Well it's been a while since I posted... Was quite busy these past weeks with writing for all my 4 sites, which I could update regularly. Writing online plus dealing with everyday life during Easter holidays isn't always the best way to be productive but I was.
However a few days ago I woke up to the news that one of my fellow old time lensmasters got their own account locked and deleted. I admired this lensmaster who is far better than I'll ever be when it comes to put together a good page - well, no, good isn't good enough: an excellent, perfect page.
So Flynn the Cat is moving on from Squidoo. No doubt this excellent lensmaster and wonderful artist will do pretty well in any place and any job but seeing the Cat leaving makes me sad. It also makes me realize that an entire generation of lensmasters disappeared from my screen and that nowadays the voices I hear are voices I don't know, never virtually met or only met when the dramatic events hit Squidoo last year.
Anyways. Let's see what I've been up to these past days.
Given the fact that I only started giving away these printable games two weeks before Easter, I consider that the number of downloads was really good. This makes me confident that giving away little gifts is absolutely good when it comes to traffic and I plan on putting together some more offers like this.
I now have to perfect my designing skills - which are absolutely bad - and go create some more printables. Not that I plan on only doing themed games like word scrambles or crosswords, but I could go for even more printable things. Will have a look online at what works and will apply.
Another feedback I'd like to write about is traffic driven through Pinterest. To be honest, I've seen a benefit in using Pinterest... in the past. However, with time I also noticed that such a traffic fades away. It may depend on the kind of things one promotes but I will take an example so as to make things more clear.
Let's see my Squidoo lens "Friends, the best sitcom ever". I started promoting it late as I didn't have a movie/tv series board in my early Pinterest days. Since the very first day, the lens had some success on that site and is regularly repinned. Not that it's repinned by the thousands but it's pinned each and every day. However, traffic to this lens never ceased to drop. Despite the increasing number of pins, it's now getting 10 times less traffic than in its early years.
So why is that lens pinned so many times? For the sake of its front picture... nothing else. But in this instance, I don't see the benefit of pinning my work. To say the truth, I use Pinterest as a traffic driver, not a picture giveaway. Though this picture can't be given away.
I notice the same kind of trend when it comes to fashion. People won't particularly go check the page, they just pin the image. They love this dress, so they repin it. They don't mind the content that is tied to the dress and sometimes I really wonder if they're interested in knowing where to buy it.
Though there was a time when Pinterest was useful to promote products - you uploaded a picture and then edited your pin and added a link to the store you found it. It was a good way to get some commissions from potential sales.
Thus I'm currently questioning the point of wasting my time pinning my stuff on Pinterest. And I could go even further since I know that the main links that brought people to my Easter printable giveaway didn't come from Pinterest! They mostly came from this blog and search engines. On Pinterest, images must be so big to be featured that people don't have to go to see your page to download a printable game.
Let alone those that repin not only your pictures but your content word for word. In this case as well, there is no need to even bother to check the link out. This associated with the new Google trend to literaly unveil your whole article to the right of their page results lead in to a huge traffic mess for most of us.
I could question social traffic as well; this worked pretty well in the past but given the huge number of people advertising their business through social means - Facebook, Twitter and the like - I really doubt they are as powerful as they once were.
Let's take the example of someone who has 400 Facebook contacts. 50% of these contacts are some kind of co-workers --> small business owners. This means that a certain number of times per day, this person will see 200 ads from their contacts. 200 ads x 3-4 times/day means that for hours, this person won't be able to work on their own projects and/or business in order to go check their contact's advertisements.
Honestly is it reasonable to spend all our days visiting others' pages instead of working on ours? And still, when one visits others' pages does that mean they will visit ours? Not sure... Most of the time I bet people just like our posts because we know each other and that themselves have so much work to do that they can't keep up with checking everything that's published on their timeline.
I'd say that Facebook pages would work the same way. Who on Earth would have the time to check 100's of different news on 100's of different Facebook pages while working on their own stuff?
The same applies to Twitter. I have +/- 7,000 followers; how could I follow up with everything these 7,000 people tweet in a day? It's just not manageable to follow, read, retweet, and interact with everybody's tweets. To do so, I'd need twice 24 hours in a day. For them it is certainly impossible to follow each and every post I share on there.
So most of the time, social interaction is just a word. Most of the time, social sites are a waste of time.
Except for one thing: the great support in some occasions that we definitely get from some groups and people. That is why I'm still Facebooking, though. Without some of my contacts, I'm pretty sure I'd have closed my account.
All in all I think that if you have great content and some good people who follow you and interact with your content through comments on your site/blog, you don't need any more means for promotion purpose. Since the competition in huge, the ways to waste our time are vast... It's all a matter of knowing how to manage to work for the sake of our success and not dilute our time in useless tasks.
But as one could say: do as I say, not as I do. As for me I enjoy wasting some time in a day interacting with my Facebook pals...
