Tag Archives: Blog Entries

Doing some Twitter analytics. Click rates per 100,000 impressions.

November 15, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Analytics, Social Media | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

In the old days, I would just tweet my blog posts. I would write multiple tweets for popular posts. But, I would retweet posts that got more attention on Twitter. This turned out to be a good idea and a bad idea. After inspecting my analytics, I learned that we weren’t getting many clicks from Twitter.

My recent experiment was to post all of my blog entries. There are about 800 of them, so I posted them one by one. The ones that got clicked on were ones that I did some testing on. I tested a few dozen posts to see how well they would do if I published them multiple times to attain 100,000 impressions. I have 9000 followers on one of my business Twitter accounts and 19000 on the marketing account. I posted tweets on the smaller one, and then retweeted them each five times on the larger account over the course of 30 hours. The total number of impressions would be slightly above 100,000. I learned that some of the posts I had been ignoring for years did very well on Twitter. A few posts got two or three clicks when published with 100,000 impressions while many only got one.

I also learned that the average click rate for blogs published once on Twitter (instead of five times in a day) was roughly 1 in 98,000 impressions which is an interesting stat to know. Now I know what to expect when my Twitter followers grow to a few hundred thousand hopefully in a few years.

Doing well on Twitter takes a lot of work and there are a lot of things to measure and a lot of ways to measure various analytics and metrics. So, try to think about ways you can measure what is going on with your Twitter account.

10 quick factors that differentiate a good blog entry from a bad one

August 3, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Semi-Popular, Social Media | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Many people write blogs, but most writers are not that interesting. Even some of the more famous blogs out there have very predictable and dull contents. So, how do you write winning blogs every time? It is not an exact science, but here are some tips.

(1) Having the right photo vs. having “a” photo.
Any blog about blogging will emphasize how you need a photo and how you will get more shares on Facebook, pins on Pinterest, and popularity in general by having a photo. But, having a mediocre photo might not get you much traction. You need to compare photos and see which ones get you the best following. Compare your analytics and use your senses. A good photo makes you say, “awe.” If you don’t have a reaction to the photo you are using, it is probably not the best you can do. Be selective if you want traffic. Thriving on the internet is based purely on how good you are at selecting and/or crafting top content and not on having mediocre photos.

(2) Length matters
I have the habit of jotting my ideas down on my iphone’s notes section. Then I’ll write lots of quick blog entries. This is a great way to experiment. However, most of the quick blogs I wrote that were three or four paragraphs with no sub-headers didn’t get read more than a few times. The blogs that were the most successful were about 500-700 words, and had many points within a greater theme, each with bolded sub-headers above each paragraph.

(3) Uniqueness is a huge factor
Many people write blog entries on topics that have been done to death. This might be okay if you offer a unique new twist on an old theme kind of like how Mozart wrote dozens of variations on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star as a child. However, picking unique themes that will be populur to a very general audience is the not so easy to master key to popular blogging. If you are in a niche industry, you might not be able to stay relevant while pleasing the masses, but at least please the masses who have some relationship to your niche market!

(4) Promotion on Social Media is critical
If you do not have a good social media presence, you might find it hard to promote your blog. If you blog regularly and the Google Gods pick you up, then you can get traffic from them. But, that can take hundreds of blog entries to accumulate a significant start with the Gods. It takes time to develop a massive Twitter, Instagram or Facebook presence, so try to master social media as that is one of your keys to getting your blog articles in the door with readers.

(5) Networking with co-bloggers
If you have a proofreader, partner, or comedian who can add some humor to your blogs, this can really help. It makes sense to invest in blog articles that are already popular by sprucing those ones up. There is no point in improving upon blog articles with ideas that didn’t work though or new articles which you are not sure about.

(6) Being too factual seems to alienate readers
There are many bloggers who are great at researching facts and figures. They pride themselves on providing “useful” information. But, the reality is that people want articles that are fun, interesting, or that can change their lives with little or no effort. Yes, a good blog article needs some facts to back up your claims and hypotheses, but being overly factual doesn’t normally lead to articles that get read much. The overly factual articles sit on the shelf.

