So this is more of a rant which I think many Marketing Bloggers will agree with. This isn’t directed at my readers or anyone in particular, but something that many Marketing Bloggers have noticed, but are usually to scared to say. It’s usually the readers fault that blogs deteriorate in quality because sometimes the readers don’t share information when a Blogger gives actual information and great tutorials. What I mean by that is that when a Marketer shares a quality full strategy, they seem to get less comments and less tweets or shares. When a Marketer shares a bunch of fluff or thoughts, everyone loves to share it and comment on it. It’s almost like when people learn something, but don’t want others to find the same information or find out it wasn’t their idea, they shut down and try to keep it quiet. This way they can have an advantage over their friends and competitors. The other thing that deteriorates the blog is that since the low quality posts are what gets shared, that tells the Blogger that low quality posts are what their audience wants to read. This information is coming from me ghost writing on large blogs and watching what gets shared, talking with large blog owners and from general observations.
The thing is that when a blog becomes popular because someone was sharing information, the blog owner gets excited and wants to continue writing. It’s like when you’re an Affiliate and get your first sale or an SEO and you get your first top ten listing. If you tweet out the good information, it encourages the writer to want to write more quality posts just like getting your first sale makes you want to generate millions more. If you are scared to share the information because you don’t want your competition or peers to find out that it wasn’t your idea, or you don’t want them to compete with you, you aren’t encouraging quality posts from the author and the blog’s quality will deteriorate. If you only tweet out, comment and share fluff and theory posts, guess what, you have now not only told the Blog owner that you don’t want to hear about quality information, but you have helped your followers, friends and fans discover a talented Marketer for the wrong reasons. You are not only encouraging the demise of what could have been an extremely educational and quality blog, but you are creating another “Guru” styled blog which is nothing but fluff and the obvious. This really hurts the next generation of Marketers that looks up to these people because they end up learning absolutely nothing and go to the wrong sessions at events and shows.
Anyways, I’m not ripping into anyone in particular and I don’t want you to take offense to this. Just think about when you share and what you share. If it is fluff or obvious things, maybe think twice about sharing it. If you find quality content and strategy, don’t be afraid to share it. Sharing the quality posts will encourage better posts in the future. Not sharing fluff and thoughts encourages the writer to have to provide quality content. Anyways, this was just a rant that I wanted to write about after getting back from SES NYC. Thank you again for reading.
5 thoughts on “It’s Your Fault Marketing Blogs Suck”
Hello Adam,
Although I can see where you’re going with what you wrote, the problem with it is that you’re attempting to change human nature, and I don’t see that happening easily. I can also see where lack of popularity and sharing leads people to loose faith, loose heart, and modify their approach, but then who’s fault is that when they decide to compromise their own principles? Nobody makes another do anything; we all have free will and choice to do as we wish. We can stick to our principles and act in ethical manners, or we can cave in and sell out, and that’s what it’s about in the end.
Although social media is a boon for many, it’s not, in my humble opinion, a good idea relying so much on any one means of visibility. Being online and having my first website online since 1997, I don’t see me changing what I do. Since the beginning, I’ve avoided short cuts, because most short cuts, especially relating to SEO, as they eventually wind up being fruitless when search engines change the way they do things. The same goes for copy and paste article marketing, as the recent Panda update killed that as well. Do I need to list out more areas where shortcuts never last the long term and why it’s more important to find base things that stand the test of time?
Since the beginning, I’ve always written content to do something for the reader. I’ve written it in such ways that I provide ethical information, and by the time someone reads something I’ve written, they can actually DO something with it. I’m not going to change what I do or sell out simply because I don’t have dozens of people tweeting or sharing my content. If nothing else, it can be my journal and reminder of what works, and what is ethical so that I never loose my morale compass. I’ll rely on other means to get my content viewed, not just the need of people sharing it.
As for quality, that’s highly subjective. Many think because they have thousands of copies of their content all over the internet that it equates to quality. Some others think because they’ve written a thousand or more articles, that equates to quality. Still others think because they get thousands of hits to something that equates to quality. Volume as a metric for quality is ridiculous. Quality means the reader can actually DO something with what they’ve read. It solved their problem. If we want a real metric of quality then we must submit to places that rely on quality for their livelihood, and article directories and other such places are not the best method. Try a magazine in a niche that honestly must produce quality in order to receive sales. Submit and get published consistently, and THEN MAYBE we have quality. A more accurate answer is that we have the ABILITY to produce quality, but that does not ensure that each thing we produce IS quality.
Lastly, the craze of niche marketing is partly at the root of the sharing issue. When someone views a highly focused website, if they wish to keep the secret to themselves, they do not share. Now, the same person viewing a similar website with variable information, might be willing to share other content from the website not violating their secret things. Just like anything else, all things have good and bad points. We can either rant about the way things are, or adapt and find ways around the challenges. That’s what makes the difference between success and failure.
Wow, thank you for the comment. The subjective part and human nature were part of the original post, but I ended up removing it because it became a giant rambling. I just sort of needed to vent something and decided to blog instead of tweeting lol. This is a great comment and thank you for sharing it. You bring up a lot of great points.
No problem Adam, I tweeted it as well. I wish you much success in your endeavors, and thank you for approving my comment. Do drop by my website, I’m not against giving competitors links when they provide valuable contributions to the comments area =)
Thanks Jim,,,but this is sort of one of those fluffy posts ;-). I actually did check out your site but have friends coming over for brunch so I need to get ready. I’ll look through it more later. =0)
That’s OK Adam, I don’t limit competitor links to fluffy posts though 🙂 It’s all about contribution, and for that, I feel it should be rewarded, competitor or not 🙂 Besides, it’s added customer value as well. If they can’t find what they need on my website, why not offer them some alternatives? Enjoy your company and catch you around I’m sure 🙂