Social Networks v Content – Who Is King?
March 4, 2008
Do you spend most of your working week creating excellent content for your business website or blog? After all, content is King isn’t it? 19,100,000 Google search results say it is and surely all those people can’t be wrong.
So, can excellent content alone drive a significant amount of traffic to your online business; or is it just wishful thinking? Well, according to top business coach, Liz Strauss, “Good makes some folks think that the world will eventually come to them.” And surely it’s a bit unrealistic to expect people to find you among millions of other websites, just because you’re good?
Skellie, the superstar Freelance Writer doesn’t believe excellent content will drive hordes of people to your website. She claims that it wasn’t outstanding content that enabled the most popular blogs to rise to the top; it was their participation in social networks. E-consultancy.com also believe in the power of social networks and they claim that online retailers saw their web traffic from social networks increase by 153% in the first nine months of 2007.
It could be argued that Internet traffic from social networks is not beneficial to an online business. After all, visitors from StumbleUpon and Digg don’t tend to hang round a website for long, before moving on to the next. But because these social networking sites send masses of people to online businesses, stats soar and the site is perceived by others as popular. And, when something appears fashionable, it becomes a self fullfilling prophecy.
I’ve noticed many complaints on forums and blog comments recently, from people who feel that it is unfair to manipulate the social networking sites to drive traffic to your blog. But, how is it different to any other form of marketing? Businesses pay to advertise on websites, pay for Google Adwords campaigns and optimise their sites for search engine traffic. So is social networking any different?
What is your view on this? Do you belive that you have more chance of survival if you put most of your efforts into producing exceptional content for your website? Or do you prefer to produce content that is just good enough and spend the remainder of your time networking and marketing your business?
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29 Responses to “Social Networks v Content – Who Is King?”
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Catherine,
I LOVE the new design btw — congratulations.
Re: the topic at hand. That’s a toughy for me. The purist in me wants to follow the rules of My Name is Earl — ‘Do good things, and good things will happen.’
But I cut my teeth in the business world as a direct marketer.
And in that world it’s almost a moral obligation to find the right audience and let them know you HAVE great content. If you don’t let people know about it, they won’t benefit and you won’t get to keep doing what you love.
It’s a grey area — but for me it’s a balance between ‘black hat’ spam-actions and ‘white hat’ social networking.
Done right I social marketing is like in person networking — you try to build a foundation of credibility and respect. Then when the opportunity arises you confidently as for the order.
The difference from a direct marketing world would be finding a very discreet list of potential customers for your service — say a few thousand highly qualified prospects.
-Vs.-
A junk mailer sending out 1,000,000 pieces of paper to an indiscriminate list of people.
One’s going to be more successful profitably because they did the hard thinking upfront. The other *may* get lucky and make a profit but they get a bad reputation and destroy the creditability of the media for the rest of us.
There was a time when people were excited to get a Sears Roebuck catalog in the mail. Come to think of it there was a time we were excited to get an email from someone we didn’t know….
Long, long story short….I think you have to network, you have to sell, but you gotta keep it clean to protect the integrity of your name AND the medium.
Kelly Andrew Brown’s last blog post..Can a great idea and some hard work take an entrepreneur from $0 to $100k in one year?
Hi Kelly – thank you. I would have been disappointed if you’d chosen amazing content over marketing with your background.
I remember the days when it was exciting to get an email too. Now it’s great if I can just find a normal email among all the junk I get.
Genius post, Catherine, and insigntful comments Kelly!
There are a couple of thoughts I’d contribute, though:
Good content can’t create traffic or generate revenue. Bad content, however, can prevent both.
Good content keeps your readers coming back. Yaro Starak makes the point in a post yesterday that repeat customers are the key to increasing revenue. Building trust with readers by providing consistent content adds a great deal of value by making new customers out of your old ones.
For me, I spend roughly equal amounts of time on content and marketing. I also think there is a point at which you’ve a large enough base of readers that simply posting an awesome article will generate enough new readers that marketing becomes, to a degree, less important. How much social networking do you think Darren Rowse does today?
