- Apr 08
- 23
The Negative Effects of Daily Blog Posts
- Posted by Jiannis Sotiropoulos
- Published in Blogging
One of the most known ways of getting regular traffic to your blog is writing daily posts. It is written in bold letters in the blogging bible that daily posts increase:
- the traffic to your blog
- your presence in the blogosphere
- your presence in search engines
- your readers
- your reputation
Check some of the popular blogs out there and you will see that daily posting is a very common, successful practice. Robert Scoble writes a couple of posts each day, Seth Godin too. But daily posts also have some negative effects on your blog which you should take into consideration.
- Daily posts mean hasty readers. Writing a new article every day can give the impression that you don’t invest much time writing it. Why should others then spend much time reading it?
- Daily posts mean low quality. This is a logical result of daily posts. Do you really have something interesting to say everyday? Most bloggers who write daily usually reiterate information and news that are already out there.
- Daily posts mean fewer subscribers. Direct result of the above points is that your blog gets less subscribers. People don’t want to have a cluttered mail or RSS readers…especially when posts repeat themselves and don’t have much to say.Although I like Mashable, I unsubscribed from their feed. They post 10+ posts each day and that’s just discouraging for me.
- Daily posts mean fewer comments. Let your readers think about what you write. Sending an avalanche of thoughts and information doesn’t give the user time to think things over. Blogging is a communication medium, it’s not an one-way monologue.
- Daily posts mean pressure. It is a great time hog to write an article each day – even if it is just a short text. Why do you think most blogs are abandoned after a couple of months?
- Daily posts don’t guarantee success. Success comes with quality, interaction and innovation. Say something new once a week and you will build a steady readership in no time.
The other side of daily posts
Don’t fully disregard the power of daily posts though. If you are a new blogger, daily posts can very quickly boost your presence online. During your first blogging steps the community doesn’t know who you are and what you’re writing about.So start with daily posts, let readers get to know you better and then relax and concentrate on quality. Readers will just keep on coming.
5 Comments- Apr 08
- 21
Does Your Advertising Agency Get It?
- Posted by Matt Peters
- Published in Social Media Marketing, Viral Marketing
I am continually surprised by the companies that contact us because their existing advertising or marketing agencies “don’t do social media.” When our phone rings, we are often faced with a frustrated person who is then ecstatic to hear that “Yes, we can absolutely design a viral video campaign,” or “Yes, we can certainly launch your company’s blog.”
Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the ability to please prospective clients, but I do not understand why the process of finding the right agency to handle your viral or social media marketing campaign needs to be so stressful. Thus, I have put together this post, with a few points for both advertising agencies and those professionals out there in marketing departments who are thinking of new media marketing.
For Companies
- First off, realize that your existing marketing or advertising agency just doesn’t get it. They do a great job at all the other stuff you need them for, but they likely don’t have the time or the inclination to climb the social media learning curve. You don’t have to take my word for it though, read this article from ADWEEK that was published at the end of February.
- Even if your traditional agency is beginning to do some work in these areas, don’t be afraid to look elsewhere for expertise. There are many companies who do only new media marketing. The contractor that builds your house is probably not the same one you would want to build your skyscraper. Use the Internet to find specialists.
- Don’t be afraid to use the new media marketing specialists you find as a sounding board for your ideas. Many of the campaigns we are currently running are very different from what the client thought they needed on the first phone call. Viral and social media are brand new and new facets are evolving every day. As such, there might be tools or avenues for your company and brand that you hadn’t even considered.
For Agencies
For agencies I have only one point, but it is an important point, so I’m giving it its very own list:
- You probably have a lot of clients who you have been serving for years. Some of these clients are going to begin asking you about viral videos, blogs, destination websites, ORM, and Facebook. Rather than steering them away from those things because you don’t normally do them, why don’t you partner with a social media agency that specializes in those elements? That way, you keep your client’s happy and under your roof, while benefiting from the expert services offered by your partner. This allows you to focus on what you do best, while at the same time staying on the leading edge of new marketing and advertising. Again, don’t take my word for it, check out the ADWEEK article I mentioned above.
I would be very interested to hear the stories of our readers. What have your experiences been when dealing with traditional agencies on the topics of new media? Let us know by commenting and maybe we can continue this discussion in further posts in the future.
