The Paradox of Social Media Popularity
Dec 20th
By Srinivas Rao, Contributing {grow} Columnist
The paradox of popularity is that it can create a paralysis that inhibits you from creating the work that made you popular in the first place!
The fear of how people will respond to you can start to creep into your work until it becomes so watered down that you become part of the echo chamber. In some ways, isn’t it liberating to be an early stage blogger with few readers? For those of you trying to build an audience I know that might sound ridiculous. But you’re free to say anything. You’re not necessarily biased by how the audience will respond. That is a powerful place to create from if you’re willing to embrace it.
Are you addicted to the glow?
As your blog grows in popularity, it’s not uncommon to become addicted to the glow of audience response. Pretty soon, you start to approach every piece of content with the question “What will they think?”
If you create something they love, you feel good, and you want to get that feeling again. I usually dread it when one of my posts does well here at Mark’s blog because I’m afraid that I won’t be able to replicate that glow.
If you create something they hate, and it upsets a few of your readers, you start to hold back and quit taking risks. At the same time, you begin to avoid the risk of creating something remarkable.
Don’t Try to Replicate Success
Every single time I’ve written something with the intention of making it as good as a post that went viral or was a big hit with my readers, it falls flat! That’s simply because it’s not authentic. I’m trying to apply a formula to authenticity.
Don’t forget that just because it’s words on a screen, people can’t feel what’s coming across. If you’re trying to replicate the previous positive response from an audience, you’re doomed before you start. At best you’ll create a pale imitation of your best work. It’s what I think of as the sequel syndrome. Most movie sequels are terrible. Remember the Karate Kid?
Try What’s Never Been Tried
We all know that “lists” posts seem to get shared a lot. It’s also the reason every single time I submit one Mark sends it back to me without his stamp of approval. He forces us to try what’s never been tried. To accomplish what’s never been done, you must try what’s never been tried. Look at the so called “best practices” adapt and break a few rules. It will change your work.
The reaction isn’t yours; it belongs to them. The art is yours - Seth Godin
What do YOU think?
Srinivas Rao writes about the things you should have learned in school, but never did and his the host-co founder of BlogcastFM. You can follow him on twitter @skooloflife
5 Essential tools to attract a relevant audience to your blog
Dec 4th
By Ian Cleary, {grow} Contributing Columnist
It is not difficult to drive traffic to your site but what’s the point if visitors don’t stay around and read your blog post, sign up to your email list or buy your product or service?
We’re all familiar with the following saying:
“Traffic is Vanity, Conversion is Sanity!”
Well, maybe you’re not familiar with that saying because I just made it up. But it does make sense!
Let’s look at five great social media tools to ensure you attract a relevant audience to your blog posts.
1. Tweet at the Optimal Times using SocialBro
The people that follow you on Twitter are some of the most likely targets for your blog post but you need to have a strategy for reaching them. One part of this is timing the delivery of your posts to try and get the attention of the majority of your followers.
SocialBro is a social media management tool. One key feature is that it works out when your followers are online. This is not going to be 100% accurate but gives you a good idea of the best times to tweet.
At 8am only 31% of my followers are actively tweeting but over 77% are active at 3pm in the afternoon.
I’m based in Europe but focus on the US so it makes sense that more of my followers are online in my afternoon which is the morning in the US. It also makes sense to tweet at 8am and at 3pm because I want to attract the attention of my European followers also.
Action: Consider SocialBro or similar tools to work out the best time to tweet
2. Target People Who Know You Using Google Author
When you are searching through Google for content you often see the authors picture displayed in the search results:
The person in the picture is Amy Porterfield. As I know Amy and value her as an expert in her field I am more likely to click on this post in the search results.
Getting your picture displayed as part of the search results is called Google Author and can help to not only get people to read your post, but it also helps readers to connect and become more familiar with you so that they will recognize your posts immediately going forward.
Action: Set up Google Author. Follow this link to read step-by-step instructions on setting this up How to setup Google Author Rich Snippets
3. Promote Your Post Using WiseStamp
Most of the people you are emailing on a daily basis are potential subscribers to your blog. Encourage them to read your latest blog post by including a link to your latest post in every e-mail you send.
Action: Add your latest blog post to your signature using Wisestamp or similar tool.
4. Encourage Your Readers to Share
By attracting a relevant audience it is more likely that their network would also be a relevant audience. Encourage your readers to share out your content to their followers.
I use the WordPress plugin DiggDigg The reason I like it is that when readers are scrolling down through the blog post it automatically moves with the reader so there’s always the option to share at any point.
Action: Make sure that you actively promote the option for social sharing. It’s not enough just having it at the very top of a post. How else can you encourage people to share?
5. Find Relevant Keywords Using Google Keyword Tool
One of the most important elements of optimizing your blog post for Google is the Title Tag. This is not visible on the page but it’s something that Google reads when it is figuring out how to index your content.
If a librarian thinks a history book belongs in the Geography section then how will the historians have a chance of finding it!
So help Google index your content correctly by doing some keyword research using Google Keyword Tool and ensure you give Google sufficient clues regarding what your content is about.
The following shows a search for ‘social media strategy’. In the Global monthly searches column Google shows you the average searches per month over the last 12 months. It also shows a list of similar keywords with the number of monthly searches.
Google also looks for a description which is not used for indexing but is displayed in search results. It’s also very important to include the correct description to ensure you are only attracting people that are relevant.
Action: Perform keyword research for every post and ensure you have the option for configuring the page title as part of your content management system.
Summary
We get caught up too much with numbers. How many visitors you have, how many fans on Facebook, how many Twitter followers? But it’s not all about volume. How many relevant followers to you have? How many relevant readers are you interacting with?
What are your tips and tools for attracting a relevant audience? We would really love to hear your thoughts.
