This blog typically gets a little over five-thousand visitors each day, in addition to the thousands of other subscribers who read the posts through an RSS Reader or through email.

I hadn’t checked blog analytics for a long time to see the sources of that traffic, so I looked at stats for the past two months today and thought readers, particularly those who are other bloggers, might find it interesting to see what I found. Perhaps there are some places you’ve overlooked when you’ve shared your posts, and I’d love to hear how it compares to yours to see if I’m overlooking other places, too!

I also thought there might be some lessons in them — for me and for others…

1. Twitter is the 20,000 pound gorilla in the room and is the biggest source of blog traffic. That wasn’t a big surprise to me.

2. However, it was a bit unexpected to see Pinterest as the second biggest source, and it really wasn’t that far behind Twitter.

3. Facebook was third (I had thought it was going to be ahead of Pinterest).

4. Feedly was fourth, which was another surprise. Readers can see entire posts in the RSS Reader and share from there, also. Any ideas why there would be so many “click-throughs”?

5. Next came my Education Week Teacher blog, where I frequently share links to “Best” lists related to the topics covered there.

6. Edutopia follows, and that was another bit of a surprise. I usually share excerpts from my books there, but that’s once-a-year. I think other writers there may share links to my blog.

7. Flipboard is next, and that was unexpected, too. I know Sue Waters, among others, is a big fan, but I haven’t paid much attention to it. I guess I should start…

8. Quite a few visitors came from my blog at the British Council’s Teaching English site, where I post once-a-month.

9. Scoop.it, the popular curation site, was next.

10. Google Plus rounded-out the “top ten.”

I then looked at analytics over the past twelve months and found that they were quite similar. There were only two differences — Facebook was just about equal to Twitter as the number one source over that period, and The Washington Post, where I periodically write guest columns, moved ahead of Google Plus.

The primary lessons I see from these stats is that it pays to blog elsewhere and it’s important to share have a social media presence in multiple platforms to share posts. It’s not like the old days when you could blog and everyone read your posts either through an RSS Reader or through email.

Any other lessons you see that I’ve missed?

I’m adding this post to The Best Sources Of Advice For Teachers (And Others!) On How To Be Better Bloggers.