5 Comments- Apr 08
- 16
How to Attract More (Productive) Comments to your Blog Posts
- Posted by Jiannis Sotiropoulos
- Published in Blogging
There are two major factors that define the success and popularity of a blog post: traffic and comments. The more traffic an article receives, the more comments are submitted – and the other way around. Articles with 50+ comments certainly imply that the content is of high quality. But, these highly commented articles are also carrying a heavy burden: They sacrifice productive communication on the altar of pageviews and traffic.Indeed, an increasing number of comments can act as an obstacle to the interaction of the community and the development of the whole discussion. Let’s first see why this happens and then get into how to improve your blog so that readers are encouraged to read and comment on the article.
Users’ Reading Habits
People rarely read Web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences. In research on how people read websites we found that 79 percent of our test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word.”
Blog visitors, don’t scan only the actual content of the site, but also the comments. When the reader notices a great amount of comments, she will certainly not read them one by one, she will scan them. The amount and length of comments also defines how fast the reader will actually scan the comments.
Users’ Commenting Habits
Take a step back and notice how you comment on other blogs. Where would you be more likely to leave a comment?
- in a great article with just 5 comments?or
- in a great article with 67 comments?
Leaving a comment on an article with just 5 comments gives the commentator the feeling that his contribution will be noticed and taken into consideration – not only from the administrator but from other readers too. A comment among 67 others seems like one more grain of sand at the beach. That’s why blog promotional strategies suggest being the first to comment on a popular blog. Because readers usually scan only the first comments.
How to Attract More (Productive) Blog Comments
There are several ways to assist your community in reading the content of the comments and contributing more productive ideas:
- Separate your comments in categories. Trackbacks and pingbacks to an article are by default counted as comments. Instead of having a big block of mixed comments and trackbacks, customize your blog to separate trackbacks from comments.
- Advise your community to be more productive. Very often a large amount of the article’s comments are thank you comments, where readers just say how much they enjoyed the post. This is of course welcome, but certainly doesn’t promote the discussion. So, why don’t you install a small rating plugin and write a small note before the comment block saying something like: If you liked this post give it a rating or submit it to your favorite social site. Use the comments below to start a productive discussion about the topic.
- Don’t answer each comment separately. Wait a day or two and then reply to all the comments submitted so far. This will significantly decrease the total number of comments.
- Highlight your own comments. Highlighting your own comments is a very good way to increase the “scannability” of your comment block. Readers will be able to scan the post easier and it will also be less tiresome for the eye. Either use this simple hack or download this plugin.
Blogging is about creating interactions; it is about developing a discussion and not having passive readers. So give your readers the tools and possibility to react to your posts and promote interesting discussions. How do you promote interaction in your blog?
13 Comments- Apr 08
- 14
A Problem with StumbleUpon?
- Posted by Matt Peters
- Published in Social Media, Social Media Marketing
Last week, Jiannis wrote a great post called “Why You Shouldn’t Stumble Yourself” in which he brought up the seemingly little-known fact that the more you stumble pages within the same URL, the less effective your stumble becomes. The post stirred up a lot of great discussion and got me thinking a lot more about the Stumble algorithm and the important steps that need to be taken when using Stumble for social media marketing purposes.
A major point of the post was there is a mysterious ratio buried deep within the innards of the SU algorithm that compares your total number of stumbles to the number of stumbles you have given to any specific URL. This was brought to my attention by a comment on the post mentioned above. The comment is from Kimota, and I quote him here with many thanks.
I recently saw my stumble traffic plummet and my submissions from my own domain no longer get accepted. SU didn’t even respond to my enquiries as to why this would be. It wasn’t until days of research had gone by that I discovered a buried little paragraph deep down on one of the SU pages that mentioned the ratio of one domain to other stumbles being a factor and that if this ratio is tipped, SU prevents you from submitting any more from that domain and affects your entire traffic. No warning and no possible way of readjusting the ratio to repair the damage.“
The most immediate application of this knowledge is that you have to be very careful when submitting your own content to StumbleUpon. If you submit all of your own stuff over and over again, it is going to get less effective. Kimota knows this first hand.
Of particular–even alarming–interest, though, are the repercussions of “tipping” this magic ratio. To better discuss this question, lets say there are two elements: the Offender (the user) and the URL (the URL that has been submitted too much). Is it simply that StumbeUpon stops counting URL submissions from the Offender, or is the URL blacklisted? In the same comment, Kimota goes on to say, “Even when someone else stumbles me, I’m not getting anywhere near the same figures.”
Could it be that the URL is punished for the sins of one overzealous SU user? Can your frequent self-submission ruin the SU traffic potential of your URL even if you never submit yourself again?
