Reviews and Generating Traffic...Or Not.

I think every book review blogger has noticed this: it's "other" sorts of posts, not the book reviews, that generate traffic and comments. The memes like Waiting on Wednesday and In My Mailbox. The issue-of-the-week posts. The indulgent what-I-did-this-week-and-what-I-learned-from-it posts. The kitty picture posts. (Guilty. Unrepentant.)

The irony is, book reviewing is what we DO. It's our bread and butter. (I still call myself a book reviewer even though my content is evolving.) I read first Adele's Traffic Report post and Megan's Blogging Stats today, and the thing that struck me was how none of Adele's most popular posts and only two of Megan's were reviews. (It struck them too.) It kept striking me all evening and it's why I'm here thinking with my fingers instead of continuing with City of Bones which I'm kinda loving. I took a look at my stats, which I hadn't done before because I, uh...didn't know you could (I know right, can you say blind?) and there's only one review in my top ten, plus that gush I did about North and South, but that's not a book and not strictly a review.

What gives? Should we give up on reviewing? Are we just crap at it?

I was particularly surprised by my results as until now I've been tracking my traffic in Feedburner and there I have 4 reviews in my top ten posts. (Two are for Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking books--you guys have taste.)

Here's my top ten for Blogger:

1. Waiting on Wednesday: Ness, Pike and Labyrinth
2. Are you making fun of me Riz?
3. Rapping at my Chamber Door: Edgar Allen Poe and MC Lars
4. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
5. Kissing Day Blogfest!
6. My new hobby, inspired by WIP research
7. North and South: The BBC Adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's novel
8. Literature in Songs: Romeo and Juliet, Dire Straits
9. Coca-Cola, product placement and The Road
10. Guest Post: Amy of Addicted to Books reviews The Handmaid's Tale

So what gives? I think it's this: Blogger Stats tracks unique visits to a post. All the popular ones contain incredibly searchable content. It's things that people out there on the interwebs are searching for all the time. The "Are you making fun of me Riz?" post had me stumped for a bit: Why does such a random collection of humorous bits and pieces have the second most number of hits? I looked at it again and realised it's because of that Edward Cullen Venn diagram I included. Never underestimate the lure of the sparklepire.

In contrast, Feedburner tracks the popularity of posts among people who have subscribed to my feed. Most of them, I imagine, are other book bloggers. They might not always comment (and I'm guilty as the next) but they're reading the content.

I like the contrast of the two sets of stats: my regulars like my reviews and memes, and the Dystopian Challenge posts. (Yay! Is great to see them in my Feedburner top ten.) These are the posts I love doing, that I plan and schedule and think of as defining the blog. And then there are the more random posts that happen serendipitously that often have highly searchable content and draw in "them out there". They probably don't stay for long, either. But it's nice to have them visit.

Oh, and so a few of them read this...EDWARD CULLEN VENN DIAGRAM.

*waves*