Techniques, tactics and experimentation inspire the work of the Journalism Accelerator. Each week this section will share: What we’re learning, how the JA is measuring up and examples of experimental techniques or tactics.

<em><strong>Why does this data matter?</strong> Sifting through the data reveals the kinds of topics and places our community finds interesting. At this early stage in the JA’s evolution, learning as much as we can about the content needs or preferences of our community is a key goal. This combination of data helps us track which pages are most useful to the JA community, or the way they research a question. “Time on page” is in no way an absolute measure, noting site visitors can walk – or click – away from a page of content. But overall patterns are useful, more so that just looking at the numbers. What’s really interesting to us is <strong>what kind of yield is gained by those we hope to serve, whose work the JA supports.</strong></em>
<h3>JA Site Basics: A summary of what people are doing on the Journalism Accelerator</h3>
<ul>
	<li><strong>Average time on site:</strong> 3 minutes, 22 seconds. Spending more time = yield. A longer average time on site means people are reading our posts.</li>
	<li><strong>Top visited page:</strong> As with most websites, the homepage of the Journalism Accelerator was the top visited page. Most of these visits came from Google searches, but 18% of all visits came from Twitter.</li>
	<li><strong>Top referring site </strong>was Twitter, referring 45% of all traffic to the JA. Twitter has proven to be a great asset: not only are you able to participate in 1:1 conversations, but if used effectively, it will help to bring in traffic.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Popular posts on JA included</h3>
<ul>
	<li><a href="http://www.journalismaccelerator.com/blog/tweetup-411-what-they-are-how-they-work/" target="_blank">Tweetup 411: What they are &amp; how they work</a>, a post that outlines the different ways others are using tweetups -- or for some publishers, choosing not to. From this week, nearly 1/3 of the visitors to this blog came from Twitter and through retweets received over 1,200 impressions.</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.journalismaccelerator.com/questions/community/which-journalism-hashtags-on-twitter-do-you-find-most-useful/" target="_blank">What tools and metrics are news organizations using to measure social media impact?</a> This forum shares how others are using different tools and techniques to better understand the social impact their content delivers to their communities. This forum has received over 23 tweets and over 7,000 impressions through Twitter. Check out <a href="http://topsy.com/" target="_blank">Topsy</a> for information on how you can view these kind of analytics.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Journalism Accelerator on Twitter</h3>
JA gained 47 new followers during the week and averages out to be about  6.71 new followers to the JA Twitter account daily. As of the date of this post, JA Twitter had 233 followers, that's 233 potential people who read JA updates in their Twitter feed daily. to put into perspective across all of Twitter, according to <a href="http://barracudalabs.com/about.html" target="_blank">Barracuda Labs'</a> <a href="http://barracudalabs.com/downloads/2010EndyearSecurityReportFINAL.pdf" target="_blank">2010 Annual Security Report</a>, only 17% of people on Twitter have more than 100 followers.

[caption id="attachment_3774" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="From the Barracuda Labs 2010 Annual Security Report"]<img class="size-full wp-image-3774 " title="Twitter followers graphic Barracuda Labs" src="http://www.journalismaccelerator.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/barracuda-labs-600.jpg" alt="Twitter followers graphic Barracuda Labs" width="600" height="441" />[/caption]

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<h4>AEJMC conference in St. Louis</h4>
In St. Louis, Missouri, journalism scholars, practitioners and thought leaders took part in the AEJMC conference, with a rich conversation unfolding on Twitter by conference participants and others off site. Through the tweets from the folks at AEJMC, the JA team was listening in and sharing some of what excited us with our community. Check out the hashtag <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23AEJMC11" target="_blank">#AEJMC11</a> to see any current tweets about the conference, here's one from <a href="http://www.journalismaccelerator.com/members/jcstearnstwitter/">Josh Stearns</a>:  [blackbirdpie url="https://twitter.com/#!/jcstearns/status/101287568712273920"]
<h4>Seattle conversation with emerging news and publishing innovators</h4>
This week, the <a href="http://journalismthatmatters.org/seattlejournalismcommons/" target="_blank">Seattle Journalism Commons</a> and <a href="http://www.journalismaccelerator.com/blog/secret-or-special-sauce-seattle-locals-weigh-in/">the JA</a> came together along with other friends in the Seattle community, to host an event at the <a href="www.alkiarts.com/" target="_blank">Alki Arts Center in Seattle</a>. Some participants included <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/SeattleDonorBiz" target="_blank">Clay Holtzman</a>, <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/karen_l_johnson" target="_blank">Karen Johnson</a>, <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/partnowjess" target="_blank">Jessica Partnow</a>, <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/MikeFancher" target="_blank">Mike Fancher</a>, <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/futuresoup" target="_blank">Jacob Caggiano</a> and our very own <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/lskube" target="_blank">Lisa Skube</a>. The JA’s work with the Seattle community has accelerated our ability to fine tune and focus our “customer service” model. We look forward to continuing to support the innovative work of this vibrant community.[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/MikeFancher/status/103254655575932928"]
<h3>Join Us!</h3>
We invite you to check out the forums on the JA, weigh in, these are questions with a shelf life. Or suggest new questions you have, resources you’d like to see featured, or if you have a blog post you’d like to contribute for others to gain wisdom from your travels, <a href="http://www.journalismaccelerator.com/register" target="_blank">join the JA community</a> and weigh in. In the meanwhile, you can follow us on <a href="http://www.twitter.com/journaccel" target="_blank">Twitter</a> and connect with us there!