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The Power Of Social Media (call HART crazy .. but)

Posted by PetLvr • 6/07/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: call hart crazy, hart, petlvr, su, traffic

I'm always amused and entertained by the idea of knowing and getting PROOF that it really doesn't matter what the heck you are writing about or how good your content and quality of your posts are ..

Some posts are winners and others are not - but, it really doesn't matter if they are good or bad - if you have the power of social media behind you.

Here's a screenshot of BC stats for my blog
easycaptures.com/9117363136

It's for the past 7 days but, really just covers June 5th to June 7th results-wise, because I started the promotion campaign late June 4th in the evening.

And, as you can see from the results - it's all basically traffic is all on one mindless post. I didn't earn anything on the traffic (maybe $0.86 adsense), and my feedcount/subscribers did not increase either. But, on the flip side of that - I do absolutely nothing to keep people on my site or solicit new membership/subscription/or newsletter signups. Me bad.

callhart.com/crazy/2009/06/funny-cartoons/

This only goes to prove that old saying "Content is King" .. is not true. Look! This is crappy content! There's no meat!

But -- "Promotion is King" -- holds true.

Maybe content is "queen" or a "prince" if you can create it.

Weeeelll- for those who are wondering how I got this burst of traffic (a recurring subject in here) .. I passed this along to 10 people on my SU friends list on Thursday night, of which consider to hold some weight on stumbleupon. (see my thoughts in the SU Group posts) One of my friends thought it was worth sharing with some of his friends (I did not ask). Then I shared it with my friends. I did not stumble this myself until all 27 slots in the sidebar of the SU page was filled.

More Shameless Promotion!
It would be nice if I can keep this up for a few days - with another similar mindless post..
callhart.com/crazy/2009/06/awkward-family-photos/

HART aka PetLvr

Anyway - was bored and haven't posted any threads for a while ~later

User Comments

6/07/09

codesucker

Hart - since you're showing stats, I wonder what are your next best refering sites, besides stumble and reddit

I never see reddit traffic.

I agree promotion is King, but content is King as well, I guess it's a homosexual royal family.

Thanks for sharing stats, I'm always wondering where traffic is coming from.

[reply]
1. 6/07/09
  
  PetLvr
  
  Stumble is really the only one that is recurring. I always see posts from 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 all the time referred from stumbleupon .. I don't see that from Reddit, although reddit sometimes gets good results if you have a good teaser title and category and people comment on them.
  
  Other than that - the next best results are the search engines. If you write for search engines, people doing searches will find the content. On my PetLvr blog, search engine traffic is about 84% according to my google analytics .. The only catch with the search engines - is that some people know how to do it better than me, and there is a risk they can turn the tap off at any time .. opposed to social media traffic, where friends will probably follow you and help you when you ask if you build relationships.
2. 6/07/09
  
  codesucker
  
  Stumble is really the only one that is recurring. I always see posts from 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009
  
  That's good to know. When I'm clicking the stumble button - most of the sites do seem 'timeless' - lots of them from older posts, so I see what you mean. I guess we can consider stumble one of the timeless social networks unlike digg(puke) mixx propeller and reddit that all concentrate on current events
  
  Thanks for the insight
6/07/09

acousticguitarist

thanks, I'm always interested in your opinions about this sort of stuff

[reply]
1. 6/07/09
  
  PetLvr
  
  thanks as long as everybody remembers that .. it's just my humble opinions! heh
6/07/09

timethief

Thanks Hart I appreciate your sharing with us.

[reply]
1. 6/07/09
  
  PetLvr
  
  thanks tt you know how I am .. like to help, plus hopefully try to add some of my shameless promotion if I can slip it in lol
6/07/09

roentarre

Your know that you just encourage me to do more promotion now. For the past 6 months, I had been scratching my head to write articles and doing multiple site submissions.

Now I realise that the content is king but promotion is also equally important. Without salesmanship, good products usually get ignored or neglected...

[reply]
1. 6/07/09
  
  PetLvr
  
  Grrrr .. I've been talking to a lot of people who write articles and submit them everywhere, and rewrite them .. about half of them are doing well and making the efforts and receiving results and benefits.
  
