Why blog? You’ll get more dates (or at least visits to your dating site)

Back in 2004, four math majors from Harvard started an online dating site called okcupid.com They face some pretty stiff competition from a number of larger, more established sites like eharmony.com and match.com.  To stand out from the crowd, they started a blog six months ago, focusing on statistics generated from their site users, and immediately saw a jump in activity on their site.

The New York Times wrote a great article on how their blog has affected site traffic and signups.  From the article:

Since OkCupid started its blog, the number of active site members has grown by roughly 10 percent, to 1.1 million, according to the company.

“We’ve been up for six years,” Mr. Yagan [CEO of Okcupid.com] said. “We’ve only had the blog for six months. It’s a big deal for us.”

Crunching the numbers from site visits, user activity and questions posed to visitors about dating behaviour gives the blog some great material.  It reads as a mix of tips on how to date online (Online Dating Advice: Optimum Message Length) and interesting data (the effectiveness of shirtless photos for men decline with age).  You can check out the blog, Oktrends,  here.

I think it’s pretty clear what value this blog is giving readers – a huge “How To” manual for how to date online, and how to use their site.

Add to that some provocative titles “Rape fantasies and hygiene by state” and the type of short, interesting trivia people naturally share online and you can see why this blog has been successful.