Surprise, surprise, we have our own product, Dash, installed on this blog, along with Google Analytics. Dash provides real-time analytics and easy-to-read graphs, which can make the difference between a hot post fizzling out and driving traffic for days. Along with running this blog, I help out with client engagement, which means I show clients who are signed up for a trial how they can get the most out of Dash. Since I’m effectively a Dash user and a Dash salesperson, it’s exciting to see our features working wonders for my own publication.

Last Friday, we published a post titled “Homepagesickness” at 10 o’clock. I continued publishing content, going about business as usual, until I decided to open Dash and check our analytics. I saw something like this:

The bars for days prior had been as high as the red arrow, at least until “Homepagesickness” made the front page of Hacker News. The massive amount of traffic made earlier days seem inconsequential. Instead of just patting each other on the back, we were able to leverage traffic into business opportunities. We reached out to individuals who retweeted the content, followed which other aggregators were picking up the content, redistributed and bumped the content on our other social media platforms, and succeeded in extending the buzz over the weekend.

Although our clients enjoy exponentially higher traffic than this blog, the same principles apply to their content, at scale. Noticing traffic swings is important for building relationships with social media influencers and partner sites. Monitoring content in real-time gives our clients—and, in fact, myself—a measurable advantage over competitors.

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• analytics
• Dash
• Parse.ly
• real time
• featured