Cultivate visibility because attention is the currency. - Chris Brogan
You're spot on, Chris!
Now it's gonna be hard to 'measure' visibility if we don't know how many people are actually looking into our stories, don't you think? Since a couple of days I'm missing the 'view counter' on the bottom right of my blog posts that indicates the number of generated page views.
The counter's a great tool to estimate one's leverage with regards to influence and also gives some valid information about the voters/readers ratio (how many of those who upvoted are actually opening the article?).
Are you also fan of the view counter? Then let's spread the word to get it back :-)
Picture found on pixabay.com
Visibility is key - but only if you can measure it
To bloggers visibility is absolutely essential.
We have uncountable tools to make some noise and get ourselves into the spot light. Now, obviously one of the most important parts of our job is to know how successful our doings are, which are the topics that generate attention (traffic) and which are the ones that don't, how many users have upvoted and how many have actually 'looked inside' a specific piece of content.
I remember that there have been written whole blog posts about the traffic 'trending topics' are able to bring to this platform.
Just think about @wadepaterson's 20 questions with John Goehrke (the guy who landed a date with Genie Bouchard).
As you can see from the comments, the view counter of this one was almost exploding:
How can we even know if a piece of content got viral without a view counter?
As you can see from the above copied conversation, the interview with John Goehrke reached more than 13,000 views within a very short time frame.
Having these numbers available is a GREAT way to measure the success of a story and like that implement an impactful strategy to generate waves of organic traffic.
The example above brought a lot of visitors from the outside to steemit.com which means that the article wasn't only successful in terms of visibility within the Steem eco-system but also on the whole internet.
Ultimately, these viral monsters are even a great marketing tool for steemit.com!
That's why I believe that a 'view count feature' is an indispensable tool for steemit and actually any blogging network.
Why did this 'performance indicator' disappear though?
I've read that it's quite prone to abuse. But is that really the reason why it was completely taken off of the application?
By the way I'm not the first one talking about it. For instance, one week ago @emrebeyler asked View count feature is gone. Why it was a bad thing? In this article I learned for the first time that the views of our blog posts are actually not an information that is stored in the blockchain. Weird! Why not?
It seems that one argument to kill the feature was the fact that it can be easily manipulated. Would this be the same if we had the data stored in the blockchain? Or are we talking about bots opening the blog posts and artificially increasing the numbers like that? Couldn't these repeated actions be blocked, limiting the views to '1 per account / IP address / ...' ?
Whatever the reasons were to take it down, it'd be great to know more about it.
What you do think? Do you miss the counter? Let me know in the comments!
Much love,
Marly -
PS: Thanks to everybody who's actually openened and read this blog post!! I can't see how many you are, but I feel you're a couple of them :-)
Thanks for your valuable time!
This blog was launched at the end of July 2016
aiming to provide stories for open-minded
people who enjoy living on the edge of their lives,
stepping out of comfort zones, going on adventure,
doing extreme sports and embracing the new.
Welcome to the too-much-energy-blog!
PS: Information is power.
Original content. Quote found on brainyquote.com.
You can count one view from me! (Upvote as well) Sucks the feature is gone but I can see the potential for abuse and distortions. Maybe you can install your own tracking pixel in your post. That might be worth exploring. Just a thought. Thanks for the share! :-)
Haha, cool! Counted you :-)
I don’t believe it’s possible to include your own pixel. Usually the editor blocks code fragments that are not part of the regular set. But I’ve also not tried it yet.
Thanks for stopping by :-)
I'm going to miss it. I was working hard at pushing my older work out there and into the world outside of Steemit. The view counter was my only way of knowing if my efforts were working, and they were. I scroll along, see an old post with 1000 views, check back a month later and see 200 more. It was good to know my stuff was still alive. People can't simply Google my work. I can't depend on those tricks, so I had to get creative. One site I use keeps statistics at least, so I can still check there. It takes some digging though. I don't always have time for that.
That’s it. I used it as a barometer in the same way you did.
About nine months ago I published a post on how to properly embed YouTube videos on Steemit. I think it was my best article with regards to reach and I loved seeing the view count constantly increasing, even though the article was already old.
Maybe there are other ways to track the numbers, but it was great to have it as an included feature.
Thanks for sharing your perspective! :-)
Those who open and read the whole post, comments mostly.
So, you know by the comments, how many people genuinely read your post.
Though it will be a very small part of the people who opened the post skimmed it, maybe upvoted or not.
And because of that, I am missing the view feature too.
I had an article about crypto, which is still trending on google. It had 40k views last I checked.
So, the views motivate the people who like to write, who love to create, like you.
I hope they rebuild the tool and bring it back without any bug!
I fully agree with what you said. It can be quite motivational! Also I believe traffic is an essential KPI for a blogger.
Yepp, definitely it is!
As much as I appreciate your views on this @surfermarly but there were two reasons due to which I could accept this change.
