Our top 5 Posts Ever

I’ve never done one of these, but I’ve seen them around. Taylor Grace does them regularly; you can find her latest one here. Typically, it’s something I’d look at monthly or quarterly, but since this is the first one, let’s look at the top five Part Time Monster/Sourcerer posts from the past eight months. These are in order, based on post views, starting from the top.

1. On Teaching Our Children: White Privilege, Ageism, and Maintaining an Open Dialogue

This one was Freshly Pressed, and deservedly so. Nothing else touches it. Only a couple of the other posts on this list have even half the views this one has. It’s Diana’s, published at the Monster.

2. Finnick ODair: The Hooker/Gladiator with A Heart of Gold and Feminine Masculinity.

Another of Diana’s. I have no idea where all the views came from. I wasn’t paying that much attention to referrals and such at the time. She timed it perfectly to catch a Hunger Games trend if I recall correctly, though.

3. Is Batman a Marvel Character Trapped in the DC Universe?

This one is Jeremy’s. It’s Sourcerer’s most popular post ever because it gets search engine hits every single day. Sometimes 15 or more. We got lucky with the headline, the choice of media, a reblog, and a Stumble. It’s a top ten Google search for “Is Batman Marvel?” And apparently it answers the question in a way that makes people curious. I believe this video of Batman and Superman fighting has a lot to do with its success.

4. Snowmageddon 2014: A Report In Memes

Another of Diana’s. She’s just good at appealing to people, apparently. This was a spur of the moment post that turned into a perfect Facebook share at a time when the entire southeastern U.S. was snowed in, but most of us had power. We actively tagged our friend with it and got so many Facebook looks that it attracted search traffic for weeks afterward. It’s also one of my favorite posts we’ve written so far.

5. Penny Dreadful Seance Review.

Diana, again, at Sourcerer this time. This one is also on the list because of search traffic. Diana and I had chat at the beginning of the Penny Dreadful season and compared notes about search engine optimization. She wrote a review every week for the the whole Penny Dreadful season and tailored her posts to be searchable. It worked, and this one turned out to be the most popular of her reviews.

A few further notes:

1. PTM’s about page, Meet the Monster, is the only page we have that’s as popular as these five posts. If I’d included pages in this list, it would be #2.
2. The Seance review is actually tied for #5 with a post I wrote about the Phil Robertson dustup, as of this writing. I didn’t include my post because all the views I got from it came from Facebook within a few days of me writing it. The Seance review is the clear winner because it’s attracting people from searches, and I expect it to pull ahead by at least one view any minute now.
3. My most popular post at Just Gene’O is currently sitting at about a quarter of the views that the Seance Review, #5 on the list, has.

I love posts like this. I find them helpful as a blogger and interesting as a reader. I’ll try and do them periodically.