That Instafamous Guy

Your friendly neighborhood IG Supehero

Mar
27

By

What #SEO really means to bloggers – So Effing Overrated

Category: So Genius Tags: , , , , , , 35 Comments

This is an open invitation for all of the SEO evangelists to come and purge the anti-SEO sentiment from deep within my soul. What’s the worst that could happen? It may turn out that I’m wrong, which happens up to twice a week, so I can live with that. What I have trouble living with is all the articles, tweets, and posts that claim Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is the holy grail of blogging. I don’t know about you, but I’ve already accepted the fact that I’m not going to bump Mashable, Social Media Today, or Alltop from the top results when someone searches for Social Media on Google. While SEO isn’t completely useless, it’s SO OVERRATED for most bloggers

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PEOPLE TRUMP KEYWORDS

I’ll admit that if your website sells products or services, SEO would play a more important role in getting noticed. But what about blogs? Are people really starting their Social Media or Marketing blogs with the expectation that SEO will magically deliver millions of hits and put them on the first page on Google? Get Real, it’s a pipe dream, unless you have tens of thousands of dollars to invest. Even then, there’s no guarantee that you’ll reach the promised land. Maybe it’s worth considering when you’ve already become established with hundreds of thousands of visitors, but don’t buy into the hype before then.  Instead, find a better(and less costly) way to grow your community.

Here are a few suggestions:

Spend time creating meaningful relationships with other bloggers

Focus on adding value to other successful blogs by becoming a part of their community

Find a niche market and build credibility through your content

Get to know your audience – go beyond saying “thank you for commenting”

DARTH SEO vs LUKE SKYGOOGLE?

Last time I checked, the purpose of SEO is to optimize your website in order to rank higher on search engines. Sounds innocent enough on the surface, but when you dig deeper into the technicalities of SEO, it gets creepy. Who wants to deal with the likes of robots, spiders, and crawlers…be tempted to engage in cloaking or spamdexing… and be able to differentiate between white hats and black hats? No, stop, I know what you’re thinking – this is not the description of a Star Wars Movie. There is no Darth SEO that fights Luke Skygoogle in an epic battle of good vs evil. If that were the case, SEO would be easier because at least you could tell good from bad. In the SEO saga, the line between is fuzzy, at best.

There I said it – I’m more concerned about building the so G community from the ground up with quality people, rather than rely on search traffic, backlinks, and 5 second page visits for cool stats. Let the outcry begin, am I completely off base here? Am I missing the boat or do you agree? Lastly, do me a favor and include a link to your twitter profile if I don’t follow you already.

Mar
20

By

20,000 views our first 2 Months – The 3 Keys to Success

Category: So Genius Tags: , , , , , , , , 31 Comments

This will be a short post with a very simple strategy to execute… just bribe people to come read your blog. It’s easy, pay everyone between $1000 – $2000 to read and comment on every post you write and BOOM – you’ll get 20,000 visitors in no time. That’s all, thanks for coming. Problem Solved, right? Well, if you’re like me and DON’T have hundreds of thousands of dollars to budget on your blog, don’t worry, there’s still hope.

Before I reveal my 3 secrets and go all infomercial on you, I want to extend a HUGE Thank You to the So Genius readership. If it weren’t for you, I probably would have already joined the blogging graveyard with an epitaph that read “another boring blog that no one cared about.” Fortunately, the personal stories that you’ve shared and thoughts you’ve conveyed over the last two months have allowed me to further develop my craft. It’s a two way street and hopefully these 3 strategies will inspire someone who is considering a blog to get out there and DO IT. It’s a very rewarding (and therapeutic) experience)

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AVOID THE POPPYCOCK

My first mildly successful post was “No One Wants to Read Your Mindless Poppycock – It’s time to {grow} up.” It was both a tribute to Mark Schaefer’s world famous {grow} blog community mixed with the key ingredients necessary for creating an entertaining blog that will keep readers coming back. Ultimately, if you’re still writing poppycock that any old Joe Blogschmoe can write, the rest of the keys won’t help you. After you finish writing every post, ask yourself this crucial question. “Is this something only I could write?” Oh, and be honest with the answer because guess what? You’re not Mashable or Spin Sucks, the world will continue to spin if you don’t publish that post. It’s better to post once or twice a week and wow your readers than throw-up on them every day until they just don’t come back anymore.

TRIBERR

If you’re wondering what the heck Triberr is, you’re not alone. I am surprised at the number of bloggers who still either haven’t heard of It or just plain don’t utilize it. Big Mistake for a couple of reasons. Triberr is a loose-knit community on the surface but has hundreds (if not thousands) of micro-communities that are composed of like-minded bloggers called tribes. It’s based on reciprocation like I scratch your back and you share my blog post. Roughly a quarter of all the traffic I’ve generated on this site has been a direct result of Triberr shares and that’s only counts what is measured. Also, you’re going to be exposed to oodles of other blogs to read and comment on – which is key to building foundations for relationships with other bloggers.

WALK THE AVENUE

I’m such a Houdini. At the beginning of this post I talked about bribing people to read your blog and you thought I was just kidding…. But I’m not! I don’t care if your name is Blog God, you can benefit from Empire Avenue’s mission system and gathering of the most passionate engagers on the social web. Where else can you offer virtual currency as a reward for engagement on your site? No where else that I know of! Even more important is the relationships that you’ll build. I estimate the liklihood of establishing a MEANINGFUL connection on EAV to be 500% greater than any other Social Media site. For more info regarding the in’s and out’s of how to “play” Empire Avenue, I recommend checking out Michael Q Todd’s blog as he has written dozens of articles that highlight what I’m attempting to explain in one paragraph.

Your Turn

What do you brings you back to certain blogs? Is this the design, format, or schedule? Share your thoughts with the audience on what you like to see or let me know whether you found these three tips useful.