Inside LabourStart

Some headlines:

1. Five of the top six mailing lists have grown very well in the last month – especially Italian, Spanish and Russian which grew by a combined total of almost 2,500.
2. All the other mailing lists have pretty much stagnated, though we have hopes for a big growth of the Dutch list this month.
3. UnionBook and the LabourStart page on Facebook continue to grow, albeit slowly. The former has picked up another 85 members while the latter has grown by over 150 new people.
4. We’re expanding our presence on Twitter, with new Japanese and German feeds already introduced and many more on the way. The English one is growing at the rate of about 200 new followers per month.
5. There’s been a huge boost — expected post-Christmas — in the number of unique visitors to the site. We’re now looking at something like 640,000 unique visitors per month.
6. The LinkedIn group – with no promotion whatsoever – continues to grow at the rate of 10% per month, and now has over 600 members.

Here are the totals with the last month (January 2012) in brackets (large gains – 100+ – in bold face):

Mailing lists (greater than 100)

English: 67,414 [66,576]
French: 3,781 [3,582]
Italian: 3,076 [2,420]
Spanish: 3,051 [2,115]
Norwegian: 2,357 [2,333]
Russian: 1,600 [712]
German: 1,534 [1,516]
Turkish: 787 [778]
Polish: 304 [304]
Chinese: 276 [276]
Portuguese: 245 [245]
Dutch: 237 [236]
Finnish: 183 [183]
Swedish: 180 [182]
Japanese: 137 [137]
Danish: 107 [107]

And just below the radar:

Arabic 97 [89]
Hebrew 96 [96]
Korean 93 [93]
Farsi 93 [93]

Social networks

UnionBook 2.0 – members: 4,875 [4,790]

Facebook –
Members of LabourStart group: 4,711 [4,714]
Like LabourStart.org page (English): 3,615 [3,462]
Like LabourStart page (French): 108 [96]

Twitter followers –
English: 5,383 [5,180]
French: 90 [85]
Japanese: 15 [0]
German: 1 [0]

Union group on Flickr: 674 [673]

LinkedIn – LabourStart group: 607 [551]

Website

Correspondents: 948 [940]

Unique visits to the site this month : 638,240 [597,481]
Peak day: 26,170 – 27.1.12
Page views this month: 1,301,326 [1,370,129 ]

Headline news –
1 The Italian mailing list grew five-fold from 560 to 2,420, becoming our third largest list overnight – due to the FIAT campaign.
2 The Russian list also grew by some 15% in one month due to our Kazakhstan campaign.
3 For the first time ever, UnionBook has more members than our group on Facebook – which has declined in membership for the first time.
4 Our followers on Twitter outnumber both of these, and the number has now exceeded 5,000 for the first time.
5 Our relatively inactive group on LinkedIn continues to grow at the rate of 10% per month.
6 At the current rate of growth (5 new correspondents per month), we won’t reach 1,000 correspondents before the end of 2012 – so we’ll want to do a cull to remove inactive correspondents sooner than that.
7 Traffic to the site remained quite high considering that it was December. There were just under 600,000 unique visitors. And this in spite of the fact that the last third of the month would have seen many (or most) of our readers on vacation.

Here are the totals with the last month (December 2011) in brackets (large gains – 100+ – in bold face):

Mailing lists (greater than 100)

English: 66,576 [66,226]
French: 3,582 [3,333]
Italian: 2,420 [560]
Norwegian: 2,333 [2,337]
Spanish: 2,115 [2,082]
German: 1,516 [1,485]
Turkish: 778 [758]
Russian: 712 [617]
Polish: 304 [304]
Chinese: 276 [249]
Portuguese: 245 [245]
Dutch: 236 [235]
Finnish: 183 [182]
Swedish: 182 [182]
Japanese: 137 [133]
Danish: 107 [112]

And just below the radar:

Hebrew 96 [97]
Korean 93 [93]
Farsi 93 [93]
Arabic 89 [84]

Social networks

UnionBook 2.0 – members: 4,790 [4,706]

Facebook –
Members of LabourStart group: 4,714 [4,738]
Like LabourStart.org page (English): 3,462 [3,192]
Like LabourStart page (French): 96 [89]

Twitter –
English – followers: 5,180 [4,964]
French – followers: 85 [82]

Union group on Flickr: 673 [661]

LinkedIn – LabourStart group: 551 [503]

Website

Correspondents: 940 [935]

Unique visits to the site this month : 597,481 [576,905]
Peak day: 23,597 – 17.12.11
Page views this month: 1,370,129 [1,371,687]

Here are the totals with the last month in brackets (large gains – 100+ – in bold face):

Mailing lists (greater than 100)

