The Aspen Institute

“So What?” – Your Weekly Guide to Advocacy With Impact 

Lovingly selected and lightly snarked by Team APEP: David Devlin-Foltz, Susanna Dilliplane, and Christine Ferris

APEP Popularity Contest(ed)

We received some thoughtful and supportive comments in response to our recent requests for reader feedback. One theme emerged pretty consistently: keep up the light, arch, skeptical, humorous tone. In other words, to paraphrase you, dear readers: snark on. After DDF requested your “qual” feedback, Christine and Susanna went “quant”: How does So What? measure up to the M+R benchmarks for blogification? Pretty well: over our February-August study period, our average open rate is 20.25%; our average click-through rate is 5.6%, compared to M+R Benchmarks 2015 averages of 16% and 3.3%, from their study of 84 nonprofits. And that doesn’t count mobile “opens.”

“Networking!” from May 29 was the most opened weekly. Honorable mentions: “Like a Girl, Not a Bride” and “Media Metrics and Desquishification”. Sadly, “Healthy and Local”, “APEP Walks the Walk and Invites You to Squawk” and “Freedom, Philanthropy and Free Stuff” came in last. (Maybe “healthy and local” sounded too hipster. But who doesn’t like complaining, freedom and free stuff?)