So at the beginning of this year I set some goals. One of them was to try out various niche blogs. The first one is up and running for a while now and I have used it to experiment with various ways of promotion. This involves Twitter, Twiends, Facebook, Farmville (yes really), Bit.ly and comment-posting.
This post
For bit.ly I wrote a post already. For Twitter, Twiends and Facebook I will write separate posts but only when I have a better understanding of these platforms. For now, I'll update you on what I tried so far.
Facebook & Farmville
First, I created a Facebook page, and started playing Farmville. Why? Because Farmville is popular and Farmville requires neighbours. People are actually willing to crap their friends list with random Farmville players if their true friends don't actually play the game. External websites promoting this didn't really work (should try and make one myself!), but posting on Facebook Neighbour fanpages (there's a bunch of them) did. If you want to speed things up a lot you can actively add others.
Twitter
Next, I created a Twitter account and started to follow other people by searching for things like 'need inspiration' and posting links to my blog. Roughly 10% actually followed me back and it did generate a few hits and even a retweet. But this doesn't really scale up. Actually Twitter's rules are against aggressive following. And against advertising. Aggressive unfollowing is even worse. Furthermore, I don't really feel comfortable harassing people like this.
Twiends
In came Twiends. It is an odd website where you gain credits by following others, visiting websites, watching vids and liking facebook pages (you can also buy credits). You can trade these credits for people returning the favor. I followed a bunch of people that offered many credits and then started to like facebook fanpages like mad (you need an 'approved' facebook page for that, which wasn't a problem for me because I had a lot of friends already because of Farmville). In the end, I quickly had 300 followers on Twitter. The sad thing is that most of these are quite hollow (like mine). A few weeks later there's still 200 left, but posting a link to a blogpost doesn't result in any visit. It may however, help to get started (ie if you follow a random person and have 100's of followers, he/she might be more prone to follow you back?).
Facebook again
Back to facebook, I now created a fan page (tried a group first because I didn't know the difference, as I said I'm mainly doing this to learn by doing) for my blog. I invited my 'friends' and switched my Twiends strategy from getting Twitter followers to getting Facebook likes. See where this ends up...
Closing remarks
In a nutshell, I'm working on and over the boundaries of what I would normally find acceptable. For now I am far from convinced by anything I have seen. What did generate some visitors was commenting on other blogs and the postaday2011 Wordpress tag I added to my posts. My goal was to write a post every other day, so I need 30 by the end of February. I've been posting every day for the first two weeks. I think I'll spread the other half over the remaining time. Also, I will try the commenting-strategy a little more actively. Although less scalable (I do read the post).
Posts tonen met het label Offspring Blogs. Alle posts tonen
Posts tonen met het label Offspring Blogs. Alle posts tonen
Offspring & Niche Blogging
Well, my first offspring-blog of the year 2011 has seen the light. InspiritualBlog. If you asked me what it is about (someone did..), I will have a hard time explaining, but will come up with something like 'inspiration', a little bit on the soft side.
Niche?
Is that a niche? Probably not. By the way, I learned the other day that 'niche blogging' is actually (according to Wikipedia at least) a combination of 'blogging' and 'niche marketing'. According to that page, 'niche blogging is the act of creating a blog with the intent of using it to market to a particular niche market'. The bold-italic is by me, because that's what makes the difference with my original interpretation. What do other sources say about it? Well if you Google niche+blogging, most what you find is about making money anyway, preferably by sleeping. Another source mentioned the 'marketing' part only as an option down the road.
Niche??
In the process I stumbled upon a post about how boring niche blogging is, how nice it is to step out of your shed once in a while, and that this might be okay since many visitors will come for YOU. I think he has a point, although I have seen blogs were visitors would not come for the blogger him/herself. The latter will definitely be the case if you're going for the quick win. I think in that case a niche blog is still the way to go. Otherwise, he has a great point.
Murlu
Who is 'he'? He's murlu.com and I really liked his blog (layout-wise I have seen better though). It feels more 'real' than problogger.com. He has a lot of good content on his site, and (that's what I really like / appreciate), a high level of meta posts, for instance about his revenues.
Offspring
Yes, I was actually talking about this new blog I set up. I'm trying a few new things here, which gives me the chance to learn (the whole point after all) as well as a chance to write about it on this blog. So, coming up will be articles about Wordpress as a blogging platform, Twitter and Facebook as marketing tools and bit-ly as a nice tool with a hidden agenda.
Niche?
