Yorkblog.com history sites surpass the 100,000 mark in pages viewed
Joan Concilio’s ‘Only in York County’ is one of five blogs that are part of a Yorkblog.com suite of York County, Pa., history bloggers. I love the description of her blog: ‘My name is Joan and I’m a lifelong Yorker. Throughout high school and college, I swore I was getting out of here as soon as possible. Now, a few years later, I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be. I love my town. And, as a local editor, I hear every day how much you love your towns, too. So please, connect with me and let’s share what makes life in York County great. I’m here to help you enjoy this place as much as I do!’
The year 2015 will mark the 10th anniversary of the birth of York County history bloggers on Yorkblog.com.
The group has grown to five who write directly for the York Daily Record’s blogging community at Yorkblog.com – and we pull in several other history blogs from the community.
So you can say that more is being written about local history today than, well, ever in York County’s 265 years.
You can also say that people are reading more local history than ever before. The work of the history bloggers – Joan, June Lloyd (Universal York), Scott Mingus (Cannonball), Stephen F. Smith (YorksPast) and me (YorkTownSquare) – attracted a few clicks more than 100,000 page views in October. Thirty-eight to be exact, as in 100,038.
That’s the most in our 10 years, loosely akin to our worldwide audience reading 500 York County history books of about 200 pages.
Of course, digital audiences enjoy advantages over book readers. All five bloggers regularly seek out out their readers for conversation about what they wrote. We do that via Facebook, Twitter and other social media.
And these digital readers respond. Believe me, they do.
I’m sure the other bloggers would agree that it’s hard to keep up with the e-mail, Facebook comments, direct Tweets and the many other ways we’re available in, as they say, the digital space.
And that’s a good thing.
So we’ve crossed that 100,000 barrier in a month, and that’s a moment to observe.
But those dozens of monthly conversations with readers are important, too. Maybe even more important because all these conversations with readers show people are interacting with our work, not just, as it were, flipping through pages in a book.