It’s been very interesting to do these top 10 posts because it let’s me look at 3 different factors:

• Traffic: The posts are ranked based on traffic (unique hits) according to Google Analytics.
• Engagement: How many comments a blog receives is usually considered a level of engagement.
• Influence: The PostRank scores are meant to judge the level of influence your post has based on things like tweets, comments, bookmarks on Delicious, etc.

Some might argue that I should base my ranking on PostRank since it’s a more complete view. I don’t use PostRank as my ranking for this list because then I would only be basing it on posts made in a month which would not account for posts made in previous months. Also PostRank does not get everything, they frequently do not gather all the tweets that Tweetmeme gets, so it’s still not totally accurate, but it’s a really good indicator.

The main reason I base this list on traffic (even though that’s not the goal of this blog) is that tweets and comments don’t always equate to traffic. Sometimes one tweet or one link from the right source is far more valuable then a dozen tweets and links from other sources.

This month for instance shows me that 3 of Augusts Top 10 are from July. That’s because of the sites that linked to them.

Where my traffic is coming from?

Twitter is the number one driver of traffic to my site, although Facebook showed up in my Top 10 for the first time. But this traffic is very short term.

Search is the number two driver of traffic. Both Google and Bing appear in my Top 10 traffic sources.

Links are the number three driver of traffic. While some are legitimate follow on posts, several of my links come to me from other Zemanta users. This is the best feature of Zemanta but most people overlook that when doing product reviews.

Top 10 posts for August

1. You Do Not Have to be Social Media Famous. 8/10/09 47 tweets, 7.8 PostRank, 9 comments
2. You are Crazy not to Measure the ROI of Social Media! 8/27/09 37 tweets, 9.3 PostRank, 4 comments
3. Lessons from Gnomedex: Too Geeky is a Good Thing 8/24/09 13 tweets, 7.8 PostRank, 3 comments
4. My GTD Moleskine Hacks 7/07/09 2 tweets, 6.0 PostRank, 6 comments
5. So Shut the Tweet Up! 8/07/09 27 tweets, 9.0 PostRank, 15 comments
6. How to use Posterous for Internal Collaboration 7/30/09 9 tweets, 7.1 PostRank, 3 comments
7. Mobile App Blogging Thanks to Posterous: Regator vs MeeHive vs Byline 8/19/09 7 tweets, 4.1 PostRank, 4 comments
8. Agencies Get Out of Your Client’s Way 8/11/09 16 tweets, 6.1 PostRank, 8 comments
9. It’s the Message Stupid! News and Politics. [A Case Study] 8/13/09 5 tweets, 3.6 PostRank, 2 comments
10. How a DM via Twitter to a Blog with a Link to Facebook Got Me My Job 7/27/09 21 tweets, 10.0 PostRank, 4 comments

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