Is that a niche? Probably not. By the way, I learned the other day that 'niche blogging' is actually (according to Wikipedia at least) a combination of 'blogging' and 'niche marketing'. According to that page, 'niche blogging is the act of creating a blog with the intent of using it to market to a particular niche market'. The bold-italic is by me, because that's what makes the difference with my original interpretation. What do other sources say about it? Well if you Google niche+blogging, most what you find is about making money anyway, preferably by sleeping. Another source mentioned the 'marketing' part only as an option down the road.
Niche??
In the process I stumbled upon a post about how boring niche blogging is, how nice it is to step out of your shed once in a while, and that this might be okay since many visitors will come for YOU. I think he has a point, although I have seen blogs were visitors would not come for the blogger him/herself. The latter will definitely be the case if you're going for the quick win. I think in that case a niche blog is still the way to go. Otherwise, he has a great point.
Murlu
Who is 'he'? He's murlu.com and I really liked his blog (layout-wise I have seen better though). It feels more 'real' than problogger.com. He has a lot of good content on his site, and (that's what I really like / appreciate), a high level of meta posts, for instance about his revenues.
Offspring
Yes, I was actually talking about this new blog I set up. I'm trying a few new things here, which gives me the chance to learn (the whole point after all) as well as a chance to write about it on this blog. So, coming up will be articles about Wordpress as a blogging platform, Twitter and Facebook as marketing tools and bit-ly as a nice tool with a hidden agenda.
Happy New Year
It's a new year. Welcome! Wishing you the best for 2011! (Ouch, busted: I initially wrote 2010, thank god this is not a type writer).
Any resolutions? Here are mine (beta):
- Launch my company
- Launch the local job website that I am currently working at
- Get some exercises in my daily routine to train my back muscles
- Launch new blogs, for fun and learning
S.M.A.R.T
In my language we have an acronym called SMART. it translates quite reasonably to English, and I always thought that's where it originates, but I'm not sure anymore. Anyways:
SMART =
Specific
Measurable
Acceptable
Reasonable
Time-bound
Targets are SMART when they follow all of these guidelines. A SMART guideline is more motivating and easier to monitor and evaluate. Even the process trying to make a target SMART is beneficial: it encourages you to really think about your targets and look at them from different angles.
Problems (un-smartness)
My resolutions are not fully SMART. Are they time-bound? Well, perhaps coarsely because of the unwritten law that resolutions apply to the coming year only. But they definitely could improve time-bound wise. 'Launch new blogs': this lacks specificity. In an earlier I wrote I was thinking about 'one blog a month'. But is that reasonable? It makes no sense setting goals if they are not reasonable. This can even be demotivating.
My resolutions revisited
- I'll launch my company and will turnover (excluding VAT) 4k euro in the first year.
- We will launch the local jobsite in February, including 20 jobs, having 1k hits in March.
- Have a daily 15-min exercise routine running by the end of January to train my back muscles
- I will launch a new blog every two months, and post at least 30 posts per blog
Sounds perhaps less inspiring, with all the numbers and stuff, but makes it harder to cheat :-D
Meta
So this my last post in the December blog-month series. This means less posts on this blog, and more focused ones. So no more sandcastle building videos ;)
Any resolutions? Here are mine (beta):
- Launch my company
- Launch the local job website that I am currently working at
- Get some exercises in my daily routine to train my back muscles
- Launch new blogs, for fun and learning
S.M.A.R.T
In my language we have an acronym called SMART. it translates quite reasonably to English, and I always thought that's where it originates, but I'm not sure anymore. Anyways:
SMART =
Specific
Measurable
Acceptable
Reasonable
Time-bound
Targets are SMART when they follow all of these guidelines. A SMART guideline is more motivating and easier to monitor and evaluate. Even the process trying to make a target SMART is beneficial: it encourages you to really think about your targets and look at them from different angles.
Problems (un-smartness)
My resolutions are not fully SMART. Are they time-bound? Well, perhaps coarsely because of the unwritten law that resolutions apply to the coming year only. But they definitely could improve time-bound wise. 'Launch new blogs': this lacks specificity. In an earlier I wrote I was thinking about 'one blog a month'. But is that reasonable? It makes no sense setting goals if they are not reasonable. This can even be demotivating.
My resolutions revisited
- I'll launch my company and will turnover (excluding VAT) 4k euro in the first year.
- We will launch the local jobsite in February, including 20 jobs, having 1k hits in March.
- Have a daily 15-min exercise routine running by the end of January to train my back muscles
- I will launch a new blog every two months, and post at least 30 posts per blog
Sounds perhaps less inspiring, with all the numbers and stuff, but makes it harder to cheat :-D
Meta
So this my last post in the December blog-month series. This means less posts on this blog, and more focused ones. So no more sandcastle building videos ;)
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