How to increase the number of hits on your blog...

This is a cottage industry in the blogosphere, with various authors willing to give you advice (free and paid) on how to increase traffic to your blog. In fact, some time back the Geomblog was cited as an example of how NOT to increase traffic to your blog, by exemplifying the kind of blog that "is for people who only talk to their own kind".

Well I have my own personal lesson on how to increase traffic to your blog, and I'll even give it out for free. The answer is: POLITICS. My evidence ?

This picture is a snapshot of my traffic over the past one month: visits in green, and page hits in purple. The prefix is my average traffic per day: not a lot, but then how many geometers are there to begin with ? The climb starts the day I posted my article about election cartograms. It lasted for a week, and I am still seeing the effects of it.