People Digital Editor Shares How to Get 1 Billion Page Views

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Visitors to People.com generated more than 1 billion page views in January, according to Omniture, setting a record for the magazine and probably for all magazine sites. What’s the secret, beyond obsessive coverage of Sandra Bullock, Halle Berry and Katie Holmes?

Mark Golin “Hitch your website to an enormously successful magazine,” said Mark Golin, editor of People Digital. Beat. “I’m joking.”

Here, then, are Mr. Golin’s four ways to get your magazine to 1 billion page views.

No. 1: Make the tech work for users
“Over the last few years we really have focused on speed,” Mr. Golin said. “The faster you serve up your pages, the lower your bounce rate is and the more likely people are to keep looking at your site. It’s sort of a like a light switch. If it only works 50% of the time, people stop using it.”

No. 2: Press on social media
“At first I was unclear whether it was going to pay off for us,” Mr. Golin said. “But Twitter and Facebook are in our top 10 referrers at this point. So we’ve been spending a lot of time building up our Facebook fan base. And our Twitter followers are at somewhere like 2.3 million. Once you start hitting the big numbers, you really start seeing your returns.”

No. 3: Highlight different kinds of content
“When I first got here the site was sort of ‘Here’s our news, here’s our photos, come again please,'” Mr. Golin recalled. “We started building out verticals — a StyleWatch channel, a moms and babies channel, a games channel, a video channel. … It’s not as though we didn’t have all of those things in the mix but, you separate them out and emphasize them and throw a little more work into each one and you start to see more page views per user in each of these categories.”

No. 4: Link to yourself
A lot of sites don’t link to themselves very well.

“We spent a lot of time doing a celebrity database,” Mr. Golin said. “When you look at most of our news articles, you get to the bottom and there’s an automatic feed from our database: Would you like to read more about this celebrity? There’s a bio, more photos.”

“Essentially it’s impossible to know everything about your user but when your user is on a particular page, you do know what they’re interested in right now,” he added. “You do that well, you keep them in the site longer.”

Social Media Saturdays: Check In with Foursquare, Post to Facebook, and Upload to YouTube

One of the advantages of living in sunny Florida is that you get to take advantage of some amazingly beautiful winter days.  I’m talking 75, bright blue skies, and so many art, music, food and theme park happenings that it really can be a choir to decide what to do.  Yesterday, my hubby and I decided to check out a new World of Beer that opened in our area: 50+ beers on tap and acoustical live music from three different bands.  A perfect way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

But besides telling you what I did this weekend, what does that have to do with new media technology and marketing?  Well, several things actually.  On Mashable’s “42 New Social Media Resources You May Have Missed,” they dig into several interesting social trends, fueled by technology, that were clearly in use during our outing yesterday.

• 15 Aspiring Musician Who Found Fame through YouTube.  Mashable’s Elliott outlines some top musical performers whose claim to fame happened due to social media channels.  All three acts at WOB yesterday touted their Facebook fan pages and YouTube videos as a means to access more information about them and as a way to get their soon-to-be-released albums.  Its grassroots awareness that’s giving these musicians a shot at fame that previously was tightly controlled only by recording studios.  Certainly an indication that social media is mainstream and becoming tightly woven in our everyday lives; thanks to the technology that makes it possible.
•  Foursquare’s Rise to 6 Million Users: This week, Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley released impressive figures.  More than 6 million people have registered for a Foursquare account, and the company has experienced more than 3400% growth in 2010.  Everyone’s “checking in” and letting their friends, family and followers know where they are, RIGHT NOW.  Yesterday was no exception.  There was not a table in the place where consumers were not using their smartphones, engaging with face-to-face friends, but also snapping pictures, posting to networks, and reporting on the day’s happening.  While the clientele was skewing a bit younger (20s-30s), even the more mature patrons (40s-50s) were mobile ready, engaged, and interacting.  Another indication that social media is moving well beyond the early adopters into the mainstream.

Smartphone projections are astounding, with some forecasting that by 2013 there will be 1 billion smartphone users worldwide.  Even Verizon this week is projecting its smartphone penetration will double in 2011, from an ending point of 26% in 2010, to 50% by the end of 2011 among subscribers.  That’s a whole lot more sharing and social connection forecasted for 2011.  A perfect way to spend a Saturday afternoon.