  Yet - everybody I know (and from experience) - tells me that if you use these articles in your blogs it's like the kiss of death. It's frightful how much such drastic sides these are .. I stopped using ezines, PLR, and other 'reworked' articles in my blog and strictly using original content and I think that's the way to go.
  
  I just can't see myself doing these articles and benefiting while other people who use it deteriorate themselves - (okay - other people being mostly myself)
2. 6/07/09
  
  roentarre
  
  I have to say that I do get readership when unique content is written in the field I am working on.
  
  Very often, this takes years to maintain ongoing support from the internet customers. However, people need to be prompted and reminded that the blog is continuously being updated.
  
  Promotion is still the king as well as content. However, good promotion on meaningless content is not going to win readership. So it really takes 3 years of ongoing learning of blog culture and marketing to get to where I am. Page rank is not good enough but I have sustained quite a number of photographer readers. They are fuzzy bunch of people...
3. 6/07/09
  
  PetLvr
  
  @roentarre ... do you find it harder to promote those type of articles .. (I presume you mean stories, tutorials, reviews and recommendations) .. than the normal type of posts that you do - the pictorial images?
4. 6/07/09
  
  roentarre
  
  @PetLvr
  
  Pictorial posts themselves have high bounce rate. Unless the blog is updated daily with a theme or a topic, it is very easy to lose readership. After all, images need to be interesting and unique in some ways to make people come back. My readers are predominantly the people who need inspirations with their own artist work including writing, stories, novels etc.
  
  I do not want a small niche of people following my work. As a photography moderator, I tend to answer a lot of questions to help newbie or people who are new to the system they are using. After some time, it gets repetitive to provide the same answers to the same question. I had a good taste of traffic at one stage when I started a long argumentative debate on a certain camera lens, my traffic surged like really crazily!
  
  Ever since I started writing articles about photography approach, basic terminology that are loosely defined or techniques used in various form of photography, Google and Snap search engines brought me huge inbound links.
  
  Most importantly, I could provide answers to many questions with my links to the particular posts. That way, my regular traffic to my blog at roentarre site has going up from 4000 click a day to 20,000 a day at the moment. Though page rank is 4, I think it is because that I had been putting far too many links on my roentarre site.
  
  However, I am feeling a lot happier now because I am writing for more audience! This is really making me very happy as well. I decided to make a good mix of articles in my blog as long as it is all related to photography.
  
  My traffic source over the past month has been predominantly from direct entries... This means that I had yet done any heavy promotion. So I think continuous endeavour in promotion on my blog is needed til the day my heart stops beating...
5. 6/07/09
  
  PetLvr
  
  thanks for clearing that up .. and let me add ..
  
  20k ??? Holy crap good stuff.
  
  But - what would your traffic be if you consolidated all your blogs into one venture?
  
  /// added ///
  So I think continuously endeavour in promotion is needed til the day my heart stops beating...
  
  Yeah .. isn't that sad? it's the same for all of us unfortunately. I've been trying to swing off on an adverture with my Shops @ HART Market series - hoping to lower my efforts in the promotion part.
6. 6/07/09
  
  roentarre
  
  @PetLvr
  
  Hehe
  
  Thank you for the compliment
  
  The traffic to roentarre is 20,000 per day alone. This is simply because that my images are very easy to steal with right click and save maneuvre. Still, I feel flattered that people bother to do that. What is more is that I have been very active in multiple photo fora where my signature links are everywhere...
  
  50mm photos is a project that I love doing. Interestingly, without any promotion, it has moved up the ladder to be a popular site...
  
  Pentax salon was started to aim at a certain group of photographers. Funnily, this site has been one of the major traffic sources to feed into roentarre website
  
  Facadephotos is really a place where I can spoil myself for showing off my landscape images...
  
  Most of the free blogspot photoblogs that I have in BC are the major traffic sources to finally feed into roentarre site. It is like an empire of traffic depots to lead to the same home website I owned. It is very comforting that this approach also showed my range in the field of photography, giving me a profile. Kind of fun that way.
  
  Advantages of blogspot are numerous. Certainly when it comes to SEO. Eventhough there are soooo many problems with its own widgets and validation problems, a lot of posts I made in these photo blogs get listed in the first page with key word search! I am simply amazed...
6/07/09

RecycleCindy

Hart:
What you are calling a mindless post in all actuality is very amusing and the photos are each pretty entertaining to view. Sometimes people just enjoy a simple but quick laugh and your post definitely delivered.

