Should You Kill Off Your Blog?!

From time to time I read an article with a theme along these lines: Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites are taking over the internet making emailing and blogging a thing of the past.

Though such ideas are out there, I have yet to uncover hard data supporting these kinds of statements. But I can imagine that there may actually be something to this sort of thinking especially since Facebook now has more than 400 million registered users and my email inbox seems to be under control. Concerning the latter I can say that the number of messages I receive daily has finally plateaued, this coming after many years of relentless growth.

I’m registered with all of the major social networking sites as well as with a handful of relatively unknown sites too. But if you think that I’m going to become a Facebook Farmville devotee and give up my blogging, you’re cluck crazy!

So should you give up blogging? Well, if your blog isn’t much to speak of then go ahead.

For the majority of people who have been maintaining blogs for several years, giving up blogging now seems to make no sense. Especially if you have created a regular following and have steady traffic. Of course, should you decide to do something completely different with your life, then exiting blogging makes sense. But don’t leave your blog twisting in the wind if you think that Facebook should replace your time online.

Here are some reasons why I am not about to give up blogging any time soon:

I enjoy creating my own work. Blogging gives me a platform or bully pulpit to say what I think. Certainly you can do that on many social networking sites, but you are competing in a noisy marketplace of ideas. By maintaining this blog I can control it and give people the chance to respond and be heard.

I don’t want to lose money. This blog certainly is not a money maker but I do manage other blogs that are. Losing a couple daily Adsense clicks may not be much, but that tends to add up. Why should social networking sites get the benefit of that and more especially when I am providing to them unique and (hopefully) interesting content?

For posterity’s sake. I can’t imagine my blog writings being around long after I am gone, but if they are then I want to receive credit for what I wrote. Even for the short term I need to point my potential clients to my writings; without a blog as reference then I have one less resource to show.

I know some people are interpreting the writing on the wall to mean that blogging will eventually go the way of newspapers. Well, newspapers aren’t dead yet and just like print media I believe that blogging will transform to keep pace with “what’s new” while still allowing bloggers to have a voice on a platform they control.

Stupid Easy Viral Outbreak Rundown

Viral marketing case study

I logged on early yesterday morning and quickly realized that an article I had automagically set to go live minutes after midnight had already gone viral. Late night west coast and early morning European Twitter users found it first–15 Way Cool Social Networking Sites You Never Heard Of–and tweeted it some three dozen times before I woke up.

I couldn't believe what my eyes were seeing!

By late morning my stats pushed past 1000 visitors, topping 2000 late in the afternoon. This morning I reviewed my stats and have found that nearly 5000 people have stopped by to read this one article alone. And the traffic is still flowing!

I promised Dominique over at 4 Walls and a View that I would give a recap today about what exactly transpired as she noticed that something was up too. Though all isn’t “said and done” when it comes to this story I can tell you this: when all is said and done, this viral outbreak will rank in my Top 3 of all time. Not bad for five years of blogging.

Importantly everything came without much effort—in other words it was stupid easy.

Background Details

But first for some background info. The site—SayCampusLife.com—belongs to a customer of mine. I’ve been blogging there and on another site of his, SayEducate.com, since late 2007. Both sites have a decent amount of traffic, but as you might guess some of the competition is formidable.

SayCampusLife is a college information website, offering college bound high school students, current college students, and their families information about scholarships, college life, careers, schools, you name it. The site ranks well for certain keywords and has a decent following. But it is the occasional article about social networking sites which seem to bring in the traffic, particularly those working a certain angle.

Planning Stages

I set out as I do every day to pick an article I felt people would be interested in reading. Sounds simple, but it isn’t always easy coming up with a good read.

But I also wanted to write about a topic that had a chance of going viral, with the appropriate amount of link bait added, which meant that I would turn to Wikipedia to find something different. Sure enough, a listing of social networking sites caught my attention, so I set out to pick 15 from that list and modify accordingly.

I wanted a large enough number to help the article stand out, but I didn’t want to go crazy either. I visited many more sites than the 15 I chose, but I narrowed the list down quickly to add a good mix of sites. I also knew that having just enough information about each place was important which meant that I had to give these sites more than a cursory glance.

Once I got everything together I worked on my headline. I needed something to catch your attention and I wanted to use a more contemporary term besides awesome, amazing or stupendous. I thought “way cool” would work and decided to use it.

Big Push

When I want an article to get an extra amount of attention, I’ll often give it a big push by tweeting, stumbling and sharing it with friends. But in this case I had some help as someone shared it via Delicious which ended up having far more “juice” than StumbleUpon. SU has been a big disappoint for so many reasons, but I thought I’d at least get some noticeable action there.

Thankfully, Delicious, Twitter, and natural search traffic was more than enough to propel the article. And thanks to each of you who helped spread the word too: everyone who added a comment will certainly benefit. Yes, you can still jump on the comment train (40 and counting) if you have something of value to share too.

Customer Satisfaction

I mentioned to my customer late yesterday morning that the article went viral and he was pleased. Later today I’ll provide more detailed traffic information to him and I’ll also be tracking the article long term.

So what lessons can be learned from how this article performed? A few things including: working a unique angle with whatever topic you choose to write about, create an eye-catching headline, and then hope that a number of invisible hands come to your aid.

In this particular case all three worked together, delivering a viral outbreak I won’t soon forget.  Stupid easy? You betcha!