My friend Gini Dietrich over at Spin Sucks recently shared her most popular blog posts of 2012.
The cool part, aside the links to all the intelligent (and entertaining) posts, is that her friend Adam Singer, who now works at Google, has created an analytics dashboard that makes the process simple. (Follow the link at the bottom of this post to get stats for your own blog.)
First, let me say that this was a refreshing exercise because it did not use number of comments as one of the measures. Instead it plotted the more important reader behaviors, things like pageviews, unique page views, unique visitors, social shares and average time on page.
And guess what? The posts I thought were my most popular ones, in some cases, didn’t even make the list. Read on for the ones that did.
Today’s guest post on the Cat’s Eye Writer blog comes from Ali Luke, who heads up aliventures.com. I met Ali on Twitter and both she and my other half, @bobwp, will be presenting at Blogworld in New York City in June, so I’ll get to meet her in real time. I’m also looking forward to reading her new book, Lycopolis. Take it away, Ali:
The passing of Apple Co-founder Steve Jobs on October 5, 2011 was a watershed moment for me. No matter which side we are on—the PC lovers or the Mac addicts—I think we all recognized the genius of this man.
As a wordster, my favorite TV game show in the world was The $100,000 Pyramid. It started out as The $10,000 Pyramid, but, you know, with inflation and all, they had to up the ante.
Don’t you love it when you have a perfect storm thing going? When the new post you are starting to write is on the exact same topic you’ve been getting questions about all week? Well, it happened. You asked me what I did to grow my blog.
Write for yourself. No, you should write for your readers. 
Just one month ago, I would not have written this post. Because I needed a fourth social networking time suck like I needed another stray cat to show up at my door. (We have already adopted two.)
I have always loved contests. And while the random chance (will my name be picked?) ones are fun, the competitions that involve skill are my favorites.
I am not a designer and never could be one. Yet, as a blogger, I know how important it is to get a nice, clean, visually appealing look. I want to entice my readers, give them a reason to stay. And good design will do that (along with stellar content, of course).