[reply]
1. 6/07/09
  
  PetLvr
  
  Thanks for that Glad to pass along smiles .. people like to share smiles definitely.
6/10/09

PetLvr

Oh well .. Life goes one
easycaptures.com/5956670498

[reply]
6/10/09

Xight

I remember you sending me this one. Wait my stumbles actually hold weight? o_O Where is this thread you speak of I need to go read it rofl.

[reply]
1. 6/10/09
  
  PetLvr
  
  I wish I could tell you where they are. I took control of the StumbleUpon Group in December 2008 (passed on by crkian) and started a whole series of posts reviews and exercises .. and left them as sticky posts. One day, all of a sudden, they disappeared from the sticky post (top of the group) and nobody claims to know what happened to them. If you search IN THE GROUPS for discussions or tags by .. HART .. you will see that you can't access the actual thread anymore. It's very discouraging and I haven't cared since.
2. 6/10/09
  
  Xight
  
  Ah I see, well its nice to know my stumbles actually amount to something for some people =D.
3. 6/10/09
  
  PetLvr
  
  Your stumbles count and is always muchly appreciated! Although, there are always some other people who seem to count more for some reason. I'm currently on an "lucy in the sky with diamonds" trip watching the "testimonial" numbers of people (more being better). I like to help and increase that number.
6/17/09

PetLvr

an update?

Without posting ANYTHING since the above .. suddenly an old post got resurrected again on SU ...

easycaptures.com/1540242540

Starting the 11th .. 95% of the traffic has been this post (from Feb09)
callhart.com/crazy/2009/02/snow-in-saskatoon-january-11-2009/

Weird, eh? But, I'm not complaining.

[reply]
1. 6/17/09
  
  RecycleCindy
  
  Interesting results. I did a little experiment of my own as I was out of town last week and haven't posted anything but traffic and in-bound links are up. It seems that old posts sometimes get new life through social media and thankfully keeps the traffic rolling in.
2. 6/17/09
  
  PetLvr
  
  That's great Cindy. A lot of people have success with other social media sites (digg, reddit, etc) - I don't - but theirs seems to be short lived and not too recurring.
6/17/09

ThriftShopRomantic

So, Hart, your stats are up-- but you're not finding you're getting more subscribers or getting ad revenues. Is there value then in the traffic, or do you feel you're getting other indirect benefits from the elevated traffic?

[reply]
1. 6/17/09
  
  PetLvr
  
  Good question! Honestly .. I think RSS subscribers are dead ... although, my subscribers did go up from low 30's to 43 today .. it changes daily though.
  
  I think there is some value in the traffic because everything I've learned since I've started blogging in May 2005 holds true - the money is in the archives - and people find it and come back to view it. I just have to remember that and everytime I see this happen I kick myself for not having enough spare time to ..
  
  e.g. .// add some Clickbank to my header - so the traffic from Romania and other NON-geo traffic'd areas see some ads instead of a blank spot where the google ads are (or keep looking for CPM sponsors!)
  
  e.g. .// maybe create a popup or exit strategy to try and collect emails for a newsletter where I can send readers more information, deals, posts, secrets etc ..
  
  e.h. .// fix the archives and make the good content better
  
  and stuff like that. Again - it's all dynamic and changing, yet I haven't changed much on this site for a long time. That's the indirect benefit I see. If I saw nothing, I would probably stop posting there and take it all down.
2. 6/17/09
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  Thanks for sharing your perspective.
  
  My blogging goals are fairly different than yours so I've been sitting here muddling over how the info can or can't be applied to non-monetized blogs who really are looking for regular readers/subscribers.
  
  Not sure of the answer yet-- more muddling needs to be done.
3. 6/17/09
  
  PetLvr
  
  well, setting the monetized part aside .. I think most blogs should try to attain two goals .. traffic wise (-traffic with a purpose-)
  
  1) collecting a direct in to your readers to buy something (collecting email addresses and earning their trust that when you do recommend something they take action). This could be selling a book, products, memberships, etc) // added: "Influence"
  
  2) promote themselves brandwise to better receive more opportunities offline. (getting the word out on yourself)
  
  It's all fun and games inbetween and a mystery how to get there.