February may be the shortest month of the year, but that didn’t stop Mother Jones from posting record gains in traffic and digital ad revenue compared with the year-earlier month, as the nonprofit investigative, political, and social-justice site drew more than 3 million unique visitors, up 420 percent compared with February 2010, and more than 6.6 million page views, up 275 percent.
Digital ad revenue for January and February rose 200 percent versus the year-earlier period.
Mother Jones credited social media for much of the growth, saying 29 percent of its traffic came from those sites, nearly three times the prior-year period’s figure. The site’s Twitter followers were up 28 percent in February, to more than 43,000; its Facebook fan base grew 20 percent, to nearly 40,000; and the new MoJo Tumblr skyrocketed 200 percent, to nearly 3,000 followers.
