3 ms·

SEO is the least of your worries at this point. You need three things to have a successful blog/platform/whatever. 1) Something worth saying 2) The ability t

by swombat 16y ago

SEO is the least of your worries at this point. You need three things to have a successful blog/platform/whatever. 1) Something worth saying 2) The ability to say it in an intelligible manner 3) The ability to promote it to the right audience Looking at thebuzzmedia.com, I think you lack 1 - it's not quite clear what you're trying to communicate with your blog, other than an expression of your opinion on a wide range of things. No case is made for why anyone else should care about that. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but no one gives a shit about your opinion about various events. Moreover, the site seems to do a bit of everything rather than focus on a clear topic, which is probably why you don't get many subscribers. People looking for movie reviews won't subscribe to your site because of the geeky articles. People looking for geeky articles won't follow you because they don't want to be spammed with your movie reviews. And neither of those two groups of people will be interested in your cat pictures. You also appear to have a severe disdain for 3. Well, there, once again, this may sound harsh, but get real, dude. Cases where some undiscovered genius suddenly gets famous through no fault of his own are one in a billion. Almost every success comes with some amount of self-promotion. Post your articles on social news sites. Get feedback. Improve. Connect with the community. Relentlessly put your site out there, on Twitter, on Facebook, everywhere. Post comments on other people's blogs. Submit your articles to Slashdot. Keep at it until you get through. It might take months, or even years. If you don't actively do it, though, it will never happen. You need to answer the following questions. If you can answer them satisfactorily, your blog readership will increase substantially: 1) Why should anyone care about my blog? 2) Who should care about my blog? 3) Will these people be annoyed by any part of my blog? 4) How am I promoting my blog to get to these people? 5) How am I connecting with these people as human beings rather than just readers? Good luck!

perlgeek 16y ago
In case it isn't obvious, a likely result from answering these questions is to split up the site. I have made good experiences with having a programming blog, a personal blog (which parts of my family and non-geek friends tend to read), and a few sitest that specialize in some very narrow topics (like, Sudoku). It's OK to cross-link between those sites, as far as there are relations - but don't expect the movie audience to read your Java and Digg stuff.
- swombat 16y ago
  Yes, absolutely. This is an obvious realisation when you think about point 3, promotion. It's really difficult to promote a site that does a little bit of everything. You can't explain its appeal succinctly and clearly. Once you try to promote your site, it becomes obvious that covering several vastly different topics doesn't work.
  - rkalla 16y ago
    FWIW the site used to be 3 separate sites for the first 3.5 years: * Tech/Video Games site * Humor site * Programming site and none of them did particularly well on their own. It was also mentally draining for me to try and manage 3 separate communities, so I combined them all. Probably not the best decision now that I read your replies though.

by swombat 16y ago

perlgeek 16y ago

In case it isn't obvious, a likely result from answering these questions is to split up the site. I have made good experiences with having a programming blog, a personal blog (which parts of my family and non-geek friends tend to read), and a few sitest that specialize in some very narrow topics (like, Sudoku). It's OK to cross-link between those sites, as far as there are relations - but don't expect the movie audience to read your Java and Digg stuff.

swombat 16y ago
Yes, absolutely. This is an obvious realisation when you think about point 3, promotion. It's really difficult to promote a site that does a little bit of everything. You can't explain its appeal succinctly and clearly. Once you try to promote your site, it becomes obvious that covering several vastly different topics doesn't work.
- rkalla 16y ago
  FWIW the site used to be 3 separate sites for the first 3.5 years: * Tech/Video Games site * Humor site * Programming site and none of them did particularly well on their own. It was also mentally draining for me to try and manage 3 separate communities, so I combined them all. Probably not the best decision now that I read your replies though.