But removing it was not the solution. Instead as you mentioned they could restrict it with 1 view considered per ip address. But again that could be tweaked as well with code or bots. Not sure if there is a technical limitation to implement it. I miss it sometimes but don't care about it too much. :-D Cheers!
Also, @surfermarly, I see that you had flagged @steemboy9's comment as it was spam. Thanks for fighting against comment abuse.
Please reply to his flagged comment with this message and earn rewards for taking an initiative to clean the blockchain.
Bot will give you an upvote :-)
Cool advice, thanks! Will do that :-)
Regarding your first comment: I fully agree that if it was ever implemented again, it’d need to be safe. To be honest I didn’t even know one was able to manipulate the counter by hitting the F5 button. As a serious blogger you don’t even think about such options to be honest, haha :-))
Again, thanks for the addings - they’re much appreciated!
I missed the counter already even tho I can see the potential of people abusing it as it can be increased by refreshing the page. So now I cannot determine which type of content people prefer more. As most of my content is now on Dlive, I use that counter as a guide for the last few days
Hey @travelgirl! :-)
You're right, luckily the view counters of other Steem applications are still working correctly.
It'd be great to have them installed on the whole blockchain...
Wishing you a great day!
It seems like there have been a couple of times where the view counter has disappeared. I almost feel like the ratio of votes to views and also the relationship to how much something was getting paid was so bad that it looked super scammy. I would see stuff making $500 and it would have 33 views and then 50 upvotes or something. It was all wacky with the bid bots....etc.
I like what @stellabelle said about how it trended outside of Steemit but not inside. Very interesting.
Hey Brian! How are you doing? I hope life's treating you well :-)
You're totally right, in the current the numbers didn't look very well. Yet, since I'm on steemit it's never been in a different way. Before bid bots dominating the market, there were circles who blindly voted for themselves. So for the large majority of the high payouts the ratio views/upvotes actually never did look very beneficial.
However, for regular users who didn't participate much in these actions, the view counter is a great tool to measure one's success both inside and outside steemit.
Absolutely. Also: how could we measure that 'trend outside steemit' now without having any idea of how many times an article had actually been opened?
I mean life goes on without view counters, but I really believe they're a smart feature - both for users and Steemit Inc's marketing/PR team (I guess they have one).
I personally think they should bring the view counter back as well because once we start seeing bigger traffic then it would be a good gauge to see. I wonder if people will continue to try the heavy bid bot pushes because everyone who have I have seen rely on it heavily wasn't really coming out ahead. It was only the people who already had a lot of support and then maybe pushed it a little further that are able to benefit from it some.
Absolutely! Actually we already had peaks of bigger traffic and it was great to have the view counter in order to track it. Professionally implemented it can be smart marketing for the whole network.
Here's my take on the bid bot hype :-)
Burning your SBD for trending positions is as if you did the following in real life: You create a new soft drink nobody knows and then buy yourself one single TV spot in the prime time every three days. So you temporarily get maximum attention for an unknown product. How many people who watched your spot would remember your drink the next time they're in the grocery's shop? :-)
This type of promotion won't bring you sustainable growth, unless your brand had been already big before. So I fully agree on what you said: in the long run it only helps those who already had a name on steemit. Nobody will remember that one guy who was once on the trending page 2 weeks ago.
It reminds me of a rat race. The only ones who seriously profit are the vote sellers.
I didn't take note of the views counter missing until I saw a meme talking about it some days ago.
I feel it whould be brought back and the issue of ip address or some other form of restriction implemented to curtail any form of abuse.
Visibility is everything.
Well basically it would sure allow to understand how much it is visible & how much attention it actually got.
Re implement of it would be indeed nice & really appreciable.
It'd be nice to have it back. I've just recently started using SteemPlus and thought it was this app - that I love for other reasons - that had resulted in the view counter disappearing. So, I just grinned and bore it. As suggested, it probably is because of bots manipulating the count / having to justify enormous payouts for posts with few views.
I manually manipulated a count once. I was being trolled and I wanted the troll to think a post had been viewed a lot more than it actually had been (it was aimed at the troll). I must have hit F5 so many times. Sad, I know, but....
I like the view counter a lot because it let me know if my work was actually being read by people even if they weren't voting. It can be very lonely as a minnow!
I am currently in a show that is talking about that earlier why the view count and the prevalent reason is bid bots.
how can someone explain a 1000 dollar posts that only has less than 10 views. Which in a way makes sense.
To be honest I don't know and of course Steem Inc doesn't have any explainations.
Well sometimes one whale vote is able to make a big difference.
I always preferred to compare views vs. comments in order to get a real idea of how „good“ my content is and how „engaged“ my followers are.
Money doesn’t provide such information.
Yet, you’re right: due to an excessive use of bots, sometimes the ratio is extreme. But that’s a completely different problem to talk about...:-) I’ve said too much about bots already I won’t participate in that discussion any longer, it’s too annoying.