English: 66,226 [65,425]
French: 3,333 [3,291]
Norwegian: 2,337 [2,342]
Spanish: 2,082 [2,051]
German: 1,485 [1,058]
Turkish: 758 [708]
Russian: 617 [609]
Italian: 560 [552]
Polish: 304 [303]
Chinese: 249 [249]
Portuguese: 245 [244]
Dutch: 235 [235]
Swedish: 182 [188]
Finnish: 182 [181]
Japanese: 133 [124]
Danish: 112 [115]

And just below the radar:

Hebrew 97
Korean 93
Farsi 93
Arabic 84

Social networks

UnionBook 2.0 – members: 4,706 [4,599]

Facebook –
Members of LabourStart group: 4,738 [4,703]
Like LabourStart.org page (English): 3,192 [2,855]
Like LabourStart page (French): 89 [83]

Twitter –
English – followers: 4,964 [4,699]
French – followers: 82 [80]

Union group on Flickr: 661 [658]

LinkedIn – LabourStart group: 503 [485]

Website

Correspondents: 935 [930]

Unique visits to the site this month : 576,905 [573,525]
Peak day: 25,482 – 2.11.11
Page views this month: 1,371,687 [1,402,386]

Some highlights:

* Nearly all the mailing lists are growing – some quite dramatically (the German and Spanish lists, for example, over the last couple of months).
* As for social networks, there’s now a virtual tie between the number of users of UnionBook, the members of LabourStart’s Facebook group, and our followers on Twitter. At the moment, the Facebook group is the largest – by 4 people. But it suffered a net loss in members this month, while UnionBook picked up about 100 new ones.  My guess is the UnionBook or Twitter will lead next month.
* We continue to pick up several members each week for our LinkedIn group, which we barely use and never promote. We’re now up to just under 500 members. If any of you are very active users of LinkedIn and are keen to take charge of this, let me know.
* At our current rate of growth, we’ll be at 1,000 LabourStart correspondents by the end of February. At that point – or sooner – we might want to begin to purge the list of inactive ones.
* There was a massive increase in traffic to the site in October – page views alone were up about 30% compared to September. And on a peak day, we’re now getting over 24,000 unique visitors.

Here are the totals with the last month in brackets (large gains are in bold face):

Mailing lists (with over 100 members)

English: 65,425 [65,139]
French: 3,291 [3,199]
Norwegian: 2,342 [2,318]
Spanish: 2,051 [2,021]
German: 1,058 [908]
Turkish: 708 [700]
Russian: 609 [597]
Italian: 552 [539]
Polish: 303 [302]
Portuguese: 244 [252]
Chinese: 249 [249]
Dutch: 235 [231]
Swedish: 188 [190]
Japanese: 124
Finnish: 181 [179]
Danish: 115 [117]

Social networks

UnionBook 2.0 – members: 4,599 [4,498]
Facebook –
Members of LabourStart group: 4,703 [4,714]
Like LabourStart.org page (English): 2,855 [2,705]
Like LabourStart page (French): 83 [79]
Twitter –
English – followers: 4,699 [4,541]
French – followers: 80 [78]
Union group on Flickr: 658 [652]
LinkedIn – LabourStart group: 485 [464]

Website

Correspondents: 930 [916]
Unique visits to the site this month : 573,525 [503,250]
Peak day: 24,154 – 18.10.11
Page views this month: 1,402,386 [1,120,845]

Here are the totals with the last month in brackets:

The ITUC has issued its annual report on the violations of trade union rights.   It’s important that we do all we can to promote this — in all our languages and in all countries.  Here are some of the things I’m doing today:

• Promoting this in a LabourStart mass mailing later today
• Posted it to the LabourStart page on Facebook
• Posted it as a tweet – as LabourStart
• Posted it on UnionBook – and then automatically through my personal account to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn

Other correspondents have already made sure it’s a top news story on LabourStart today.

What have you done?

Here are the totals with the last month in brackets:
—
Mailing lists (with over 100 members)
English: 56.584 [56,950]
Norwegian: 2,759 [2,760]
French: 2,481 [2,462]
Spanish: 1,532 [1,614]
German: 839 [854]
Turkish: 689
Italian: 526
Russian: 493
Polish: 302
Portuguese: 252
Chinese: 243
Dutch: 234
Finnish: 178

—
Social networks
UnionBook 2.0 – members: 3,593 [3,503]
Facebook –
Members of LabourStart group: 4,369 [4,332]
Like LabourStart.org page 962 [120]
Twitter – followers: 3,469 [3,269]
Union group on Flickr: 637 [635]
LinkedIn – members of LabourStart group: 334 [318]
—
Website
Correspondents: 866 [865]
Unique visits to the site this month: 532,236 [509,194]
Page views this month: 1,245,761 [1,291,153]
Popular language home pages (last month in brackets):
* English 49,471 [45,959]
Our web host (1&1 Internet) no longer provides details beyond the 30 most popular pages, and none of the other language pages are in this category.