Back on episode 3 of Perfcast, we went over our blogging challenge entries for the week. The previous weeks blogging challenge had been to create linkbait. I was successful with my challenge entry however, David was in the process of putting his entry together for the launch of CollegeCrunch.org. We had an idea as to what the linkbait was going to be about and from the sounds of it, the post had an excellent chance of being successful.
Fast forward to today and it looks like Davids linkbait post didn’t do so well. (Before Posting: Think Like A Common Person) The result of his linkbait post is interesting to me because I had brought the issue up during the show. There are times when you can spend hours on a blog post and think it is going to be a hot ticket item right out of the gate, only to publish the article and see it fall flat on its face. How depressing these times of blogging can be.
However, David has done a good job in his post reflecting back on why the post was a failure. He states that he didn’t review the post from a common place perspective. That is, readers couldn’t emphasize with the article. David gives us three things we should think about before publishing what you believe to be a pillar article, but you’ll have to visit his blog to read those tips.
What I would like to know from you is, have you ever worked really hard on an article only to see it go nowhere? What have you learned from such experiences? Share your experiences and your knowledge in the comments.
Image taken by Melissa Segal under Creative Commons.
7 thoughts on “When The Big Post Turns Into A Big Flop”
Big posts are never too good…I feel its better to divide them in two posts rather than putting a single big one…it gets dull at stages…This is my perception. I might be wrong though
Same thing here, sounds like my entire blog …
Ryan, that’s what kills me… there are a few things I have thought of after seeing the reaction that could have made the whole thing work a million times better. :$ Many of these cars have previous year models that look just as good and cost as little as half as much. I should have listed those prices in order to help people realize that they can afford used versions of these cars. Or, as you said, make sure the understanding was to drool over the list rather than take it as fact.
Lastly, as I said to you privately, I see BMW’s, and Audi’s here at University all the time, and not being driven by professors, and so it appears that many people HAVE decided that having a nice car is the most important thing to them. I just didn’t think widely enough, and will definitely do better next time with this insight in hand.
The sad part: “why didn’t I think this way before hand?”
Once you realize your mistake, it is hard to see HOW you were so dumb to have made it.
David,
On thinking about this a bit more, I think you could have actually had a different affect with this bait with a simple title change: 15 Cars That Every Guy Dreams Of Driving To College
A couple points.
First, a failed linkbait is a linkbait that fails to get links. From the looks of it, David’s linkbait garnered half a dozen quality links. You don’t get those every day.
Second, David seems to have learned a lot from this linkbait experience. He’ll be able to adapt and apply this new knowledge. One thing I’ve learned is that I can sharpen a linkbait by asking myself how likely it would be for other bloggers to find it interesting and linkworthy.
Also, if there’s anything I’ve learned as a social media marketer it’s this: real success quantifies over a large set, not a small one, and over long periods of time, not short ones.
WTF did I just say? Well, you succeed in social media by allowing for a bit of failure and by systematically trying. As you fail, you learn. Not only do you learn what the social media communities want, but you also learn what’s important. The traffic garnered from Digg or Reddit is borderline worthless. It really only has value in so far as it results in long-term equity in your site (search traffic, which monetizes). Long term equity is accomplished by gaining quality links or committed readers.
Yeah, the commenting system here on Performancing is surely not the best. Hopefully, that will change once the move is over with.
It is a good thing I enjoy talking to myself, because it seems hardly anyone is reading.
Your captcha sucks, like Bots can do math. I bet if you put an quadratic formula there, you would have more bot responses then actual human ones.
Comments are closed.