Small Mighty Web Traffic, Experimental Ads, Facebook’s Risky Business

The Strategist picks the day’s most interesting stories for the content aficionados who love the backstory and reading between the lines. Here are the gems you need to kickstart your Friday:

In Counting Actual People, Hyperlocals’ Smaller Traffic Numbers Can Be Big (StreetFight)
If you’re a content marketer, web publisher, or big brand, it’s invaluable that you look at your analytics in terms of people – not pageviews or numbers.

From an advertiser’s perspective, a niche publishing website can deliver significant ROI. Small communities attract focused and close-knit groups – a quality that makes interest based targetting more efficient. So what if you attract only a couple thousand unique visitors?

Agencies Ready for the ‘Year of Experimental’ (AdAge)
Marketing is about pushing boundaries – tradition is an element of the past. It’s time to experiment and innovate.

From new event-marketing arms to stunt campaigns and human installations, brands are taking customer engagement experiences to new frontiers.

Facebook is Growing Through Risky Business (Wired)
Facebook’s mobile revenue rose impressively last quarter, but at what hidden costs? Advertising is a key component of this model, and Facebook is leveraging opportunities to follow users more aggressively.

As with the majority of multimedia businesses, the advertising balance is one that’s tough to strike. Here’s one Wired writer’s take on the topic.

6 Tip for Keeping the Conversation Flowing at Tech Events (VentureBeat)
Networking is awesome. But how do you ‘break’ the awkward silence.

Be yourself, have a goal, search for common interests, and follow-up. It’s up to you to make the connections last because you never know who you’ll meet – a future business partner or mentor. Maybe even a new best friend.