Febraury 2015 has been yet another decent month for Open Borders: The Case. It’s been a quiet month with steady traffic, despite a substantial reduction in the number of published posts.
Traffic patterns: overall summary
Controlling for length, February did almost exactly as well as January in terms of pageviews. Both months were a little lower than the unprecedently high-traffic months of November and December. Traffic is likely to grow at a slow and steady rate from this level, with occasional spikes during times when migration becomes a topical issue.
Social media successes
None of our posts published February were extraordinary successes. But some of our posts did perform well:
- Interview with Stephan Faris: Homelands, and abolishing global apartheid by John Lee, February 6, 2015, had 95 Facebook engagements and 31 Twitter engagements. This was a follow-up post to Journalist Stephan Faris: Modern border regimes are apartheid, January 30, 2015.
- How do you convince people to sustainably support migration liberalization? by Vipul Naik, February 25, 2015, had 70 Facebook engagements and 11 Twitter engagements. The post received a small Facebook promotion after it had organically crossed 25 Facebook engagements.
- Terror in Paris and Open Borders by Nathan Smith, February 10, 2015, had 33 Facebook engagements and 2 Twitter engagements.
- Borders and Inequality by guest blogger Katy Long, February 5, 2015, had 23 Facebook engagements and 30 Twitter engagements.
- International Migrants Day versus Open Borders Day by Vipul Naik, February 16, 2015, had 24 Facebook engagements and 18 Twitter engagements.
We had a much lower Facebook spend than usual. We only promoted the first two of the posts listed above, after it was established that they were doing quite well organically.
We also had some success with older posts, including:
- Journalist Stephan Faris: Modern border regimes are apartheid by John Lee, January 30, 2015, continued to receive Facebook and Twitter engagement through the month of February. It now stands at 394 Facebook engagements and 30 Twitter engagements.
- World Poverty by Nathan Smith, February 17, 2013, enjoyed renewed attention after being posted by Vipul Naik in the Open Borders Action Group, and subsequently shared by several people on Facebook and Twitter. Prior to this resurgence, it had only 3 Facebook engagements and 1 Twitter engagenment. Now, it stands at 96 Facebook engagements and 11 Twitter engagements.
Search interest
The pages we got traffic to based on search interest remained the same as in January 2015. See the January 2015 review for more information.
Open Borders Action Group highlights
Below are listed some posts in the Open Borders Action Group that generated considerable discussion. OBAG posts that led to subsequent blog posts aren’t included.
- Post by Ilya Somin, February 27, about his Volokh Conspiracy (Washington Post) blog post, referencing an analysis by Alex Nowrasteh and Samuel Wilson published by the Cato Institute. The post got 13 likes and 19 comments.
- Post by Vipul Naik, February 24, linking to an immigration/political correctness news item. 25 comments.
- Post by Vipul Naik, February 21, about Open Borders: The Case site policy when discussing controversial topics. 5 likes, 21 comments.
- Post by Becky Smith, February 22, linking to Managing Migration: Whither the Missing Regime? by Bimal Ghosh. 4 likes, 13 comments.
- Post by Vipul Naik, February 17, about the use of “mass immigration” as a term. 10 comments.
There’s a lot more discussion at the Open Borders Action Group. Do check it out and join the group if you’re interested in participating.
Site traffic: details
Pageviews for Open Border: The Case:
| Month and year | Pageview count (WordPress) | Pageview count (Google Analytics) |
|---|---|---|
| February 2015 | 26,205 | 25,351 |
| January 2015 | 28,149 | 25,702* |
| February 2014 | 14,964 | 15,409 |
| January 2014 | 17,521 | 17,709 |
*Google Analytics was dysfunctional for a few days and a few hours on other days, causing that number to be an underestimate.
WordPress traffic by day for the past few weeks:
Google Analytics traffic by day for the past month:
- Facebook likes for our Facebook page stayed fairly steady over the month, increasing from about 4180 to about 4250. We did not spend any money on page promotion. This was very similar to last month’s growth number.
- The Open Borders Action Group expanded from 867 members to 905 members.
- Our Twitter account @OpenBordersInfo saw its follower count increased from 1048 at the beginning of the month to 1084 at the end of the month. This was very similar to monthly growth in January.