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As a relatively new blogger, I am intrigued by the process of “getting found.” People spend a lot of time figuring out ways to be more viral.
Recently one of my Marketing Voices interviews for PodTech was Neil Patel, co-founder of ACS Consulting, based in Orange County, California.
Neil's business is search engine optimization and he helps blogs get found. Specifically, he supports lots of Top 100 bloggers. People such as: Guy Kawasaki, Jason Calacanis and TechCrunch.
One of Neil’s tips is that content is king for bloggers. He also uses creative and time-tested linking strategies and other tools such as Digg and Stumbleupon. Neil also mentioned that knowing the right tags and words to use in a blog is important so that the blog is found by the search engines. Neil and his team are praised for their work with General Motors, American Greetings, and Hewlett-Packard.
Guy Kawasaki, who I also interviewed on Marketing Voices, supports the idea that content is king for making blogs more viral.
Content obviously drives readers because they want to learn something and not waste their time. I know I only read sites that enhance my learning. Seems all pretty self-evident and simple, but there are so many blogs that don’t focus on content that I thought it was worth discussing.
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Comments
Jennifer, my take is 90-95% of blog's don't have content worth discussing. Is that harsh? Maybe.
Btw, welcome to the FIX!
Posted by: Paul Barsch | 07.17.07
Jennifer welcome to Daily Fix! Now I'm going to have to disagree with you ;) I think that a blog definitely has to have content that the reader can find value in, but that's far from enough. Let's assume that Paul's figures are right, and that only 5-10% of the blogs out there have decent content. Let's also restrict the discussion to the roughly 100 million blogs that Technorati tracks.
That means that there are 5-10 million blogs out there that have good content. That's an awful lot of blogs to wade through, and even if we become more restrictive and say that only 50,000-100,000 of those blogs have amazing content, that's still means that we'll never read many of these blogs.
So I don't think that producing great content is enough to make a blog popular. I think the key is to produce good content, but more importantly, to be a good community member. To leave your blog and comment on other blogs, to develop relationships with your fellow bloggers. To join discussions on their blogs.
I think this serves two very important functions:
1 - It gets the word out about your blog. You don't have time to go out and look for my blog, no matter how great it is. But if I come to YOUR blog and leave a comment, the odds that you will follow me back to check out MY blog, increases greatly.
2 - Participating in discussions on other blogs makes me smarter. I get to learn from other bloggers, and that makes the content that I create on my blog, even better.
While I agree that you have to produce great content, I think being a good community member is more important. That helps get the word out about your blog, and it makes you a smarter blogger, which leads to your creating better content. Mike Sansone had a great thought a few months ago at Converstations, saying that if content is king, community is the kingdom it serves.
Posted by: Mack Collier | 07.17.07
Hi Mack: Thanks for the welcome. You raise a very good point about being a community member, and I would say that both content and community membership is important. My point about content was that I do think
there has to be a point of view on a blog, and to me it has to offer some thoughts that give people some sort of "ah-ha". The community aspect is key though too. I like that you think it is more important. The phrase: Community kingdom...like that!
Posted by: jennifer jones | 07.17.07
Hi Jennifer and Mack
The discussion that you have raised here is very interesting. Infact, another popular term "Blogging Karma" is doing the rounds. Blogging Karma emphasises that only by being a genuine and active member of the blogging community, one can expect his/her own blog to be noticed. A theory similar to Newton's 3rd law.
But if you ask me interms of priority, I think its the content: or else being just a good blogging colleague is of no use. Repeat visits can happen only when content is interesting and opens the reader to a new possibility.
Posted by: Pramod | 07.18.07
Pramod: glad you weighed in.
i had not heard the term blogging karma, thanks for sharing it.
Posted by: jennifer jones | 07.18.07