Clark's Spot

It happens every day during my commute. I don’t take a highway or expressway during my drive, but I cross the interchange of an expressway at the edge of downtown. A few blocks from the expressway is a bridge construction project that’s taken out one another way into downtown.

Between these two inconveniences (they’re minor – this isn’t a major metro region), you’ll a dozen drivers jockeying for position. You’ll have traffic heading on and off the expressway. There’s always a truck from a distributor pulling out to block traffic. You’re likely to hit a parent stop in traffic lane to let a child out for school.

The rest of the drive is fairly empty. All of the congestion is in a really small area. That small patch of roadway determines whether I’m early, on-time, or late. The majority of the trip has no impact on the final results.

I was thinking about that as I drove to work yesterday. I knew that I’d spend the day writing and coding a monthly e-newsletter.

Research might suggest that e-mail is losing effectiveness. It’s too easy to delete (if it isn’t marked spam). The addresses in your list eventually go out of date. The information is scanned and discarded compared to interactive websites, social networks, and online communities.

(Disclaimer – we don’t spam, everyone has prior relationship with us, we process unsubscribes and opt-outs, etc.)

I’ve found our monthly e-mail is the largest driver of traffic to each of these other channels. The website hits go up. The blog views skyrocket. The clicks on Twitter and Facebook pop. It’s the reminder to our stakeholders to check in – using whichever program or format you’d like – to the institution where I work.

In other words, the three-day window of e-mail opens has a huge effect on the month traffic. What have you found?

Thanks to lynac on Flickr for the photo.

Mr. Peanut and I in healthier times

I’ve been off work for the past few days taking care of a sick cat. Great that I have a week of vacation for this. The cat recently had surgery to repair/reconfigure the surgical procedure he had done in August. The cat is leading the family in surgical procedures in the past year…

So from my spot on the kitchen floor, I’ve spent a lot of time working on the spring newsletter for the Lackawanna Historical Society and getting some grad school work done.

I’ve also been working on a series of posts about social networking – something that I get to do at work each day. I’ve used my time off work thinking about a few social network questions that I posed to myself about a month ago:

• what’s hype and what’s real?
• what’s here to stay and what’s a fad?
• where should we put our online efforts?
• what’s talked up just so people can waste their time on it?

Of course, I’ve found some time to spend on the popular networks as well. One of the best things about Facebook and Twitter is all of the favorite quotes everyone will post. Best one I’ve seen this week?

“Everyone wants to change the world. No one thinks of changing themselves.”
-Henri Nouen