Howdy folks. Just a quick note to say I’m guest posting on my buddy Dave Harry’s blog today - Huomah. Dave is an SEO and social media guru and one of the more amusing, friendly and interesting bloggers I’ve met in my travels. If you haven’t checked his blog out I’d highly recommend it. My post, entitled ‘Do you have blog insurance‘ addresses the dangers of relying too heavily on social media as a traffic generation strategy. The post was inspired by Dave’s personal misfortune after he broke his hand and was unable to type/blog for weeks… Yargh! What a nightmare.
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I’ve tried a lot of traffic generation tactics since creating this blog. Some, like StumbleUpon, have been instant hits. Others have generated dismal results. Commenting on other digital marketing blogs was initially a tactic I’d discarded to the ‘dismal’ category. It was time consuming and rarely brought in more than the tiniest trickle of traffic. In order to comment, I needed to read a range of articles and develop intelligent thoughts to add to the conversation (not bad things really when you think about it…). I found I was spending up to an hour of my time in order to contribute just 5 or so comments to the blogosphere. It was so much easier to just press the magical ‘Thumbs Up’ button… Talk about lazy! It was only a couple of months later that I realised my attitude sucked and that commenting was one of the productive activities a blogger can partake in… Read the rest of this entry »
The long tail of search truly is a wonderful thing. For new bloggers like myself it offers a rare opportunity to pull in a little organic search traffic. And believe me… that ain’t such an easy thing to do for new bloggers in the digital marketing space. After all… you’re competing against an industry of SEO’s. Every search engine referral is like a little nugget of gold… or is it…? While reviewing my top search rankings in Google Webmaster Tools I came across a few peculiar phrases that made me chuckle…
Anyone that follows the internet marketing community Sphinn would have noticed the linkbait storm that erupted over the last few days. For those that missed out, Lyndon Antcliff went public with an outrageously successful linkbait case study, in which he generated half a million page views and media mentions from Fox News and The Sun newspaper (Note - Lyndon later pulled the article from his site due to the ensuing controversy). Social media was the catalyst that allowed the story to snowball (Digg in particular). The only problem was that the article at the centre of the case study was a fake. The story, which included tales of 13 year old boys stealing their father’s credit card in order to hire hookers and rack up a $30,000 debt, was a complete fabrication…
Blogging can be a tough gig. I generally summarise my blogging experiences in a couple of words - rewarding, inspiring, engrossing & addictive. But there are also days when ‘pain in the ass’ enters my mind (usually when I’m still in the office at 10pm). Blogging is an ongoing commitment and most of us will encounter days when motivation and inspiration is lacking. But what happens if/when the camel’s back finally breaks and you decide you’ve had enough? Could you sell your soul blog…? And more importantly… would anyone really be interested in buying it?
I came across an interesting post recently in my regular reading that posed the question - ‘Is blogging worth the time commitment?‘. Great question and one that most bloggers will ponder at some point. I’m not afraid to admit that I massively underestimated the time commitments associated with blog maintenance. At face value blogging seems like a simple case of writing and publishing articles. But don’t be fooled… there’s so much more to it. Don’t believe me…? Then come take a journey into my blogging diary…
Last year I thought I was a pretty damn good digital marketer. I had 5+ years industry experience and had just landed a job with Australia’s biggest digital marketing agency. I was on my way… Yet looking back as little as 4 months later, I’ve had a stark realisation. I knew squat! In fact, in retrospect I liken myself to a cocky teenager who thinks he has mastered all of life’s lessons. So what sparked this change of heart? Entering the blogosphere. Indeed, I now wonder whether it’s possible to be a truly good digital marketer without being a blogger…?
Just a quick post today to celebrate the loss of my PageRank virginity. It seems the Googlebot has finally decided to recognise my humble little blog. Now… I know that little green bar within the Google toolbar means very little… my good pal Dave told me so. But I do still tend to believe toolbar PageRank contributes to the social proof that influences perceived authority, just like Jonathon Fields wrote earlier this week (super article).
So a quick huzzah to me for reaching PageRank 3 within 4 months of launching the blog. Not bad considering I’ve done diddly squat to optimise the thing. Methinks it’s time to unleash the optimisation beast within…