(7) Articles with many points on a single topic often win big.
Do you see titles such as 8 ways to succeed on social media or 11 ways to get your cat to meao more? These are titles that work. On social media, most bloggers make the mistake of not including unique content in the tweet itself. The result is generic looking titles that I would not invest any reading time in. Blog articles that have a theme and two or three examples do not do well. Longer articles with seven, ten, or twenty-eight ways to for example succeed in social media seem to do better. But, be unique about how you write and promote these articles otherwise they too will end up lost in cyberspace.

(8) Excite and entertain
Nobody wants to go back to a blog that puts them to sleep. You need to find a way for your blog to be easy to read, fun, and exciting. With half of the world’s population now claiming to be bloggers, you have to differentiate your boring content from everyone else’s, so try to be interesting!

(9) Too much advice can be a bad thing
My very best blog articles did the worst. But, why? Because I gave really fine-tuned technical advice for how to do better in business, social media, or in hiring. Too much nitpicky and analytical advice doesn’t usually do well unless your audience demands it. Additionally, I am writing to an average business oriented crowd and not to a high-brow crowd. Sometimes if I write above the level of my readers, they become alienated.

(10) Sentence structure of the title really matters
If you analyze blog titles and which ones do well, you will quickly understand that simple grammar actually sells. Subject – Object -Verb is a great structure to start with. My best blog article of all time had a title – Steve Jobs watched his programmers carefully, so should you! It was simple, had a powerful message, and a call to action. Not all posts that use the formula for success will be successful, but it is a good place to start.

(11) A call to action
A good blog entry should get people out of their chair. There should be a call to action. They should want to get up and make a change to their life or business right after reading it. A call to action could be part of the title, like in my Steve Jobs example, and should definitely be at the end of a blog entry.

(12) Know your audience and personalize
It is hard to know the intricacies of your audience — their likes and dislikes. You have to experiment and learn little by little what they like as a group. And they will surprize you many times as well. I mentioned before that if I write articles that are too technical, analytical or high-brow my audience tends to not read them. On the other hand, if I write interesting articles with a meaningful and understandable point, they will get a generous supply of traffic.

(13) So, what can you do?
Start by experimenting and look at your analytics. Try to figure out which articles worked best and why. Look at what other people are publishing and what did better on their Facebook or Twitter. There is no way to absolutely master the art of knowing what is popular on social media, but the closer you look, the better you get. So start today, and as always, choose some pictures that knock your socks off! I am not using photos yet except on Facebook promoted posts, but I’ll begin using them soon as my blog grows!

Top Viral Images, and how they spread.

April 5, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Semi-Popular, Social Media | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Mastering the art of knowing what is viral and why is a fascinating undertaking. Knowing exactly the twists and turns it takes to spread is even more interesting. But, what spreads more — images, great articles, or videos? The answer is that images tend to be more popular, but the spread of various types of content depends heavily on the particular medium. Text tweets can do very well on Twitter, while a good vertical photo can do miracles on Google Plus.

Appeal to the general public
One thing to understand about viral content is that is needs to appeal to the general public. If you have a post about widgets, only people who like widgets will share that post. The people they share it with will not likely enjoy widgets which means the sharing will end right there and the post will not go viral.

Where does content spread?
Viral content can be spread on blogs, forums, social networks, web sites, and company intranets.

What types of posts go viral?
Popular images might make a point, tell a quick story, or appeal to people on an emotional level. Being funny or entertaining generally helps. But, your image or post needs to appeal to the masses. It could be a breath taking photo, or something that makes you start laughing at first glance. Or it could be something really interesting.

Integrating industry specific with viral themes
One technique that sophisticated marketers use these days is to integrate popular themes into industry specific blog entries. If you are writing about widgets, you could write about how your puppies are happy the minute they see a widget, or how you love enjoying a widget with your morning mocha. You would be surprised at how powerful pets and coffee are in social media.

Tracking the viral flow
Once an image goes viral, it is difficult to track how it spread. It might be easier to follow the expansion of a particular post on a particular network like Twitter for example. For an image to go viral, it needs to be published by a particular account. Then, at least one of the accounts following that account need to share the content again. The reason why even the best content out there rarely goes viral is:

What can go wrong
(1) The account posting doesn’t have many followers, or doesn’t have many active followers

(2) At any particular moment in time, less than 1% of your Twitter followers are on Twitter and will have the chance to perhaps see your post.

