Last weekend while chatting with friend Thord D. Hedengren I joked about one of the things I learned over the last 4 years, dealing with pro bloggers. The bloggers who will write tutorials how to get traffic, how to promote your blog and similar crap. Of course I could not not twitter my joke(1):
What I learned from ‘pro bloggers’: Gimme a topic & within 3hrs I’m an authority all while BEING drunk!
Lots of work for me to become ‘pro’!
The sad thing about that rather hilarious(2) tweet is that it is based on real experience, the truth in the sector. There are forums where you can order 400-500 word entries for around $6 on ANY TOPIC. Many of these entries land on rather well trafficked sites. I know people who will write on any topic and depending on the fee they will become an authority, ie. read one or two Wikipedia entries and also follow on average three of the outgoing links below the Wikipedia entries.
Today Dutch blogger Ernst-Jan Pfauth posted a good read on what bloggers should do: think more like journalists and write what you have to write. Not what you think your readers want to read.
Newsflash: in the endless discussions about the future of journalism, most people are asking the wrong question: ,,What does the reader want?” What follows are assumptions about the behavior of the new news consumer. ,,He doesn’t want to pay for news”, ,,He’s only going to read from epaper”, etc etc.
Well, two things:
- Assumption is the mother of all f*ckups
- The reader has NO clue what he wants
Ernst-Jan started as blogger and landed a job at nrc.next, a Dutch newspaper. He also interned at IPS Inter Press Services.
The best thing about his Stop Wondering What Readers Want, It Leads to Mediocrity for bloggers is the closing paragraph:
You’re not into journalism but just want blog tips? Sure enough. You can use the above story as an advice to ignore all ‘how to grow blog traffic’-articles. They’re based on mediocrity. Just think how you can get your message across.
Quality will generate traffic. If you don’t write interesting and compelling content you need to improve your SEO, have your voting brigade ready and try to get your entry pushed out on every bookmarking site, preferably by at least 15 to 20 contacts to give it an initial push.
Lesson learned: Write interesting stuff and do not bother with tricks.
