State of the Voice - some stats

Chris Davis, Pincher Creek Voice

I've been meaning to write a "State of the Voice" since our three year anniversary this summer, but haven't had the time.  We're still busy.  Here's some stats.

Roughly estimating (based on Google Analytics) where our readership is viewing from:

• 25% from Pincher Creek and Crowsnest
• 25% from Lethbridge and area
• 15% from Calgary and area
• The remainder from Edmonton, Red Deer, Vancouver, Toronto, overseas, and various other areas.

Our Pincher Creek and Crowsnest readership is only a quarter of the pie because our market is small and we've already captured a very significant portion of it.  The room to grow in readership locally is less all the time as we capture the readers that use the internet.  For example, our Lethbridge and area readership has grown significantly, not at the expense of our local numbers, but in addition to them.  Our extensive sports coverage tends to bring in a lot of readers from all over southern Alberta, a trend not really reflected in this month's numbers, as those readership numbers tend to explode in the winter and spring months, particularly during hockey and basketball season.

Some other stats:

• We have approximately 4250 regular readers in the Pincher Creek/Crowsnest area.
• We have 17,000 to 18,000 "unique" readers a month who visit approximately 34,000 times a month and view approximately 65,000 stories a month.  This number fluctuates seasonally and due to other factors to as low as 15,000 uniques and as high as 21,000 uniques, after eliminating some stories that have had a much larger readership (and therefore skew the numbers).
• Our website has had over 2,000,000 pageviews since July 21, 2011. We've been online full time since then, more than 3 years.  It took more than two years to reach 1,000,000 million pageviews.  The second million pageviews took about a year to achieve.
• In the last 28 days our YouTube videos were watched 4,204 times, for a total of 10,476 minutes.  We have 143 YouTube subscribers, but you don't have to be a subscriber to view our videos.
• We have 1062 Twitter followers, most of whom seem to be legit. (@PincherVoice)
• Our Facebook page has 779 Facebook friends, and is possibly our fastest growing statistic at this time. (www.facebook.com/PincherCreekVoice)
• We've published more than 5000 articles in the last 3 years and (almost) 3 months, an average of about 128 articles a month, or 32 a week.  That number does not include advertising, and has been rounded down.
• Our advertising revenue has grown significantly in the last year and a half since we hired Toni full time.  Call her at 403-751-0025 or email her at pinchermedia@gmail.com to arrange for an ad.
• We're seeing a HUGE growth in pageviews via phones, so if you're one of those phone users do feel free to let us know what we can do to make your experience a better one.

Some negatives:

• Our revenue hasn't grown enough to hire more permanent full time help yet, but it's getting closer.

Here's our current Alexa ranking, as of October 14, 2014:

To check the Alexa rankings of other websites, click here.

Frankly, Alexa isn't that reliable despite being an industry standard, but it can be broadly indicative.  What it indicates is that we are by far the most read website of about 25 or so I applied Alexa to in southern Alberta, outside of large metropolitan areas like Lethbridge or Calgary.  

So here's a snapshot of our basic Google Analytics (a more reliable industry standard) on October 14, 2014:

Our secret?  Get to the story and tell the story.

As part of my semi-annual State of the Voice column I usually include an update to our policies and plans going forward.  Stay tuned for that shortly.

Chris Davis, Publisher, Pincher Creek Voice