FLIRTing with the Crowds

All things social in design, business & technology

How to attract 250.000 weekly visitors to your blog

Posted on | November 23, 2009 | 6 Comments

A very cool week for an occasional blogger: during the last six days close to 250.000 people have visited my blog to see my 8 ways to kill an idea post. As you’re one of them, I’d like to take the opportunity to say thanks – nothing cheers you up in the middle of Finnish winter than an unprecedented spike of audience on your personal blog. Although the content isn’t originally mine (thanks again to the amazing artist Scott Campbell) this is a big event, for the content is in line with what I usually rave & rant about (marketing, creativity, technology), so some of you might actually stick around (for example, the same can’t be really be said about another of my ‘hits’, the now infamous kebab animal). A few key learnings for fellow bloggers:

  • We don’t know what sticks. It’s true. We live in the age of chaos and randomness. That’s why it pays to write often and on a broad scale – while naturally keeping focus. Of course when something does stick, randomness moves aside as the network and herd effects takes charge.
  • Speed counts. And I don’t mean blogging about stuff faster than the others. I mean blogging about stuff before your defenses set in. At the age of speed too much of a reflection kills you. React fast to topics that occur to you so you don’t overanalyze and suffocate your stream of thought. If I would’ve started to pin the drawing to a philosophical framework the post would at best have been delayed and at worst dropped altogether.
  • Re-use with generosity. We live in the age of the remix. Everything you publish doesn’t have to be your own. The ‘8 ways’ pic was sent to me via email by a colleague. He found it from a discussion forum. Attribution and credit are always required, of course.
  • Titles make a difference. The age of juxtapositioning is not over. It’s rather ironic that the most spread idea ever on my blog is about killing ideas. Provocation and turning things upside down surprisingly often helps.
  • Show, don’t tell. The very core of contemporary culture is visual. Except for the picture, there were three sentences on my blog: a reference to the mail that I got the picture from; a reference to the original artist’s site; my own assessment of the piece (Brilliant.) A picture simply tells more.

The mentioned points fit well to other forms of web marketing as well. How would you apply this to e.g. the marketing efforts of a big corporation?

Category: The Disruption of Marketing

Comments

6 Responses to “How to attract 250.000 weekly visitors to your blog”

  1. Rebeca
    November 24th, 2009 @ 2:38 am

    Hi! I’m a newbie in the blogging world, my blog has only one week :) … I found your blog very useful, but I noticed or I couldn’t find your RSS Feed, or a contact email. Anyway, congrats for your blog. Best,
    Rebeca

  2. Sami
    November 24th, 2009 @ 6:15 am

    Hi Beca! The RSS link is next to the ‘latest posts’, under ‘what’s up right now’. Maybe I should make it bigger…

  3. Sami
    November 24th, 2009 @ 4:19 pm

    Ok. Didn’t seem to work. So I fixed it. And made it bigger – now nobody shouldn’t miss it :)

  4. Andrea D'Intino
    November 24th, 2009 @ 6:15 pm

    Hyvaa paivaa :-D

    I found your blog through your “8 ways to kill an idea” posted by my bro on facebook…of course I couldn’t resist and I re-posted it on facebook and tweeted about it.

    Well, your blog is brilliant! Most important for me, I had a look at your M.Sc. thesis (thanks for sharing!) and there I found out the term “crowd-sourcing”, which I have been looking for a long time…

    - How do we apply the principle of crowdsourcing?
    In our tiny software house (founded this year with 2 friends) we’re bringing users on this page:
    http://tabbles.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=139

    It kinda works, since we had our software localized in 4 languages plus we have a small crew of beta-testers checking and writing on our forum everyday.

    Plus, on the buy page is written “free for bloggers, do-gooders and charity”.

    P.S.: I’d be really happy if you had a look at our baby (Tabbles) as I believe it could help you to keep your docs organized. Of course we’d be more than happy to hand you a couple of licenses!

    Best,

    Andrea

  5. Sami
    November 24th, 2009 @ 6:21 pm

    Hi Andrea and thanks for the compliments! I’ll check Tabbies out and get back to you!

  6. Andrea D'Intino
    November 24th, 2009 @ 6:47 pm

    Sure, looking forward to it :-)
    in the meanwhile I couldn’t resist and had to blog about what I found here:
    http://tabbles-dev.blogspot.com/2009/11/tabbles-free-for-bloggers-and.html

    Btw, I suggest you have a look at the excellent balsamiq blog: http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/
    they make a pride of giving away knowledge and stuff for free, and the strategy is very rewarding… we got some deep inspiration for they’re doing.

    best,
    Andrea

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  • Who am I?

    My name is Sami Viitamäki and I'm a partner and strategist at TBWA\ in Finland. With many years' experience in marketing, media and the internet as both a practitioner and an academic, from client as well as agency perspective, I currently help organizations to better invest their marketing resources by utilizing the full potential of the social web.

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