Stats from the front lines: EPA’s Greenversations Blog

Someone just asked me some questions about Greenversations, so I figured I’d share the answers more broadly.

Basics

• Greenversations launched on Earth Day in 2008: April 22, 2008.
• We’ve published 1500 posts written by hundreds of EPAers across the entire agency. Anyone at EPA can write with their management’s permission, and posts are reviewed by the relevant communications director. No attorney review.
• We’ve received 17,000 comments.
• The record for comments was a question of the week that asked people why they did or didn’t bike to work. It continues to receive comments more than 3 years after we posted it, and it’s up to 834 responses so far.
• The longest-running conversation is in the comments on a post about the Coqui frog, an accidental import from Puerto Rico (where it’s much-loved) to Hawaii (where it’s causing problems as an invasive species). Published in May 2008, we’re up to 134 comments between incoming comments and the author’s responses. The most recent comment came in October 2011.
• Our most prolific blogger by far is Lina Younes, who wrote weekly in English and Spanish for three straight years before taking a break. She’s back at it now.

Readership

• Someone comes to our blog around 60,000 times each month. No way to know whether that’s 2,000 people checking every day or 60,000 people coming once.
• About 160,000 pages are viewed each month (if you read 3 posts, that’s 3 page views).
• 25,000 people follow Greenversations on Twitter.
• 28,000 people get an email each time we publish a new post (you can subscribe from the right sidebar on any page).

If you’re interested in how we run Greenversations, check out our guidance and the (somewhat outdated) presentation below.