Top 5 (Anti) Social Articles in 2009

I decided to take a rare peek at Google Analytics and find out what my top 5 articles were of 2009 by pageviews.

The results didn’t surprise me and are a glimpse into what people are interested in right now and does make me question my focus here a little.

One of the top 5 was the home page. I am not including this in the list but rather actual articles.

The Countdown

1. How to Create Facebook Fan Page – I spent most of a day last Spring learning how to make a custom Facebook fan page using Static FBML and boxes. It’s a little unfortunate that this article is still so popular because Facebook boxes will be going away very soon. I’m hoping people who visit the article will take note of the link to the updates on this topic. This article has been the most popular in 2009 and is the most popular on a daily basis.
2. 4 Sites to Help You Decide What Book to Read Next – This was one of those articles that I kind of just considered filler. It got stumbled and has been going strong ever since. Apparently when people finish a book they really need help deciding what book to read next. I don’t have that problem because I have teetering piles throughout the house of the books I want to read next.
3. Twitter and Facebook Integration: Stop Making Every Tweet Your Facebook Status – This article was a plea to get people to stop feeding all of the tweets into Facebook. A lot of them don’t makes sense on a different platform, especially the retweets, and automating social media really kind of takes the social out of it. I recommended that people use the Selective Twitter Status application instead. Unfortunately, many people who find this article are looking for a way to integrate Twitter and Facebook and are feeding all of their tweets into Facebook rather than heeding my advice ;-)
4. How to Add a Custom Tab to a Facebook Fan Page – I’m glad this Facebook article is popular. The information is still pertinent and is going to be moreso when the boxes are removed from Facebook and everything needs to be converted to tabs.
5. How to Link to Your Facebook Fan Page from Your Profile Page – Everyone wants to know how to do this and it’s unfortunate that Facebook doesn’t provide this functionality. And, what’s even more unfortunate is that my method might not (probably won’t) work anymore when Facebook removes the Boxes. I am not yet aware of an alternative solution.

So, what have I learned from this? Well, Facebook fan pages are a hot topic right now, people need help creating them, and are searching for information. What has also caused me to reflect a bit is that while I mostly focus on WordPress, not a single WordPress article was in the top 5. I didn’t list the top 10 but there are a couple of WordPress articles in the top 10. And another stat that made me happy is that my services page was in the top 10 for pageviews.

photo credit: jack o’diamonds