Bob Younce’s last blog post..Drop some knowledge, win a prize.
Love the header, Catherine! Very metallic.
I don’t know how they can make it look that shiny.
I’ve been reading some of these discussions about social networking, and it seems that it’s very important, and I need to spend more time on it. However, it makes me cringe to think that some people aim to produce content that is just good enough.
Maybe social networks and content are both rooks! But then I don’t know what the king would be.
Hunter Nuttall’s last blog post..Lessons From The 2008 Congress Of Jugglers
Whether it’s a blog or a static web-site, there has to be some way for people to “discover” your content. Social networks is one way to do it. However, if there isn’t any content worth “discovering,” it doesn’t matter how people find it. Most won’t bother to visit again, if they visited in the first place, and it’s unlikely that they’ll visit it again, provide a link or otherwise recommend it to other folks.
I’m finally seeing an increase in income from the one place that I am concentrating on. Granted, it’s not enough to make a living, but it’s more than enough to pay for all my online expenses and buy all of my fuel for my truck — when we’re not traveling, that is.
The content on that site is not great, but it works for that niche, and I think as I keep tweaking the content, the income will continue to rise. As a matter of fact, while I’m out working my contract job in the “real” world, I haven’t had time to anything with it and the income has been steadily rising.
Social networking may bring the visitors but appropriate content makes the money.
Mike Goad’s last blog post..Dust Over Dakota.
I agree with the general consensus — there seems to be a need for a certain ratio of (good/great) content versus marketing.
What that ratio is probably depends on a lot of factors.
Maki over at DoshDosh says he did not participate in social networking to get over 10000 subscribers, while other bloggers advocate social networking a lot.
With the astronomical rate of blog “births”, I’m sure we’ll be seeing new ways to social network to market our blogs. Maybe someone will come up with something different altogether.
Nez’s last blog post..The ABC’s of Blogging
Hi Hunter – thank you. It’s very shiny isn’t it. I don’t have a clue how they get it like that, but I’m going to be doing a questions and answers feature this week to ask them.
Hi Mike – that’s interesting. So maybe relevance is more important than good enough then? Mind you, I have to say that the content on all your sites is pretty good to me.
It’s excellent that you’re now making more money from them with less work too.
Hi Nez – I guess it has a lot to do with getting that ratio right isn’t it? And I’m not suggesting for one minute that someone should constantly produce content that sucks. Mind you, I read a humorous post this week by a guy who suggested that some people do just that and get away with it because of the principles I suggesed above. I will hunt it out and show you it, because it was quite amusing.
I’m wondering if i read the right article by Maki? I recall him saying that he didn’t do the same things as other bloggers to increase his traffic – eg guest posts etc. And I know that in this post: http://www.doshdosh.com/why-readers-subscribe-to-a-blog/ he says he’s never been on the front page of Digg. But, he does seem quite active on StumbleUpon – although I don’t know how long he’s been using it for.
Hi Catherine,
I feel like I’m on a different blog. How impressive!
I have to agree that content is still the most important thing. Those that are searching online want answers, and if they don’t find it on our site, they move on.
Social networking brings traffic and gives us great spikes in our visitor counts, plus is a great boost for the ego. But, I really wonder if 500 Stumbles or Diggs is a true measure of the quality of our blogs. If that traffic doesn’t stick around, and we’re not being Stumbled or Dugg on a regular basis, we’re dependent on the new (uniques) and loyal reader statistics.
For me, it’s those constants that determine the actual growth of my blogs.
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Hi Cath,
I really like the design of your new blog it is very simple but effective.
I think great content is the most important, and then participating in social network to advertise and get your name across comes second.
After all it is bloody hard work to get readers to your site, for them to never come back to your blog because it has poor content.
Regards.
jsanderz’s last blog post..11 More Essential Shortcuts
Hi Catherine,
I think you can have mediocre content a still have a well known blog. Content may be king but strategy reigns supreme. your marketing strategy is one of the pillars holding your blog up. And social networking is the best short term tool you have to prop that pillar up.