Posted by Holly Day
However a few days ago I woke up to the news that one of my fellow old time lensmasters got their own account locked and deleted. I admired this lensmaster who is far better than I'll ever be when it comes to put together a good page - well, no, good isn't good enough: an excellent, perfect page.
So Flynn the Cat is moving on from Squidoo. No doubt this excellent lensmaster and wonderful artist will do pretty well in any place and any job but seeing the Cat leaving makes me sad. It also makes me realize that an entire generation of lensmasters disappeared from my screen and that nowadays the voices I hear are voices I don't know, never virtually met or only met when the dramatic events hit Squidoo last year.
Anyways. Let's see what I've been up to these past days.
Easter printable games giveaway
Given the fact that I only started giving away these printable games two weeks before Easter, I consider that the number of downloads was really good. This makes me confident that giving away little gifts is absolutely good when it comes to traffic and I plan on putting together some more offers like this.
I now have to perfect my designing skills - which are absolutely bad - and go create some more printables. Not that I plan on only doing themed games like word scrambles or crosswords, but I could go for even more printable things. Will have a look online at what works and will apply.
Pinterest traffic
Another feedback I'd like to write about is traffic driven through Pinterest. To be honest, I've seen a benefit in using Pinterest... in the past. However, with time I also noticed that such a traffic fades away. It may depend on the kind of things one promotes but I will take an example so as to make things more clear.
Let's see my Squidoo lens "Friends, the best sitcom ever". I started promoting it late as I didn't have a movie/tv series board in my early Pinterest days. Since the very first day, the lens had some success on that site and is regularly repinned. Not that it's repinned by the thousands but it's pinned each and every day. However, traffic to this lens never ceased to drop. Despite the increasing number of pins, it's now getting 10 times less traffic than in its early years.
So why is that lens pinned so many times? For the sake of its front picture... nothing else. But in this instance, I don't see the benefit of pinning my work. To say the truth, I use Pinterest as a traffic driver, not a picture giveaway. Though this picture can't be given away.
I notice the same kind of trend when it comes to fashion. People won't particularly go check the page, they just pin the image. They love this dress, so they repin it. They don't mind the content that is tied to the dress and sometimes I really wonder if they're interested in knowing where to buy it.
Though there was a time when Pinterest was useful to promote products - you uploaded a picture and then edited your pin and added a link to the store you found it. It was a good way to get some commissions from potential sales.
Thus I'm currently questioning the point of wasting my time pinning my stuff on Pinterest. And I could go even further since I know that the main links that brought people to my Easter printable giveaway didn't come from Pinterest! They mostly came from this blog and search engines. On Pinterest, images must be so big to be featured that people don't have to go to see your page to download a printable game.
Let alone those that repin not only your pictures but your content word for word. In this case as well, there is no need to even bother to check the link out. This associated with the new Google trend to literaly unveil your whole article to the right of their page results lead in to a huge traffic mess for most of us.
Social traffic
I could question social traffic as well; this worked pretty well in the past but given the huge number of people advertising their business through social means - Facebook, Twitter and the like - I really doubt they are as powerful as they once were.
Let's take the example of someone who has 400 Facebook contacts. 50% of these contacts are some kind of co-workers --> small business owners. This means that a certain number of times per day, this person will see 200 ads from their contacts. 200 ads x 3-4 times/day means that for hours, this person won't be able to work on their own projects and/or business in order to go check their contact's advertisements.
Honestly is it reasonable to spend all our days visiting others' pages instead of working on ours? And still, when one visits others' pages does that mean they will visit ours? Not sure... Most of the time I bet people just like our posts because we know each other and that themselves have so much work to do that they can't keep up with checking everything that's published on their timeline.
I'd say that Facebook pages would work the same way. Who on Earth would have the time to check 100's of different news on 100's of different Facebook pages while working on their own stuff?
The same applies to Twitter. I have +/- 7,000 followers; how could I follow up with everything these 7,000 people tweet in a day? It's just not manageable to follow, read, retweet, and interact with everybody's tweets. To do so, I'd need twice 24 hours in a day. For them it is certainly impossible to follow each and every post I share on there.
So most of the time, social interaction is just a word. Most of the time, social sites are a waste of time.
Except for one thing: the great support in some occasions that we definitely get from some groups and people. That is why I'm still Facebooking, though. Without some of my contacts, I'm pretty sure I'd have closed my account.
All in all I think that if you have great content and some good people who follow you and interact with your content through comments on your site/blog, you don't need any more means for promotion purpose. Since the competition in huge, the ways to waste our time are vast... It's all a matter of knowing how to manage to work for the sake of our success and not dilute our time in useless tasks.
But as one could say: do as I say, not as I do. As for me I enjoy wasting some time in a day interacting with my Facebook pals...
Posted by Holly Day
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