Reader Helen Vatter asked an interesting question in a comment to my recent blog post about bloggers needing to more actively promote their blogs.
In the discussion about that post, the big difference between good and bad self-promotion was the quality of the content that you promote. If the content creates value to the reader it is good enough for self-promotion, but if it doesn’t then it is frowned upon and seen as spam.
So Helen asked how do you know if your content is good and if it creates value.
Do you have any suggestions for people that are new to social media and are trying to get a readership for their blog? I don’t think it is expectable that from the start everyone defines their own niche and targets the people in that niche with compelling content, the process is much more complex than that. And maybe people just wanna share some thoughts without having much experience yet.
I am in this situation. I am new to social media, and I know that readership will follow great content, but what is great content and how do you know if your content is good if noone reads it or comments on it?
Therefore my question for really basic start-up tactics to promote a new blog. I also wrote about this issue in my blog post about the entry barriers of social media. http://tinyurl.com/dxnlrm
My answer to the blog content question
Check some of my earlier Twitter articles on information on how you can brand yourself as an expert on Twitter.
Personally I would recommend searching Twitter for your keywords. See what people are talking about, what questions they have. Then respond to that, write a blog article about it, provide some useful tips and ideas. And then tell them about it.
Write what you feel is useful and valuable, write about your experience, what worked good for you, and spread it out there and then see the feedback. Learn, improve, and do it all over again.
Opinions from other bloggers
How to measure the value your content create
I personally feel my content is good when I see people commenting on it and when I can see a lot of buzz being created about it with retweets on Twitter and submissions to StumbleUpon.
When your reader takes the time to write a comment or to submit your article to StumbleUpon or tweet your article to their Twitter followers it is a good sign that your article has created value and that it was appreciated by the reader.
How do you know if your blog content is good?
What do you think? How do you know if your content is good and if it provides value to your readers? How do you measure the value of your content?
Image by Helmet13
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{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
The first thing I do when I create a new website is submit it for review to forums. I know that my content is good when people tell me that they’ve bookmarked the website, or that they like the content, etc. I also get great encouragement from the people who comment on my blog. It really comes down to just putting your stuff out there, and seeing who reacts.
Commenting criteria is good. People are more likely to comment on a post having 20 comments already than a new one.
When it comes to writing, I seldom try to put something special. Most of the times, I write normally. Readers decide great content after all.
Um, I don’t wear sunglasses. You mixed me up with ezg.
Oh, now I see that my name is listed underneath.
@mother in israel – Yeah, it is a screenshot from TweetDeck.com. That’s the client I use for Twitter.
If you have a professional journalist friend or someone who writes advertsiing copy for a living, they can probably tell you in an instant whether your conent is good, in a general sense. Team that up with whether you are answering questions of interest (as Marko suggests) and you’ll know when you have the right combination
It’s hard to tell if my content is good when most of the people say “Nice Post!”. Not even sure if most of them actually read the stuff. I like to post the way I talk in person, and I don’t try to be somebody else who I am not while I post contents. My fans love me for being myself, and I speak nothing but the truth.
Those screen shots of tweets spice up and make for good content. Is this from Tweetdeck? I wonder how you make screen shots of tweets in Tweetdeck. It will be very useful to know how that works next time I write something about my Twitter experience.
@jan_geronimo – Yeah, it is screenshot from Tweetdeck. Just a regular screenshot feature of your operative system. Nothing fancy.
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Rakesh Sharma Jack
Personally, I think you may never know without reading what other people have wrote. I never thought of using twitter to search for ideas. That is great advice. I will give it a try. Thanks for sharing and have a great Thanksgiving.
Personally, I think you may never know without reading what other people have wrote. I never thought of using twitter to search for ideas. That is great advice. I will give it a try. Thanks for sharing and have a great Thanksgiving.
Sorry, I gave a typo in my webaddress login on my last comment so I just fixed it.