Guys like Maki have really learned how to focus their social media efforts and drive targeted traffic to their blog. That’s the key, if you focus on the correct tags and niche’s you drive the right traffic to your site or blog. So, Stumblers, Diggers etc.. that do come already have an interest in the site. Therefore they are not offended by the site. A good SMM like Maki or Saleem understand how to do this and are able to capitalize on it.
Its all about focus and effort. You may not be technically pay for social media traffic but you do work your but off for it.
Hey–nice implementation of Revolution, wish I had $100 for it… but but but, you shouldn’t leave those default footers in there, blank just saying “featured content” in them! Looks like you’re half-finished. : )
Sam Jackson’s last blog post..Would you like 3.5 GB of amazing, free, legal, excitingly new music? Yes? Click here.
Good story, I digged it for you. See how good content attracts visitors?
BTW. I guess the question “Content or Social-networks” depend on your business. A blog want traffic/money so: social networks will do. A business website want to promote their product, so the content (good descriptions, maybe a business blog) is key there.
Good luck! Robert
Robert de Bock’s last blog post..Anonymous browsing using a hosted PAC file
I doubt anyone with sales, marketing and/or advertising experience could argue that content or product is all you need to succeed. Strategy and business go hand in hand, and blogging is no different.
Most of my marketing and copy writing career has been spent coming up with creative strategies to make a complex product sound simple and attractive. I’ve worked veterinary, pharmaceuticals, natural health, IT, insurance and utilities – none of which are sexy. What I’ve found is that technical people almost always think the product will sell on its own – “it’s so good it doesn’t need marketing”. But I’ve never seen it happen.
Even if you do a soft launch and get key influencers to trial and endorse the product, that’s still strategy and marketing. You can’t just put a product on the shelf or a blog into cyberspace and expect that it will become successful from being quietly excellent.
I’m pretty new to blogging, and I don’t have a clear monetisation strategy at the moment, but I have found that I can’t always pick the articles that will take off and pull in the visitors. The best content doesn’t necessarily get the most hits. And while the sharp hikes from StumbleUpon and Digg won’t necessarily deliver long term readers, I have found that social media networking and getting involved in the “marketplace” (ie. other blogs) has created the most momentum with my still new site.
Good article and conversation piece, Cathy.
Kelly
Kelly Rigby@ SHE-POWER’s last blog post..Why I’m Lucky and You Are Too
@ Barbara – Thank you. That is important isn’t it – being able to balance your time enough to get people to come and being good enough that they want to come back.
@ Jeff – Thank you. Totally agree – it is important to retain some of that traffic. Although, I still think that social networking is more of a stat boosting exercise and others are encouraged to visit as a result.
@ TsuVelli – Totally agree – social networking is an area of marketing which is extremely work intensive. It can be outsourced to a point, but you have to do much of it yourself and it does consume a lot of time.
@ Sam – It’s weird you should say that – it was the first thing I thought of when I got up. I did mean to do something with them yesterday, but installing the theme took longer than I thought.
If I’d left it until it was perfect, I might not have launched it for ages. I suppose that’s another one of those just needing to be good enough examples.
@ Robert – that is an interesting point – the time spent on one or the other will also depend on what you’re hoping to achieve. Thank you for the Digg by the way.
cathlawson’s last blog post..Social Networks v Content – Who Is King?
Hi Kelly, you must have hit the send button at the same time I did. I totally agree – it would have to be a pretty amazing product just to take off on it’s own.
That attitude is fairly typical of technical people though isn’t it? They’re usually the ones who start up in business on their own and fall flat on their faces.
I also noticed that its’ not the best articles that get Stumbled a lot. For example – I did one about StumbleUpon about 3 mistakes I’d made so far. It definitely wasn’t one of my best, but it got stumbled heaps. I’m guessing that many stumblers appreciated it because it was warning others against doing annoying things.
