I had to submit an application this week for a Russian visa to travel to the women’s U18 world championships in January. One of the questions they wanted answered was the name, address and phone number of my last two employers. Luckily, one of those employers was myself as I had my own company. The other was an integrated marketing company that went bankrupt while I was working there in 1992. Now, I am sure I have an old business card somewhere that would give me the address and phone number (not that it would matter in 25 years later) but I had to call an old friend of mine who worked there too to see if he could remember the address and maybe phone number.
Luckily, he did. And I managed to find the phone number somewhere in the far reaches of my brain. My friend and I got chatting (we go back to grade 7) and I mentioned my interest in advanced analytics in hockey. My friend laughed and said that it figured, “what was that game you used to play all the time?” Well, that game was Start-O-Matic and it was a pro sports simulation dice game that was pretty awesome and of course involved a lot of calculation of statistics - in a pre-computer time!!
So, I have had a fascination with statistics for quite a while -although I have no formal schooling in statistics other than what we learned in grade 11. That fascination got me to do some statistics on readership of my weekly blog posts.
Mostly, I wanted to see if there was a pattern to what types of posts are read more than others. Mostly, the stats come from clicks from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn with some web searching thrown in.
Here are some quick observations:
1. LinkedIn readers tend to gravitate to articles about leadership and discipline. 2. Facebook and Twitter readers like to read about hockey systems and running practices. 3. A few shares and likes goes a long way to more readership (I know, not a news flash at all!).
Needless to say, I am very thankful for all the support and feedback I get each week.
So, here are the top 14 most read posts from the past three years - the top posts being viewed just under 3000 times:
1. 13 Pieces of Coaching Advice from My Future Self 2. Scoring More Goals Next Season Starts This Summer 3. Coaching Survival: Discipline for Discipline 4. Bench Management: 9 Things Coaches Need to Know 5. Hockey Coaches: Basketball's Got it Right! 6. Team Discipline Starts Behind the Bench 7. 7 Key Pieces of the Pre-Game Routine 8. CASE STUDY: The Torpedo System 9. This Has to Be Part of Every Hockey Practice 10. Where Did All the Fun Go? 11. Six Reasons Why You Need to Dump the Puck in More 12. 5 Situations You Are Forgetting to Practice 13. Are You Under-Coaching Your Team? 14. Closing the Gap