How to build an enormously popular and successful blog

How to buildan enormously popular

and successful blogby Andrew Konoff

Saturday, 19 January, 13

Warning!Participation enforced.Bad language ahead.

I’ll talk about philosophy.


An overview1. It’s a process, not a guarantee

2. There are four and a half steps:

• define your goals.

• choose a focus.

• build a diverse content calendar.

• expand to a bigger audience.

• do some other shit that’s helpful.


Stuff we won’t do

• Talk about platforms (e.g. Tumblr)

• Talk about specific topics (e.g. cats)

• Talk about media types (e.g. infographics, vlogs, podcasts)

• Care about haters


Why listen to me?


Why listen to me?

• I’m the marketing guy at GoInstant, and this is exactly what I’m doing there.

• I was the Saskatchewanderer. Ran a travel blog that had 173,000 unique visitors in four months, 45,000 YouTube views, and 2,000 Twitter followers.

• I’ll be using these as examples of what to do and what not to do.


It’s a process...


Not a guarantee


Processes involve feedback

• Each step in this process generates outcomes, which we will measure.

• Some outcomes are better than others.

• If our metrics are well-chosen, the numbers show which outcomes are good.

• The numbers don’t matter if the metrics don’t measure your goals.

• If your goals suck, that’s another matter.


Step 1: Pick your goals

• Ask yourself: what should your blog get you? How will you know you’ve succeeded?

• Money?

• Sales leads?

• Expert status?

• Laid?

• Text can do anything but write itself.


Define your commitment.

• How much money and time and energy do you have?

• Our process involves prioritization, so don’t worry too much if you’re resource-poor.

• Mostly, ask this for your own sanity.


Question time!

What’s your blogging goal? Do you have more than one?


Step 2: Find your focus.

• It has two parts:

• Your thesis, argument, or insight.

• Your audience. Who is passionate about what you have to say?

• GoInstant: Customer experiences matter for business.

• Saskatchewanderer: Saskatchewan is full of cool shit.


Focus Metrics:

• Forget about audience size. Care about engagement per reader.

• Lots of readers with little interest equals bad bad bad die die die

• Measure time on page, subscriptions, social shares, number of posts read per visit, comments, etc. etc.

• Engagement is the fundamental building block of every good blog, app, relationship.


Focus Metrics:

• The proof of a growth opportunity: you want each post to generate a higher rate of marginal engagement.

• If I got 10 views last week, I want 12 next week, and 15 next week, and 20 next week.

• Marginal gains: +2, +3, +5. Up and to the right for the 2nd derivative.


Focus Metrics:


Question time!

What’s your blog’s focus? How’s your engagement? Is it a growth opportunity?

Does it accomplish your goals?


Step 3: Build a content calendar

• The secret? Mix up these two axes:

• Audience: Niche <--> Broad

• Durability: Timely <--> Evergreen

• Take risks to really engage people. Some types of post are riskier than others.


Step 3: Build a content calendar


Content Cal Metrics

• Preliminary work: define blog categories for matrix quadrants.

• How many shares?

• How many views in the first day? After the first week?

• How much time on page?

• Then compare the categories.


Question time!

Make a post idea per quadrant.Which work best for your audience?

Do some posts get more views later in their life?


Step 4: Expand

• It’s time to build out your audience by expanding the focus of your blog:

• to add another highly engaged, closely related audience.

• to include a thesis that is consistent with your core focus’s thesis.

• Remember: focus = thesis + audience


A lesson from Lakatos

Imre Lakatos is the coolest Hungarian philosopher of science ever.


Research Programmes


Same for blogs


Same for blogs

• For GoInstant:

• core of “customer experience matters,” surrounded by “X matters for customer experiences.”


Mistakes

• As the Saskatchewanderer:

• Saskatchewan is cool!

• After the Saskatchewanderer:

• All purpose travel writing! Please for the love of god hire me I’m unemployed actually I’ll write anything just c’mon please try


Better idea

• If Saskatchewan has all this cool stuff, I can find other beautiful stuff in other unpopular Canadian destinations.

• Audience: broke ass Canucks.


Expansion Metrics

• Exact same as focus.

• Are your readers highly engaged?

• Is this a real growth opportunity? Is the rate of growth itself increasing?


Step 4.5: Everything else

• Get good at writing by fucking up constantly.

• Marketing matters.

• Market to your audiences. Test.

• Build relationships with other bloggers through guest blogs.

• SEO benefit is huge.

• Give a fuck about the technical parts of writing and of running a blog.


Any questions?


Thank you so much!

Share the presentation:http://bit.ly/bigbigblog

Follow me on Twitter:@andrewkonoff

and HAVE AN AWESOME PODCAMP!


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How to build an enormously popular and successful blog