Last week’s Hurricane Sandy really had am impact on those in the United States.
Image courtesy stock.xchng user piuse
While obviously it affected those in the East most of all (thankfully, I was holed up, safe in my hotel in New York City; so many others were not so fortunate), the connectedness of the US to the rest of the world meant that the implications of this storm stretched not just across the country, but all over the globe.
This was particularly true for industries that rely on technology—from Wall Street to the blogosphere.
Here at ProBlogger, we noticed a significant flattening of traffic in the days leading up to the storm. This, I expect, was the result of readers in areas expecting the storm heading offline to get prepared.
Ordinarily, we’d have seen an upswing on that day. Here’s what the same days in the previous week looked like:
Whilst we all know that the web brings us closer together, it can come as a surprise to see that your little old blog is impacted by a weather event on the other side of the world. If this is how it impacted my blog, I can only imagine how it affected local businesses in those areas—even those who managed to survive the storm physically, and keep on serving customers.
These kinds of traffic blips are something we might be used to seeing around festive times of year, though. Here’s what happens to ProBlogger traffic in a typical December, as most of our readers (in the US, the UK and Australia) gear up for Christmas and New Year:
We might be tempted to think that the Web soldiers on regardless of what’s happening in the world, but the truth is that the web is a critical part of the world. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Events like these can impact traffic, sales, signups, social networking opportunities, and so on.
The good news is that as the events pass, and people’s lives return to normal, they’ll want to get back into their old routines—including seeing what they’ve missed online.
Depending on where you’re located, and where your target readers live, a range of events—local or global—could impact your blog. It’s important to remember that sometimes, our readers have more important things to worry about.
Did Sandy affect your blog—either because your readership is located in the Eastern US, or because you were one of the millions caught in its path? We’d love to hear your stories in the comments.