Stumblers also seem fond of labor intensive pieces – especially huge resource lists. I suppose they appreciate the effort made to put them together and also, they’re usually very useful.
This topic reminds me of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates back in the 80s.
Who had the better product (i.e. the content / useful website)?
– Steve Jobs
Who had the better marketing and social network?
– Bill Gates
Who won?
I have to disagree with some commenters that say content is the better way to maintain the survival of your website and business. It really is about marketing. I wish exceptional content was sufficient, but it just isn’t.
Maybe for bloggers, I suppose, but for most “normal” online businesses, a great marketing campaign is what’s going to make you win.
If it’s social media marketing you’re working, then like TzuVelli said, as long as you have a laser focused targeting scanner and zero in on your target customer, your content won’t matter as much because it’ll (hopefully) take little convincing for them to buy. Your marketing efforts should have already somewhat convinced them.
It’s like Starbucks. I think their coffee sucks (but love the Java Chip
). However, their marketing of their brand has created a revolution.
Am I making sense? It’s late and I need to go to bed!
LOVE the new site, Catherine.
John Hoff’s last blog post..The Dumbest Thing I’ve Ever Heard – You Never Learn From Your Successes
@Kelly – Exactly!
John Hoff’s last blog post..The Dumbest Thing I’ve Ever Heard – You Never Learn From Your Successes
Hi John – I agree completely. I’m not saying your content should totally suck, but if you have an online business, or any business marketing should be a priority every time.
Great comparison between Gates and Jobs by the way and it is so true – the good marketer will always beat the exceptional product.
Glad you like the new theme.
Good stuff Cath! I am a firm believer of content – it might take a longer route, but eventually it will shine through (probably take 5 times longer than someone who games the systems though). Having said that, I have nothing against social bookmarking sites, although it is probably a matter of preference that I don’t like the amount of time it takes to get a good profile going. I have seen some amazing results though.
Albert | UrbanMonk.Net’s last blog post..A Tested Guide to Transcending Your Fears and Finally Live Your Life’s Purpose
Hi Alfred – it does take an overwhelmingly long time to build up your profile doesn’t it? I think it’s best just to concentrate on one or two social networks, otherwise your efforts would be diluted.
I don’t think I can add anything other than it’s not a choice – you have to do both if you want to build an audience.
As an amateur direct marketeer, it doesn’t feel right not to promote. And neither does it feel wrong.
I don’t do a great deal on the personal blog, but the business blog has SEO etc. But the main audience is actually an existing client base. And we sometimes forget that a blog is a useful tool to deliver service and provide a forum to communicate with clients too.
It just so happens is does a great job of complementing other marketing activities rather than a stand-alone medium.
Ian Denny’s last blog post..Blog Authors – How To Get More Comments Per Visitor
Hi Ian – it was really just to state a point of how you allocate your time. Do you spend all your time writing the perfect content, or do you make sure that content is just good enough then market it?
Now, if you’re a business with employees or you outsource, as you say, you wouldn’t need to make that choice. But, you would if you were working alone.
Good enough doesn’t have to mean rubbish though does it. How many times have you messed about trying to perfect a project when what you’d done days earlier would have been good enough?
My first visit to your blog. Very nice and a good topic!
However, I think it’s like saying, which is more important for your car? the axles or the wheels? You can’t do without either.
Social bookmarking drives traffic to your site, but great content is what keeps them there or sells them something.
So just like the axle and the wheel, you need both.
Chris McElroy’s last blog post..Do Professional Bloggers Get Writer’s Block?
Hi Chris – thank you, I’m glad you liked it. I guess from what everyone has said, it’s something of a balancing act isn’t it?
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Thanks for the interesting post. It helped me pass the time at work. I will definently visit this site again. Bookmarked!
Yeah Cathy, exactly right, balance is the key. I just look at a website as the foundation. You have to have a good foundation first, before you worry about getting traffic.
So, when I say the content is more important, it’s because it needs to be done first and needs to be made ready for visitors before worrying about where they will come from.
First you build the house and stock it with great booze before you invite everyone to the party.
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