Of course, this is the kind of social media sensationalism that gets rumors started and some of you might think this is tantamount to tabloid journalism. Let me be clear right now, I do not know the answers to the questions. Indeed, when it comes to the mysterious web algorithms out there, we are all making our best guesses based upon research.
The ultimate takeaway here is to be overly careful when it comes to helping your fledgling blog through its baby steps. But I am very interested by the idea that a URL as a whole could be penalized for being submitted by the same users all the time. I can’t imagine that would be the case, because that would actually penalize a blogger for having a rabid fan base. I greatly welcome any input and discussion from those of you who can provide insight (anecdotal or, even better, factual). Have you noticed trends? Take a look at your own stats and share them with the community in the comments. As we get some good stuff together, I will round it all up into a follow up post. Let the learning begin.
38 Comments- Apr 08
- 9
Going viral with YouTube
- Posted by Jiannis Sotiropoulos
- Published in Online Video, Viral Marketing
One of the major riddles in the fields of online marketing is the YouTube platform and its public. Its peculiarity lies in the fact that it doesn’t have the form of the major social networks (digg, stumbleupon, sphinn, etc.) but neither does it have the structure and rules of blogs. Indeed, decoding the marketing potential of YouTube is a very complicated process. But if we take a more attentive look at its users and videos, we might gather some valuable information.
In this article, we will concentrate on the variables, which specify the popularity of a submission in YouTube.
The Peculiarity of YouTube
The viral potential of YouTube cannot be studied like the other popular social networks or blogs. YouTube is a combination of both.
- It encourages and promotes self-submitted content (other social networks are against self-submission)
- A YouTube channel should not update regularly to be successful (in comparison to blogs)
- It uses other social networks to increase popularity (like blogs do)
The studied videos, their submitters and their YouTube Network
We will study 3 of the most viewed videos of all time and 1 less popular for comparison. The videos are:
- The evolution of dance, by judsonlaipply
- Lo que tú Quieras Oír, by kaejane
- Hahaha, by BlackOleg
- Homenagem a Isabella Nardoni, by jeholiver011
Judsonlaipply is a YouTube member since March 23rd, 2006. He has submitted 2 videos and has viewed 859.
His channel has 23,432 subscribers and 1,130,903 views. He has 2,326 friends.
Kaejane is a member since 18th January, 2006. He has submitted 3 videos and has viewed 1,883.
His channel has 2,597 subscribers and a total of 151,191 views. He has 0 friends.
BlackOleg joined YouTube on November 01, 2006. He has submitted 6 videos and has viewed 25.
His channel has 3,560 subscribers and a total of 257,587 views. He has 287 friends.
Jeholiver011, joined YouTube on 2 April, 2008. He has sumbitted 1 video and has watched 10.
His channel has 228 subscribers and 11,737 views. He has 1 friend.
A first observation we can easily draw is that the number of friends does not play an important role in promoting a video. This is a very interesting conclusion, which goes beyond what we already know about social networks and the attention economy.
Kaejane has no friends and still his video is the 3rd most viewed of all-time. The same applies to Jeholiver011. His submission was top of the week and he just joined YouTube, having only one friend.
Popularity of the videos in other social networks
One of the main factors, that defines the success of a YouTube video is its submission in other social networks.
The evolution of dance got more than 2000 diggs and 200 stumbleupon reviews. It is natural since it got dugg by msaleem, one of the top Digg and SU users. It is no wonder it became so popular in YouTube.
Lo que tú Quieras Oír, on the other hand got only 2 stumbles and 2 diggs.
Hahaha, also did extremely well on other social networks. 62 reviews in StumbleUpon and 3536 diggs (again submitted by a top digger, MrBabyMan).
Jeholiver’s video had no luck in social networks.
The role of the popular social networks for the popularity of the YouTube videos is very clear. Would “Hahaha” and the “evolution of dance” have reached such view counts, if it weren’t for Digg and StumbleUpon?
Nonetheless the riddle remains: why the other videos became popular with such a low presence in social networks?
Conclusion and other variables which define YouTube popularity
Our observations so far suggest, that – in comparison to the other social networks we know – having friends on YouTube doesn’t necessarily mean popularity. Instead, having friends in other social networks can help promote the video.
But lets try to solve the riddle of the other videos, which became popular without being submitted in other social networks. What other factors can define the success of a YouTube video?
- demographics: the average age of the users, their location, their gender. We have for example two Spanish videos, which became popular without the assistance of any other social network. How big is the Spanish community in YouTube? Do they watch only Spanish videos?
- the interests of the average user: like other social networks, videoblog platforms concentrate on specific topics. Others on humor, others on animation/art, etc.
