Over time the way visitors have been able to find their way to my blog (redplanetdust.net) has changed profoundly. I have been publishing my blogposts to the LinkedIn timeline as from the start of my blog over 2 years ago. Just as one of the basic means for distribution like Twitter, RSS and Flipboard to reach audiences. (NB The publishing to social media of blog posts is an optional but automated process from the WordPress engine.)

Most remarkably the amount of visitors reaching my blog via Linkedin – where my posts and sometimes referenced articles are shown in the timeline – has gone from the second most important referencing source of incoming visitors (after Google search) to virtually zero. Not for the latest one or two posts but this has been the case for several months now.

ZERO

It could have to do with my own efforts, let’s be self critical:

  • My natural audience has become pretty bored with my writings?
  • My titles and excerpts do not entice enough? (NB even offering Btc as click bate this week did not have any effect)
  • My topics go left and right so maybe the topics touched lately are less enticing?

I do not know, a user survey does not work much in this case, even though I would be very pleased to get feedback.

A few months ago Linkedin changed its approach for the timeline updates. Would these changes have had an effect how often and where my updates are shown? (NB I have reported on Google’s practices on page ranking supposedly hurting my traffic as well.)

Or am I (also) “victim” of a bigger development?

You must have read articles about companies and others complaining not being noticed anymore in the crowded news-feeds, updates or timelines of popular social media. A good management decision should not be based on n=1 experiences, nor should declaring general trends be based on it. Still I think it remarkable that LinkedIn which was a relevant and stable referrer for over 1,5 years died down so systematically.

Does this change my appetite to write blog posts on a regular basis? Not in the least! Luckily I get visitors reading my stuff form dozens of countries. I never started the blog to aim for high traffic numbers in the first place. I write because I like to share some of my thoughts, and because of the joy I get from the process to create the posts.

Update 7 February 2015: Just minutes after publishing this page was viewed while referred via LinkedIn. It was not the first hit as a Twitter referral came in just seconds after posting (NB mind you I only use twitter passively as a distribution mechanism and have only a very very small group of “followers”). This was actually the first LinkedIn referrer since the 1st of Jan. this year! But since that hit it became quiet again. Also remarkable: the amount of people viewing the update in LinkedIn’s timeline (as can be seen in the Who’s Viewed Your Updates section) is much lower (at least halved) then previously. A further indication the change a LinkedIn has a profound effect on reaching my (potential) audience?

The only exception that people see the update more often is when a person likes an update, as it obviously spreads wider. That said, I see “likes” to my updates without referral hits on my website. This means people are liking without reading the content behind it. Again it is not right to draw general conclusions from such a small statistical sample but it shows even more how marginal the effectiveness is of LinkedIn as a source of readers at least for my website.

Update 16 February 2015: I have just canceled the automatic publishing facility to LinkedIn. The effectiveness of “luring” people in to my blog on LinkedIn has come to a grinding halt. Also the amount of “update views”, being the times that my connections or others see the title and a small excerpt on their timeline has been going down to such levels that I come to the conclusion this route is not working anymore. And maybe will be doing me a disservices as people – obviously the LinkedIn heavy users – might be getting sick and tired of seeing my “updates” flashing by all the time.