Facebook, StumbleUpon Rock Your World!

I am glad that I didn’t follow through on my decision last year to close my StumbleUpon account. I was getting tired of SU, finding myself particularly annoyed with certain network changes that seemed to limit my ability to connect with people through this popular bookmarking service.

In addition, SU appeared to be going the way of Reddit—gamed and controlled by nasty people whose idea of free speech is to hurl invectives at other users. Cowards!

But I stayed on and have no regrets with my decision. I certainly don’t use SU as frequently as I once did, but I have also found that most of the cowardly users have now been contained. Life is good and, if a March 2010 StatCounter GlobalStats survey of top social media sites is accurate, then sticking with SU was a good decision on my part.

Yes, SU rocks your world if you use it: only Facebook outperforms it in sending traffic your way.

According to Stat Counter, Facebook is credited with racking up 48 percent of all social media hits, but SU is a strong second as it adds 25 percent to that mix. And Twitter? Not as important as some might think, generating just 10 percent of all hits. YouTube, Reddit, Digg and MySpace round out the next four spots, offering small amounts of traffic in comparison.

SU has never been a dud when it comes to social media—far from it. As recently as June 2009, SU was ahead of Facebook, but the world’s most popular social networking site soon soared while SU began to slip. Recent traffic reports reveal that Facebook has lost some of its steam while SU has recaptured what it had lost, but in all likelihood it will remain Facebook first, StumbleUpon second, with everyone else a distant third or beyond.

One of my chief reasons for staying with SU is that I was connected with so many people through this service. As I contemplated dropping SU, I realized that I would be saying good-bye to a significant number of people I followed and who followed me.

There really wasn’t a reasonable alternative: I don’t use Facebook all that much and Twitter just doesn’t offer the scale of the others. Besides, my traffic stats continued to rise thanks to SU interaction, bringing visitors and new customers my way.

Every social media/networking site has its benefits and faults but Facebook, with more than 400 million users and StumbleUpon, with its nifty bookmarking arrangement, capture more than two-thirds of all social media hits.

Looks like I’ll have to rethink my Facebook strategy next!

Keeping It Green. As In Evergreen.

Are your articles forever green or evergreen?

One of my clients recently discussed with me his desire to include a story on his blog that was newsworthy, but there was a problem: almost as soon as the information was to be posted, it would become outdated.

Now posting what you want, when and how you want on your blog is your business. That’s the beauty of online journaling—you’re the writer, editor and publisher all wrapped up in one and you get to say pretty much whatever you want to say.

Article Freshness

But we also know that there are other reasons for posting something online, reasons demanding a carefully constructed plan following much thought. One of the most important reasons is the article’s strength long term–many weeks, months, perhaps years after it was originally written.

How fun is it to find an article you wrote in 2007 still getting hits? Importantly, those hits are translated into income (through ad clicks) or business (through client inquiries) because you had the presence of mind to write in such a way to make sure your article never aged. You kept it green, as in evergreen.

Evergreen content is always fresh, it never ages and is useful years after it was first written. News stories are not evergreen because they focus on a specific time and place. Articles about particular holidays, a sporting event, a world crisis or any other event that has passed are not evergreen. Even writing about the location of the 2015 Super Bowl now will only guarantee a few years of freshness before that article is old and outdated.

Evergreen Example

Certainly, I am not against writing articles locked in a specific time and place, because they do have their place in the writing sphere. If you were to look through what I’ve written on this blog since it launched in December 2005, you would find mostly evergreen articles, but also a fair share of dated material included.

Timeless articles such as, “The 5 Components of the Writing Process,” written by me in September 2007 continue to perform well. In the past year alone that article has been visited 941 times, and has been referenced elsewhere well after it was first published. I believe that articles like this one have helped raise my visibility while offering advice that will never change. That’s something you’ll want to consider doing as well.

New Approach

Now let’s get back to what my client wanted.

I knew he was looking for something that could be cited time and again, thus we killed the original story and decided to develop something that will endure. The subject matter is right, but the approach we’re now taking is far different with an eye toward long term usefulness.

There isn’t anything wrong with writing articles that are not evergreen. In fact, if an article is hot and cited by others, you may want to consider visiting what you wrote from time to time and updating your material. I do that with an article I wrote several years ago about Operation Christmas Child here because it continues to do well in the SERPs and is referenced frequently by people who want to help this worthy project each year.

Update List

I keep a list of articles to update from time to time, but I keep that list short because the last thing I want is to be held hostage by dated material needing my constant attention.

Evergreen writing is my preference because once you have published what you wrote you can put your time and energy into advancing your other work.