Year in Review: Top Posts for BI Notes Blog 2012
As the new year begins, I am reviewing the 2012 results for this blog and trying to determine what direction I need to set. As Greg Ng suggests in his post 2013 Goals. Not Resolutions., I want to keep my attention on the goals that help me stay focused on what I want to accomplish. Today I am sharing a few of my insights and I’m interested in your feedback.
Where Should I Focus My Efforts?
Last year this blog received over 50,000 visits and well over 100,000 page views. Search engines lead the traffic with generating 47% of the visitors to the site. Social Media and Related sites contributed 14.5% equally. Dashboard Spy refers the most traffic to the blog. As far as I can tell, there are not at lot of resources available for SAS BI Dashboard information, so I may be the only resource. Overall, there are a lot of SAS users!
Nearly all social media visitors are from LinkedIn. Makes me wonder if the Social Media outreach is worth the effort. However, I suspect it is how many new visitors learn about the site. Twitter generates very little traffic, which is kind of strange to me. Last year I made several new friends from Twitter. My guess is that many of the readers do not read or follow tweets. What do you think?
Top 10 SAS BI Posts
Another item to consider – what topics are most popular? BI Dashboard, OLAP Cubes, Enterprise Guide, and Stored Processes were of the most interest. From this list – I think I need to create more dashboard content. Here are the top 10 most visited posts from 2012:
- SAS BI Dashboard Rocks My Google Analytics Data Analysis Shows how to use the SAS BI Dashboard interactive indicators and reviews the Google Analytics data.
- SAS BI Dashboard: Google Analytics Dashboard Kicked Up a Notch Explains what the Google Analytics dashboard has available and how tyou can show that information with the SAS BI Dashboard.
- SAS OLAP Cubes: Using PROC SQL and MDX to Query OLAP Cubes Discusses how to use the MDX query language with an OLAP cube. Steve Overton contributed this post.
- SAS Enterprise Guide: Import the Excel Spreadsheet – Easy Peasy Shows how to import an Excel spreadsheet into SAS Enterprise Guide.
- Web Report Studio: Souped up Dashboard Speedometers, Sliders, and Dials You can add dashboard elements to Web Report Studio using a stored process and the GKPI procedure.
- Career: Secrets from a Professional SAS Recruiter Dick Smith, a recruiter, provided some tips for job hunters in this post. Hints – get a LinkedIn profile and make good use of keywords.
- SAS OLAP Cubes: Percent of Total MDX Calculation Need percent of total in your OLAP cube … Steve Overton demonstrates the technique in this post.
- Enterprise Guide: Zero My Hero – Using the Z Format If you are trying to think of SAS Global Forum topic – Z format is one I would consider. There is very little information available about how to apply the format and what it does. And there’s a lot of interest! Consider that this blog most often discusses SAS BI Tool topics and this article was about a BASE SAS topic!
- SAS EG 5.1 – Data Exploration Feature Probably one of the best new features of SAS Enterprise Guide 5.1 See how it’s used in this post.
- Stored Process: How do I get to the Library? Libname Errors! This might just be the most common error that new stored process developers encounter.
July 18th had the most page views in one day with the most popular links was about how to get the Twitter followers and lots of interest in the pictures I had from the SAS Professional Forum in the UK.
Other Blogging Adventures
Here’s just some other things that happen as a result of being a blog author:
- Several times a month someone contacts me asking if I can send a free PDF of Building Business Intelligence with SAS: Content Development Examples book and/or a free copy of the SAS BI software. Sorry fellows, it is illegal in the United States. Not sure a prison stint is the career enhancement I’m seeking.
- A man contacted me asking for some topics for his master’s thesis. After I provided him some suggested topics, he replied he did not like any of my ideas. However, he did add that I could just give him one I had or just write the thesis for him. I don’t even know where to start on that one <sighs>.
- Each month I also receive many nice comments from various readers about what they enjoyed. Those comments most often come when I am exhausted and do not wish to continue. Thank you for your inspiration!
Looking forward to 2013
This year I plan to focus on the new SAS Visual Analytics product. Plus I’m interested in creating more video content. At first I thought it might be less work, however, when I started video blogging with All Analytics I realized it’s actually more work. With that said, I do want to create some YouTube content so I can better learn to use the technology.
If there are some topics you are interested in me talking more about – use the Comment section to list them. If you are interested in providing a guest post – pitch me an idea! Happy New Year!
