Breathing life into our blogging

Most of the time internet marketers and bloggers tend to focus on their analytics and their website numbers. We spend hours trying to interpret and analyze where we get our traffic, what page they visit, etc. There’s nothing wrong doing this but it does become troublesome if you focus too much on strategy and forget about churning out good content. If there’s one lesson I’ve learned so far as a consultant it’s this: every single eyeball on your site is just as important as the next one. Why? Because you never know if that 1 out of just 10 people who visits your site has a network that will open up the heavens for you. Ultimately it boils down to churning out and leveraging value-based content that people will appreciate. Let me share some personal experiences and tips. These are all based on my current career as a Social Media & Marketing Consultant.

The iPad Trap
This site, New Media Philippines, gets tons of visitors because I write about the iPad. If I’m not mistaken nearly 60% of the traffic I get on this site is mainly due to the articles I write about this particular device. Initially I was thinking of writing more iPad articles because of this data. However what value do I get out of this? I don’t run advertising on this site so the extra traffic doesn’t generate any revenue unless they happen to be iPad fans who also are marketers who need my services.

A few days ago I was meeting a new client who represents a rather big group of businesses. After presenting and discussing what we can do together, I asked him where he found out about me and what I do. He shared with me something that I will forever keep in my mind, heart, and soul ’till the day I join the good Lord.

“I’ve never heard of your blog before or about social media. I found out about you from a friend who said she got an e-mail from another friend telling her to read your site because you did good work for them. That friend then called me and asked me to check your site and I did. And here we are now.”

It sounds so simple but it actually has so much meaning. I was curious to see how my other clients and former clients found out about me so I spent some time this afternoon making calls. I found out that it was pretty much the same across the board. Mostly referrals or they “chanced” upon my site when someone shared the link. Most, if not all, are NOT direct and regular readers.

Which leads me to my advice to all of you aspiring bloggers and consultants out there — In this day and age where blogging and internet marketing seems to be drowned out by search engine optimization and other technical stuff, don’t forget to write beautiful, valuable, and thought-provoking content about your niche. Your articles have to be so compelling and powerful that they will have a life of their own and they become so attractive for your readers to spread via their social networks and e-mail.

Every single person who visits your blog is not just one person. Every single person who visits your blog has a network of his or her own which can be in the tens, hundreds, or thousands. The ripple effect of social media is so underrated because it’s so hard to measure but it can definitely make or break a business.

I remember one thing that my late grandfather mentioned to me before about his writing. He said that when he wrote he felt that a part of him was “imbued” in the article that he made.

Maybe that’s how we should treat our articles. At the very heart of blogging is passionate, personal, and emotional writing. Let’s put enough effort so that we “imbue” part of ourselves into our articles. Maybe that will be enough to spark it’s animation so that eventually it will find a life of it’s own.

It’s amazing how words these days can truly change one’s life.