Lines on the Map - 20,000 Readers!

I have just received some statistics showing how ‘Lines on the Map’ has been used since it was launched in March. After a lot of initial publicity – in newspapers and on local radio – about 9000 people visited the site in the first month. This reduced steadily in April May and June – perhaps the novelty had worn off – but the number of visits almost doubled in July, then again in August. September reached a peak of over 13000! Poems have trickled in by email – about half a dozen each month. The Summer popularity of the site may be accounted for by:

1) the Holmes Chapel Library bookmarks. Every borrower got a poem bookmark with details of the web site on the back.
2) Listing on the Poetry Society ‘Poetry Landmarks’ web site.
3) ‘Word-of-mouth’ publicity after children’s workshops and school visits.
4) A second press release about ‘Lines on the Map’ on local papers.

On average, visitors to the site look at 3 pages – making a total so far of nearly 60,000 page views by nearly 20,000 visitors. This is a very large audience for poetry, where most poetry books and magazines only have runs of several hundred, and shows a successful outreach of poetry to new audiences. The table below shows the most visited towns and villages. Unsurprisingly, Chester – with a large population and a number of poems – attracted the most visitors, but every dot on the map has attracted a respectable number of readers.