Analysis - by Patrick Thornton on Monday, December 22, 2008 18:34 - View Comments

DISD blog doubles traffic expectations in first year

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Months ago Kent Fischer told me that he expected the DISD blog that he and Tawnell Hobbs run to get between 500,000 and 750,000 page views in its first year.

That estimate has turned out to be wildly wrong. The DISD blog already has about 1,500,000 page views for the year, and traffic has been increasing steadily in the second half of this year. Those are pretty impressive first-year numbers for a blog dedicated to the Dallas Independent School District. Both Fischer and Hobbs also write print stories as well. 

The blog has picked up considerable steam ever since a financial crisis broke out in the school district, and Fischer and Hobbs provided incredible, in-depth coverage of the crisis. Timing can have a large impact on blog traffic. Getting ahead of big stories is a great way to build traffic and use loyalty.

The DISD blog is a great example of harnessing the Web to provide better coverage.

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  • http://beatblogging.org/2008/12/23/leaderboard-for-week-of-12-22-08-the-best-of-the-best/ Leaderboard for week of 12-22-08: The best of the best | BeatBlogging.Org

    [...] like education? The DISD blog is on track for more than 1,500,000 page views in its first year. That easily surpassed expectations. Just think of the page views that this blog could get if Fischer is able to build that blog on [...]

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BeatBlogging.org was a grant-funded journalism project that studied how journalists used social media and other Web tools to improve beat reporting. It ran for about two years, ending in the fall of 2009.

New content is occasionally produced here by the this project's former editor Patrick Thornton. The site is still up and will remain so because many journalists and professors still use and link to the content. BeatBlogging.org offers a fascinating glimpse into the former stages of journalism and social media. Today it's expected that journalists and journalism organization use social media, but just a few years ago that wasn't the case.

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