- the quality of the content: I think this is very important in YouTube. Thousands of people subscribe to a channel with just a couple of submissions (see judsonlaipply’s channel), with the hope to get some more quality flicks. Quantity is not important – YouTube users subscribe massively in channels – quality is.
- time of submission: this is a minor factor, but I believe it still plays a role. If you submit a video when the most users are offline, it will probably get lost in the archives.
I’m interested to see how you assess YouTube. What other factors could define the success of a YouTube video?
8 Comments- Apr 08
- 8
Business-to-Business Marketing – Getting Started with Online Social Networking
- Posted by Sandra Atlas-Gordon
- Published in Social Media Marketing
Business-to-Business marketing and online social networking don’t seem to go together. Compared to the great number opportunities social networking affords consumer product companies, many business-to-business marketers believe they have few, if any relevant social networking options.
For many business-to-business companies, it’s important to be perceived as thought leaders, deeply understanding the needs of customers and the broader marketplace in which they compete. Towards this end, they write white papers and case studies and present this content at conferences and post it to their websites. They may not even think of using online social networking or creating their own blog as a way to build their brand.
Yet, social networking offers many opportunities to build reputations and relationships. Creating a blog in which key company leaders post about issues of the day is a great way to start. If companies aren’t ready to launch their own blog, the next best thing is to identify the best-known blogs of their target audience. Thought leaders should become part of industry conversations taking place on these blogs by seeding ideas and leaving insightful comments on posts of other professionals.
For example, the company I work for provides trademark research services to attorneys. To begin connecting with attorneys, our attorney could become a known as a credible thought leader by posting on trademark law blogs (there are many of them), since we do not yet have a company blog.
Online business-networking services are now offering a parallel experience to MySpace and others in the professional world with services such as LinkedIn. Although the number of these services available to entrepreneurs and businesspeople is growing, LinkedIn strikes me as the leading network. Some business networking sites enable you to publish you own “blog,” or join specific community discussion groups.
Social networks like Twitter are great places to follow and connect with target prospects. They take blogging relationships to the next level and can offer additional opportunities for powerful connections.
Last week, DoshDosh featured an article on social networking saying the ROI of social networking is hard to measure. Yet, ROI isn’t the main reason to engage in social networking. The key benefits of social networking are increased brand awareness and improved reputation. Both are goals of companies who want to be perceived as thought leaders. There will never be a better time to start using social networking as tool to build a strong brand in the marketplace.
This is a guest post by Sandra Atlas-Gordon. She blogs at Wearable Art Blog.
1 CommentPandemic Labs is pleased to announce a new contributor to the writing staff here at PandemicBlog. Many of you might now him by this avatar, but for those of you who don’t, let me be the first to introduce you to Jiannis Sotiropoulos.
Jiannis Sotiropoulos is currently living and working in Berlin. He specializes in online media, approaching it from a theoretical and aesthetic perspective. His studies in sociology and media sciences are his foundation in understanding the functions of the web and how its users interact. With his Masters Thesis on the attention economy of the social web, he scientifically decoded the marketing rules of social networks in the online universe. He continues studying social networks and waits to see how (and if) the future semantic applications will change the current laws of networking. His personal blog, Changemod, is a fantastic resource and has long been a favorite of the editors here at PandemicBlog. Without a doubt, Jiannis will bring a much needed scientific perspective to our discussions and we will all benefit.
Our Ongoing Mission
As our readers know, PandemicBlog aims to be a resource for insight into Social Media Marketing, Viral Marketing, and other forms of new media marketing that haven’t yet been discovered. We have tried to deal intelligently with topics ranging from the paradox of self-promotion with social media, and the power of viral marketing for small business. Up until now, this task has been shouldered almost completely by the editors, Matthew Peters and Brennan White. But…
We strive to be more.
From the conception of this blog our goal has been to bring together a group of thinkers and writers who can contribute their insight, expertise, and opinions on the sometimes nebulous world of Social Media Marketing. Jiannis is the first of our new group of contributors and we hope that a proper writing staff will have a synergistic effect, raising the value of this blog above the sum of its parts.
If you are new to this blog, please subscribe to our RSS feed so that you’ll receive all PandemicBlog articles and be updated on the other exciting new additions to the PandemicBlog team that will be coming in the near future. As always, please feel free to contact us with questions, comments, or topic suggestions. We want PandemicBlog to be a resource to all concerned with these forms of New Media Marketing, and the more we know about our readers, the better we can do.
3 Comments
