My Nortel Experiment
In late-December 2005, I decided to conduct an experiment by launching a blog called All Nortel, All the Time that just about Nortel Networks. Why? Well, I had one of those Wordpress.com “golden tickets’ that I wanted to use; there were no other blogs dedicated to Nortel (surprise surprise!), and I wanted to see how much traffic I could attract by writing a blog that wasn’t bolstered by my profile as a business reporter with the National Post.
Over the past 14 months, I’ve written 433 posts on Nortel and generated 282,000 pageviews, which works out to about 30 posts a month and 23,000 pageviews. Not terribly successful in terms of traffic but not bad given I’m writing about one company with a stock price that, until recently, has been nothing to write home about. In the past month, however, things are looking up. All Nortel, All the Time was picked up by Seeking Alpha, which focuses on investment opportunities, and traffic hit a record high today at 2,760 pageviews (it didn’t hurt that the CFO quit yesterday, and the company announced 2,900 jobs cuts today).
I’d like to think All Nortel, All the Time’s quasi-success has to do with being focused, enthusiastic and committed - and I would argue these are the elements if you are going to blog the right way; be it about technology, cooking, books or sports. Perhaps the most rewarding part is the traffic and comments I get from Nortel employees, and the fact that after all this time, I’m still the only Nortel blog in town (other than Nortel CTO John Roese). Make of that what you will!
