A place for my stuff | by Ian Ketcheson
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Over the last few days I’ve been conducting a little experiment. (See here for the orginal post). In a post that ostensibly talked about a neat new tool called HitTail I also included some very hot keywords (Bleenks, Peekvid) that have been generating a lot of my organic search results.
I’ve been fascinated for a long-time about how ideas and memes spread online, and was curious to see if I could grow my blog by just simply pandering to hot keyword search terms.
I’m sure that this is a thought that jumps to mind for many organizations as they look to make a move into social media.
So, did it work?
Here’s my conclusion: Measured against old web metrics my little experiment was wildly successful. But, once you poke under the hood and evaluate it against social media criteria it is very clearly a big flop.
So, what made it look successful?
By standard Internet traffic metrics this was a resounding success: I had a 1100% spike in traffic in the 24 hours after the post. In the six days prior to the post I averaged about 15 visitors per day (good thing I have a day job). I pulled in 177 visitors on Monday, thanks mainly to a refer from Stumbleupon which started hitting my site early Monday afternoon. Traffic remains high on Tuesday.
But, these traffic stats are pretty much useless.
When we stop to measure the success of this experiment against measurement and analysis criteria suited to social media the results are underwhelming.
Lets turn this into a learning experience. Why was it a failure? And, what are the lessons for organizations that are starting to think about using social media?
Social media success is not about hits. It comes from building on your existing relationships, making contributions to your community/network, increasing your influence through demonstrations of thought leadership, speaking with an engaging and “authentic” voice (although that is becoming an overused and often disingenuous cliché), and by ultimately creating compelling content.
Organizations thinking about moving in this direction need to ask themselves whether they are up to this challenge.
HitTail is a very cool new tool, put out by Connors Communications. It moves the next step beyond Google Analytics, showing you in real time the search hits that are coming to your site and offering suggestions for how to increase traffic.
Here is some free advertising for Hittail. It’s a remarkably boring PR video for a very cool tool.
So, what have I learned?
A couple of weeks ago I wrote this short blurb on Bleenks:
Forget BitTorrent. Bleenks is the next chapter in the copyright battles. Bleenks, like Peekvid.com, challenges copyright models by using a form of steganography to hide copyrighted content in video sharing sites. Watch for more of this.
Well, apparently this has become one of the most common ways that people find my site.
The obvious lesson? If you want traffic you should write about the next generation copyright buster. (Heck, lets really pander to the “wise” crowd: bleenks, peekvid, TV fusion)
The bigger lesson is that real-time analytic tools like Hittail, and its ability to make suggestions based on your keyword traffic, help bloggers better understand the reasons people come to their site, and generate content that will get them coming back. This is reader feedback par excellence.
Stay tuned: I’ll let you know what kind of traffic this post gets. I’m not afraid of sharing my (pitifully low) numbers in the name of science.
As I’ve mentioned before, I maintain a page over at The New PRWiki where I track new blogs from government officials, Ministers, Heads of State, etc.
Well, after spotting several dozen articles dripping enthusiastically about Prince Charles’ apparent launch of a blog, I was all prepared to update my ist.
Here are a few samples of the news coverage recycled press release:
Zee News: “Britain’s heir-to-the-throne, Prince Charles has been bitten by the blogging bug so badly that he now has a video diary on his website. “
AP via Macleans “He’s no Lonelygirl15 but the heir to the British throne has joined in the Internet video craze by posting a day-in-the life video on his revamped personal website.”
This is London: “His Royal Blog-ness: Prince Charles adds ‘blogging’ to his list of talents.”
Then I checked out his website
Gimme a break.
This is a redesigned website that happens to include a canned, highly edited flash video from more than two months ago. There is no behind-the-scenes video. There is nothing written in the first person. There is no sense that maybe the Prince of Wales had put His Royal Hands on a keyboard.
Heck, I’d even be happy with Pluralis Majestatis.
There are some very interesting experiments going on in the use of social media by government officials. You can pop over to the NewPR for a list of government innovators. And, please let me know of any I’ve missed.
But just don’t include the Prince of Wales in that list.