Thanks for stopping by!
I agree with you fully. Anyone can earn a lot of rewards, even on shit posts by spending some sbds/steems on the boys. The sum of rewards doesn't determine if a post is in fact popular or good. The first time I didn't see the 'eye', I was on my new phone, so I thought it's because of this phone; I know, "how dumb of me" but I think my subconscious was actually hoping that to be true, so it planted the silly notion in me. However, when I logged in using my laptop, it was all the same, and I was disappointed. We need that viewcount, and I hope it will be back soon enough inshaAllah. Thank you for writing this post, I was hoping someone would mention it. I'm resteeming this to spread the message. Everyone should be concerned about this.
Yea I am agree with you. It should be re-implement. I also found view option.
it should be bought back, really worthy reason of bringing it back
Absolutely right @surgermarly... Steemit should need to reimplement and development for increasing its facilities...
Awesome steemit blog. nice story you shared. thanks a lot for sharing......@surfermarly
I agree that it should be implemented. I'm new to Steem, and while i'm getting up votes, it was much more important to me to see if people were actually reading my posts. Now I can't exactly gauge how my posts are doing since I don't know how many people are viewing anything compared to how many comment. Shame its gone.
i would love to have it back
but when it will show the real amout of views,one account visit should be counted only once even if that account visits repeatedly
This is not a great loss.
Anyway, it did not work correctly: it counted views every time you opened a post to answer the comments. It turns out that the author of the post could himself make up to 20 or more views of his own post, and they were all counted.
Well I do believe that it’s a loss because I’m interested to know how my articles perform - and not only on a monetary level.
Yes it didn’t work well as it was implemented in the past. That’s why I suggested that it‘d need to be limited to 1 view per account / IP address :-)
I like your idea about 1 view per account / IP address: we need real, truthful statistics. In this case it will be valuable and informative data.
I heard that Busy team is working on this, and probably Steemit decided to keep up.
That’d be great! I fully agree with you that data needs to be reliable always :-)
Comments readers give at the bottom of the post would surely show if they read it
Note those that comment just some seconds after you made post don't read it, they read the topic and reply. I just ask them questions for you to know if they read
What are the two eyes, I went crazy for the first time, I was very much liked that I did not see any such eyes?
I do agree with you. We need to have the view counter back. As I am new on the platform, I think I saw the counter only for couple of days, so later I actually wasn't even sure I have seen it at all. Now after reading your post, I realize the feature was real. And it is much needed. I am going to reblog this post!
I like the idea of a counter, but the one we've had isn't the best of indicators. A mere refresh of the page would make the pageview number go up. If I went back to a post to answer a comment, the pageview number would change. If someone else went to reply to my reply, it would change.
If there were a way to make it unique visitors (which apparently is hard), then it would be much more valuable.
I suppose the only true barometer we have for who has read the post are the ones who engage on it. Even the upvote can be automated, so unless you want to find out who autvotes and who doesn't, you can't always count that as an eyeball. Funny thing about the view counter is that it actually gave you a decent idea of who actually autovotes vs. who might have read the post then upvoted, because the view counter would be less than the votes!
I totally agree! I was sad to see it gone. For a second I thought it was just a problem with my browser. :( While I am always honored to be the recipient of a curation trail that brings several votes, I am writing here because I want to engage with people. I can honestly say that I would trade that no-look upvote for someone who reads, but is unable (or unwilling) to upvote.
I wonder if the fine folks developing @steem-plus could add this feature back in. Also, if you have not downloaded their browser plugin yet, I HIGHLY recommend it. It adds some really helpful information to the Steemit experience.
Cheers!
Sam
Es una de las cosas que nos llama mas la atención de los que hacemos los post o es la gran pregunta que nos hacemos, Cuantas personas en realidad leen lo que escribimos? solo entran comentan y se van? son cosas que las personas deben tomar en cuenta ya que escribimos es para ellos y se siente decepción al saber que hay comentarios incoherente porque anteriormente yo era una de esas personas pero me di cuenta de como en realidad funcionan las cosas en steem y es simplemente increible
It does seem strange that the counter is now missing. It's a really integral part of any blog, I know the upvotes are important but you need to see whether it's your click rate or content that is not catching on with people. I will re-steem this although I have hardly any followers and I'm not exactly sure what the hell I am doing on this platfom. Haha
From what I’d heard, that count was never really accurate...
As i don't get much feedback for my posts in the first place, the removal of such an essential feature makes me think about looking for alternatives tbh - i think i don't participate enough (poor network connection) or post the wrong stuff for collecting steem anyway so it's not an important part getting thus upvotes - but i wanna at least see if my posts are seen in the first place
yeah i miss the post view counter too. it would be even better if it has the dashboard with analytic like blogspot or wordpress to provide content creator a matrix to improve. And also for audience to discover and see trending/popular content.
Do you have any alternative to that beside adding counter widget code in each post ?
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