(3) If you do get shared, the follower who shared your post may not have that many followers. If you have 10,000 followers, and only one shares your post and that one has only 10 followers, your post will not get seen.

(4) If you do get shared, but the people following the people who follow you don’t find your post interesting because they are in a different industry or have different interests, there goes your virality!

(5) You posted your post at the wrong time of the day

(6) Group consciousness would have liked your post in 2011, but not in 2015 for some unknown reason.

Summary
To really go viral, you need to attract the attention of what Vegas casinos call “Whales.” You need a few really huge accounts to retweet you, or at least a lot of somewhat large accounts. That way the message has a chance to spread, and keep spreading. You need a really hot post, and a lot of luck too. Sometimes a hot post will spread like crazy. Then, it will die down. Post the same thing a month later, and nobody is interested. My suggestion — pray to the viral gods — put your destiny in their hands.

The Lamborghini effect in Social Media marketing

September 6, 2014 by 123outsource
Categories: Popular on Google+, Semi-Popular, Social Media | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

I have been doing marketing for my entire life it seems. I remember as a kid, I marketed my lawn mowing business. I came up with sweat intensive methods for attracting clients in a heartbeat. I used to write an estimate on a flyer and leave it under their door mat if they were not home. I got hired by 10% of the people I left a flyer with. That is phenomenal. But, it is because I used a personal touch, and gave a quick and customized bid to everyone. Being fast at doing accurate estimates has its advantages.

As an adult, I have been running websites for more than a decade. It is hard to run a website, and the marketing keeps changing. Google is basically in charge, so whatever they like, you had better do!

The Lamborghini effect
It sounds like a movie. The Italian Job, The Bridge on the River Quai, The Lamborghini Effect — playing at 5pm, tickets sold at the door. Basically what I am talking about is having a marketing methodology so potent, that if you just tap the gas pedal, you will hear a huge “Voom” sound, and magic will happen. Today, I had a Lamborghini moment, if I may coin that phrase. I published a popular blog entry. But, I had also channeled some traffic to my outsourcing blog (the one you’re reading,) from my newer travel twitter which gets a lot of retweets. The result is that my traffic was more than double for a few days on my blog. Wow! All I did was tweet a few tweets and voom!

Followers are useless, you need results!
Lots of companies and individuals are in social media marketing, and claim to be good at it. You will see offers where they can get you 2000 followers overnight for a low fee, or maybe even 30,000 followers. Followers are useless. You need relevant, active, engaged followers, even if you only have a hundred. Most companies hire people who are not that experienced, and who will not get you amazing results. They will get you some new followers, maybe write a few tweets if they can even write well, and perhaps get you retweeted a few times. There is no focus on results, only on spinning the wheels. I don’t like this. I not only want results, I want to be blown out of the water. Real results are traffic to your site from clicks, and getting new customers — not new dormant followers who just sit there collecting cyber-dust.

My goal
My goal in social media is to learn how to get results so potent that I can help others to promote their social media campaigns. I want one or more twitter accounts, and blogs that get so much active traffic, that one tweet from me, and you won’t know what hit you! It amazes me that my older Twitter accounts have 4000, or 8000 followers, but only get retweeted two dozen times a month, while my newer travel twitter gets two dozen retweets per day, on a bad day. Wow! But, what if I can get my campaign to the point where I am getting hundreds of retweets per day? I think it is possible.

Blogging
As far as blogging is concerned, by blogging more and more, I learn what is popular and what is not. Writing a popular blog entry in a niche market can get you a few thousand clicks over the life of the blog entry. Some entries get a lot of clicks their first week, while others slowly get clicked on and attract search engine traffic over years. Some of my most popular blog entries were written in 2011 by the way! My goal is get better at identifying what people like, and to continue to write more popular blog entries. I want to get so good, that all of my blog entries are popular. We’ll see what happens, but it is going well so far.

Summary
Most social media companies will give you “a” Twitter account and “a” Facebook account and perhaps a blog that is “blahg.” Don’t settle for less. I like it when you get results that are so amazing that you say, “What happened?” That is the Lamborghini effect in Social Media Marketing. Once you’ve experienced it you’ll never forget it!