If I read a good paper or listen to a good argument and take it away with me I could say that I’ve been influenced. But how does the author of the paper or source of the argument knows? Now, if I take their paper and share it with someone else, or if I pass on their arguments to my peers, that may be seen as clear indication of influence. I would not share something I think is poorly articulate -or simply plain wrong.
While it might be hard to find out if everyone who reads this blog is influenced by it, I think I can safely say that most of those who chose to share its content with others were. At least they thought that the post or blog was worth passing along. They were willing to put their name to it.
When designing websites think tanks should make sure that they can trace shares for their studies and outputs. Platforms like WordPress make it easy and add the ‘sharing’ buttons. Twitter has a function to see if your tweets have been retweeted.
None of these (and I am sure there are others) cost anything and can be a very useful tool.
This blog has 220 subscribers and 305 Twitter followers. I usually forward each post to a few online communities. About 150 people per day visit the site (sometimes more, sometimes less). But the following posts have been ‘shared’ from the site. Next time I’ll have a look at the top shares in Twitter and Facebook
Top Posts & Pages
These posts on your site got the most shares
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