Links:
Question of the week:
Let me know your thoughts and comments!
Please leave a comment below.
Note that I don’t reply to all comments, but I do read them all. If I don’t reply to your comment, it most likely means that I agree with what you say and don’t have anything meaningful to add, myself. I appreciate and read all comments and your comments play an important part in what I write about, so keep them coming.
Spammy comments are always filtered or removed. No surprise there.
Hello Shane.
For me the “Unpopular post” is about too many things on the post, too many people sharing stuff and too many aproaches.
What I found is that if I talk ONLY about 1 or 2 things in a post is much more “digestible”.
Like for example talking about only one person or two that share concepts of ways to increase traffic that complement to each other, but when you give a lot of options, it can get confusing, too many information.
Take care
That makes sense. Personally, I despise list-based posts for this very reason. However, they do tend to be very popular, which is why we did this experiment.
I guess the way to go is to pick your favorite strategy and test it out.
Yep, in fact I do appreciate and like this part of what you do. Testing and seeing what it works kind of “live”, and then coming with conclusions…
For example, I think that the reviews you do work very good because at the end you usually give 2 or 3 options to choose, even if you compare 5 – 10 products or whatever number, at the end there is not too many options to choose from…
Take care
I do agree with J – I fing list-posts very unactionable.
I don’t usually have the time to look into several different strategies, and if I “file it for later”, that means I’ll never get to it.
For that reason, I prefer to write detailed posts on specific strategies vs talk a little bit about everything, which is what list posts essentially are.
Hi Shane
I think it’s because that post is different to all your other posts you’ve done before. Especially so when the post involves content from other experts, where normally the content is just from you only.
Shane, I thought the “Expert Traffic Strategies” post was great! I probably spent 45 minutes on the page digesting the material – and clicking links to the different experts.
I was one that did not share the post. Upon reflecting on why I didn’t, I rarely share posts on internet marketing, SEO, or social media marketing. Since my social media is a gateway to the community that I am building, I want to keep the community about my niche, not internet marketing. I think it would detract from the ongoing conversation.
I do, however, share your posts via email to my buddies in the blogosphere. I am a Shane Melaugh evangelist, of sorts. And since that would not be directly tied to the post, it would be hard to track it.
I think your instincts with putting the post up was dead on. Keep ’em coming!
Hello Shane,
Regarding the ‘unpopular post’ feedback – possibly the response was less than expected because of the US holiday, Thanksgiving. Many were still in vacation mode or returning home that Sunday/Monday. Overall I found the information really good. It was a lot though.
Really enjoying your material.
Best,
Eric
In regards to the “Ask The Experts” post, here’s a few thoughts as to why it didn’t get as much traction as you thought it would.
1. Timing. Eric already mentioned Thanksgiving holiday. For those of us outside the US, we sometimes forget the impact of the biggest holiday of the year on traffic.
2. Lots of links to external sites. It is quite likely a lot of people clicked on the links to read more about the expert and spent a lot of time on their site and didn’t come back to the main post.
3. Given the content is effectively written by multiple people, readers are probably less inclined to leave a comment if there is a specific person they want to address the comment to. If the article is written by a single author, a reader has much higher confidence that the actual author will respond to their comments.
In regards to popular/unpopular posts, I find that the reviews/lists tend to be the most popular on my site. I guess there’s a reason why the “Top X” lists are still so common. People like something that’s easy to digest.
Cheers
Peter
Hi Shane,
Just my tuppence worth… I think that the topic matter would be ascribed more so to SME’s and on-line marketers looking for ‘inside track and secret recipes’ or seizing upon white label opportunities or PLR’s. This would be the main reason from my observations that there is a significant reduction in sharing these sorts of posts. not only on your site but on many others. I think it all depends on social clout (perceived or otherwise) and what level of censorship you would like to have applied to your posts.
Re the ‘unpopular post’, I quickly moved on from it as I’d assumed you had run out of time and just gathered some quotes from the usual suspects. “If I had to start out again, I’d call my hotshot JV partners and build a list…”. I prefer hearing directly from you; in a way, I guess as this was a traffic experiment, it served its purpose but try to keep the content to your tone and style.
These weren’t quotes – we approached each blogger with a custom landing page asking them to reply with their answer to the question. This post easily took double, probably triple the time it takes to put together one of our normal posts. We actually developed a plugin from scratch to try and optimise the process of reaching out, following up, collating and displaying the answers – so, yeah, definitely not a case of running out of time!
The ‘running out of time’ line was a bit tongue in cheek but that was my immediate reaction when I saw the comments. I guess I’m too cynical to be online but when I see people giving that top tips, I often wonder how much thought went into the sound bite.
I enjoyed some of the tips in it and I already have my own online income so not too sure why it wasn’t as popular? Maybe because all the comments were more “generic” instead of 1,500 words on one method which would make perhaps a newbie better understand the actual method instead of seeing broadly each method and not completely understanding what they mean. Not exactly a go here, do there, though a few were more detailed. Either way, it gave me some reminders on other things I need to try soon, thanks for making it.
Hi, As I said at the time I found the post to be extremely useful, but I am not perhaps the fully rounded marketer. Social marketing is not my scene and I did not share the post with anyone.
I am sorry if you did not get the result expected, but then again I speak to one person at a time and believe you do the same, and having that one person listen closely must be more important than having a room full of people saying yes and not following the conversation at all?
Do not try to measure the results of one post in terms of social votes to be more important than the thanks of individuals is what I would suggest. Personally I would prefer to help one person choose the right path for them as opposed to having a lot of people paying lip service and then totally disregarding what you were trying to say. Jim
For me, it came off as messy and like a lot of noise. Here’s why:
* The advice came in at all different levels without a logical progression. It’s like asking “what is the meaning of life?” and having a 5 year old, someone’s plumber, a sociology professor and a pastor all answering at once.
* some of the information overlapped.
* some of the “advice” was so generic I didn’t even need to Google for an answer.
* It was a different style told in a multitude of unfamiliar voices
* it was missing the “interesting thought/insight” + analytical “and here’s why” approach that you do so well
* it did feel a little like people were paying you to be featured or that there was some kind of jv thing going on if I’m 100 percent honest about it
Also when you come in contact with so much advice from unfamiliar people who are giving either intense or super generic answers, how do you respond to that…and what would motivate you to do so?
It was a worthy experiment nonetheless and thank you for explaining the odd shift. You’re generally amazing at what you do and I love that you’re always willing to try new avenues.
I echo this. Alice has just said it so much better! :-)
Thanks to everyone for the feedback on the expert roundup post!
As I said in the video, I really appreciate seeing some negative feedback and I’m glad you aren’t pulling any punches. :)
I actually share most of the opinions listed here, concerning list-posts. For example, I definitely agree that one good strategy, explained in-depth is worth more than a dozen strategies explained in a paragraph each.
The content on this site won’t change away from quality, in-depth posts like you are used to. But I will occasionally try new things and use this site for experiments, just like this expert post was.
You have to try new things and I’m just very appreciative of the fact that you have the nerve to do so and then share your findings. Thanks Shane.