Ian Cleary is a Social Media Tools Specialist. He is the founder of Razorsocial, a website that provides sharp insights on social media tools. Follow Ian on twitter @ianmcleary
Illustration courtesy BigStock.com
Why it pays to be a patient blogger
Nov 29th
I have a “healthy impatience.” Most successful business people do. But that is not necessarily an ideal quality to have as a beginning blogger!
Blogging success does not arrive at your doorstep wrapped up in a pretty bow. You have to work hard and have A LOT of patience.
- Last month, I had more page views than in my entire first year of blogging. A lot more.
- Ari Herzog recently left the 25,000th comment on my blog. After my first year, I had less than 100. And most of them were mine : )
- Uber blogger Chris Brogan famously said that it took him three years to attract his first 100 blog subscribers.
The point is, the overnight success thing worked for Justin Bieber, but it probably won’t work for you and your blog,
You. Must. Be. Patient.
Focus on creating the best possible content. Insanely great content.
When you get a reader, love them like crazy.
Help others, Support other new bloggers.
Take risks. Try it and see what happens.
Handle criticism with grace. It’s a sign of success. A reason to smile, in fact.
Be yourself. Really yourself. That’s your competitive advantage.
Be consistent. Just keep writing.
Have the courage to hit that publish button, even when you know it’s not perfect.
And yes … be patient. It will happen. It will happen. It will happen.
This is why I am not reading or tweeting your blog post
Nov 20th
Do you want to increase the readership of your blog by 400% in just one easy step?
Lean in close now as I share this blogging secret: “Stop writing sucky headlines.”
In today’s world, you simply MUST craft a descriptive, accurate, catchy and “tweet-able” headline. I know this aspect of blogging has been written about before so I am mystified as to why it remains such an obstacle to so many bloggers.
If you don’t have a headline that grabs me by the throat in a nano-second you have lost me, and most other people too.
I swiped a couple headlines from my blog reader to illustrate both good and bad examples of blog headlines. Maybe one of them is yours? Here are real blog headlines that were so bad I could not bear to click:
“False Hope” — The headline is smug. The writer assumes the post is so epic that they don’t even have to indicate what it is about. Unless you’re Malcolm Gladwell, I’m probably not going to read this.
“Your Video Presence” — This has the potential to be an interesting topic but the headline is too generic. It doesn’t tell me enough about the angle of the article to force me to take the next action. I’m a busy guy. Sell me baby.
“What’s in a Word?” — I don’t know and I won’t find out either. It’s clever but not descriptive enough to capture my attention.
“A Walk in the Cloud, Part 2″ — Cloud computing is an interesting topic but a “series” generally does not work for a blog. When I see this headline, I think “Well I missed Part 1 so I should probably skip this.” It’s like walking in during the middle of a movie.
“Monday Inspiration” — This could be a great article but it’s a lazy headline. Unless I am a regular reader and already interested in you as a person, this is probably not enough information for me to click through.
“Want to grow your revenue? Check out B2B Marketing Sales Leads, a sales lead generation program” Ewwww. You’re trying to sell me something. Yuck. Do this a second time and you’ll get deleted from the blog reader. No check that. I’ve already deleted you.
“New Yelp feature turns photos into online menus and we also compare tablet VS smartphones usage stats” This is an interesting headline but it’s too long. At 100 characters, it’s too long to tweet once you get the sender’s name in there. And remember, if it gets RT’d, that adds more characters. So keep headlines short enough to encourage social sharing.
Now, here are some great headlines from the pros:
How some people are using Triberr to kill blogging By The JackB — This headline promises a fresh angle on a hot technology. It indicates that people are mis-using Triberr to hurt something near and dear to me. I want to read this.
5 Lessons From the Best Example of Content Marketing Ever By Jay Baer — For my money Jay is one of the best headline writers in the business. And he knows a number in a headline is gold. Probably increases “sharing potential” by 30%. Eight of my 10 most popular blog posts have a number in the headline and that goes for most other bloggers too.
What is sharing on Facebook worth in cold hard cash? By Jeff Bullas — Jeff is a master blogger who understands how to write a headline. He never fails to grab you and his content keeps you there. Combining “Facebook” with “cold hard cash” is a winner.
Five Tips to Navigate Sandy’s Stress and Sensory Overload By Judy Martin — We recently wrote about how capitalizing on the Hurricane Sandy tragedy was a bad idea. But here’s another take. Judy writes a post that is timely, appropriate, and HELPFUL in a time of need.
Did technology kill curiosity? By Christian Hollingsworth — Christian is a masterful headline writer. In this example, he takes a simple question that might be on his mind, and the mind of others, and riffs on an answer. It doesn’t have to be complicated.
Transmedia Writing By Geoff Livingston — Is it possible to get an idea across in just two words? Geoff did it. “Transmedia” writing promises to explore a fresh concept and it made me click. Bravo.
So here is the Schaefer Ever-So-Useful List of Best Blog Post Headline Practices:
- Make it “tweetable short.”
- It should be descriptive and accurate. Don’t EVER mislead readers.
- Make it creative enough to stand out in a crowded blog reader.
- Numbered lists work well.
- Grab me with something I have never seen before.
- Make sure the “value proposition” offers something helpful.
- Use descriptive and unusual verbs and adjectives.
- Don’t make your headline an after-thought. It’s the most critical part of the post.
Illustration: This is a very famous headline announcing the wrong presidential election result, held up by the true victor Harry Truman.
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You’re in marketing for one reason: Grow.
Grow your company, reputation, customers, impact, profits. Grow yourself. This is a community that will help. It will stretch your mind, connect you to fascinating people, and provide some fun along the way. I am so glad you’re here.
-Mark SchaeferFollow Mark
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