FlipSidePA readers love the escape room phenomenon
We have a feeling Escape Room Lancaster is busy this week, considering how many readers clicked on our FlipSidePA story about it last week. Page views exploded over Fourth of July weekend — the story is our most viewed of the year.
More than 400 people shared it on Facebook, which accounted for 85 percent of the article’s web traffic. And, that doesn’t take into account its success on our other social media platforms.
On July 2 alone, about one out of every five people who visited FlipSidePA.com viewed Escape room phenomenon comes to Lancaster. The entire weekend saw similar success, and the numbers are still growing.
(TIP: For those of you looking to get locked into a room closer to home, Escape Games Live offers a similar experience at 147 W. Philadelphia St., York.)
Our innovation editor Joel Shannon noted a few things that fueled the virality of this story: it was published leading up to a weekend where people were looking for something to do; it explained a new trend in a fun and approachable way; it had a great Facebook post with art.
These best practices helped get the story in front of a captive audience, but we never expected this type of traffic. Some stories catch on and skyrocket without any real science.
On the other hand, some stories we have more control over. For example, our Fourth of July coverage this year performed extremely well, too. We had nearly twice as many page views as last year. When we saw people searching for fireworks information in early June, we posted it. Listening to our audience fueled articles including Top 5 spots to see fireworks July 4, 2015 in York, Hanover, Gettysburg, more, Check the status of Fourth of July fireworks in the York/Adams area and 5 things to know if you’re going to July4York at Santander Stadium. Note the headlines here, too. “Check the status” signals to our readers that we are staying on top of the news, and providing updated information.
And to top of a great start to the month, it never hurts when a royal baby is born and you have a photo gallery of the christening.