So... How did that Porn Star Tweet Project Go?

Nikki Daniels, my top retweeter

I wanted to show the internet that there was a method of getting free publicity for your website on a mass scale, a method that no-one was talking about. Hence, I spent five months working on a self-devised blogging project. I tried to get my blog shared over Twitter to boost visibility and start conversations about social media.

Oh, one more thing- the project involves hundreds of porn stars.

In 2012 I found an online directory of Twitter accounts for adult entertainment performers called Porn Star Tweet. I spent a month using it to get my blog retweeted. During that month, my daily page views surged. I wrote up the project here. 

Before long, that particular post had become my most popular on the blog. (It's been overtaken since by this very strange piece about a depressed lovebird.)

I left the Porn Star Tweet site alone for a year whilst I worked on other projects, but I knew the site was a goldmine for garnering page views, and that there were some interesting questions to ask about the concept of porn stars being on Twitter and being available to talk to. Eventually, I came back to Porn Star Tweet to approach the remaining 800 accounts listed on the site.

Due to faults with the Porn Star Tweet site it took 9 months to exhaust all the accounts. During that time, though, my stats leaped from 166,837 to 206,813. Considering I set up the blog in 2008, that's a big jump. I then wrote up the experiment as Ballooning Your Blog Stats With Porn Star Tweet: Take 2.

I wanted to publicise this particular blog post to gauge a few reactions. A month ago I tweeted to all the contributors to say thanks. A handful retweeted the post, helping to rake in a few hits. I showed it to a few social media people who I was following on Twitter, getting the odd favourite here and there. All of the feedback I got was positive, except for one of the porn girls. I'd tweeted to her so long ago that when I showed her the post she had no idea what I was talking about. “don't know who you are and I didn't help you with anything....new spam.” Not entirely correct.

Finally I trudged through my Twitter followings for social media-related accounts, people or organisations that might be tweeting / blogging about sites like Twitter. I fired a few tweets their way to see what they thought about “Ballooning Take 2”, but I didn't hear much back from them. The post in question has racked in around 1500 hits so far and will enter the top 10 in the next few days. And overall, I've racked up a further 55,000 hits since uploading it. So the project can hardly be deemed a failure.

It's strange that when I wrote up the first Porn Star Tweet project it quickly got into the top 10 posts on my site, and received 27 comments. Yet the second attempt involved more people and received less hits and no comments. But, whatever. I know it's a totally mental idea, and it wasn't going to revolutionise the world of social media.

There's still time for that. At least people were reading my stuff.