So admittedly I am not the best “self-promoter.” In fact, I’d say that selling my work isn’t something I do well. I’d rather have someone else do it, honestly. Part of the challenge is that I really can’t stand writers who sit there and tell me how great their book or game is without telling me “why.” Of course, the other part is that I’d much rather interact with a person–not a product–when I’m online. Sure, I don’t think any of us want to come across as arrogant or condescending, but it’s really hard to know what people’s impressions are of you unless you’re psychic or someone tells you.
Here are some of the things I look for when I either meet people online or read about them. I hope that my thoughts (combined with your feedback) will help shed some light on what might be a good “self-promotion” approach online.
- Your Online Persona is Transparent: If you are a writer and are promoting yourself as such, it’s more useful to me if you have the experience to back it up. If you don’t have the experience and are providing commentary — link to the articles and the people who do. I can’t tell you how many times an individual will talk about all these larger-than-life concepts only to find out they don’t have the street cred or the articles to back it up. Honesty goes a much longer way for me than if you try to “pad” your credentials, especially because I am actively seeking to promote my peers through this channel and through others that I might come across.
You Don’t Tell Me How Great You Are or How Much You Think You Know: As a personal preference, I really don’t like pretenses. You’ll see this a lot with people trying to sell you something — they are exclusive, one-of-a-kind, different. Give me a break. Just because you are selling something doesn’t mean that your online persona has to be “on” all the time, nor does it mean that someone reading about you doesn’t already know what you know. Everyone is not an expert; in a lot of cases some of the folk selling what we want to buy are learning right along with you and me.
You Remember that There is a Time and Place for Heated Discussions: Whether it’s the election or global warming, it’s easy to get caught up in discussions that can get pretty heated rather quickly. For those that know me, yeah I can be pretty opinionated but I also strive to be very open-minded. I intentionally keep those opinions off of my blog because I don’t want to exclude anyone, nor do I want to get into a heated discussion that makes both myself and my reader look like idiots. I feel that way about other websites and blogs I visit as well because the comments just seem to get completely out of control. To me, there is a big difference between ranting and having good content.
Your Site Isn’t an Eyesore: If your site is a selling monstrosity that doesn’t offer any real content then I probably won’t stay on it for long. If it doesn’t have a search function and I have to navigate all over creation to find more information about you, then I’ll probably leave it shortly. I hate to admit it, but badly-designed (or outdated) websites and blogs are a really huge turn-off for me. Web design has changed so much in the last ten years. In a way, blogging has made the web more accessible — not less — so if your site isn’t more contemporary I have to wonder what other trends you’re not keeping up on.
You Avoid Spamming Your Network: Yes, we all have personal projects that we like to promote. Unduly spamming your network of friends and contacts multiple times to promote your event or project really irks me. At the most, I’d like to see one–maybe two max–emails about your book or seminar sent in a very friendly and helpful way using phrases like “I don’t normally do this, but…” and “I just wanted to keep you in the loop about what I’m working on.”
You Give Credit Where Credit Is Due: Have you plagiarized other people’s work on your own site? What if you have worked on a project with other people and take all the credit for yourself? Or how about talking bad about people you’ve worked with in an online, public way? Sure, it’s nice to be validated but it’s even better when someone says something nice “about” you. (Rather than you having to take the easy way out and try to say it about yourself).
What are your thoughts on good versus bad self-promotion? Am I being too harsh or too critical? Are there any exceptions to the things I mentioned here?
Putting Yourself Out There but No Comments? Here’s why.
The line used to be “everyone’s a critic.” Now it’s more like “everyone’s gotta blog.” In my opinion, whether you update frequently or not, it’s essential to having a blog or personal website for your own name. (Sidenote: you’d be surprised how many people who reached celebrity status, don’t.) Well, when you get a blog, you have to do the work to promote it by commenting on other people’s blogs, writing good content and keeping it updating. You might say blogging is “high-maintenance,” which is one of the reasons why they get abandoned. It’s not just a “post and readers will come” sort of a scenario: it’s a “post, promote and hope readers will come.”
As writers, we all know how important content is for a blog. If it isn’t written in a language readable to humans, it probably won’t attract us (or Google, for that matter). Besides being well written, good content also means having something that is sooooooooo cool, so fabulous that people will gape in awe.
Finding that amazing content is a lot harder than it looks — especially for a writing blog — because a lot of sites make their money by being cool, almost like the Ripley’s Believe it or Not phenomenon for the blogosphere. Boing Boing, TechCrunch and ThinkGeek immediately come to my mind, but there are others. That’s not to say that your blog can’t get attention by “repurposing” or “pointing out” cool content (Search Engine Optimization, anyone?).
Enter the comments. The writer side in us loves the appeal of having people comment on what we write, because it’s like a teeny tiny “thank you” for taking the time to write a post. Yeah, don’t hold your breath. Just because it’s published online–even on a place where people are reading your work–there is no guarantee you’re going to get people interacting and commenting.
Here’s my take on why:
Why Readers Don’t Comment on Blogs
Your Comment System Needs Improvement: From complicated log-ins to “yet another password,” overly complicated means of commenting can be a turn-off. One of the ways I want to improve my comment system is to figure out the “direct reply” WordPress plug-in, so that I can directly reply better to people who comment. (Here’s the WordPress Thread Comment plug-in from WordPress.org.)
Timing, Timing, Timing: In my experience, comments can depend on when you post a topic and how long that topic is visible on your front page. They can also depend upon whether or not your content is hitting the reader when they have time to comment. If they’re at work, for example, maybe they physically can’t comment.
Doesn’t Grab the Reader: If the content isn’t spectacular, and doesn’t hit the reader in that sweet spot, then they’re not going to post a comment. Comments require an emotional commitment on the part of the reader — they have to have a legitimate reason to want to post.
Your Readers are RSS Feeders: RSS feeds are such a time saver, but they are also a barrier to commenting. I view RSS readers to be a lot like window shoppers; they can read headlines and snippets of your content, but they don’t have to click through. That “click” is their commitment to your blog. Asking them to comment as well requires another step toward reader-writer commitment, so you had better be ready to offer them something good.
The Tone of Your Content isn’t Genuine: Blogs have the trouble of sounding too authoritative, because everybody is an instant expert. Something I struggled with when I started my blog, I try to go the route of “this is my opinion and your experiences may differ,” and that’s what has worked for me. Readers aren’t stupid, so if your content sounds too much like a sales pitch or talking down to them, then chances are your blog might get ignored.
Web Analytics Can Help you Prove your Theories
Anyone can make inferences as to why people aren’t commenting on their blog, but to get into the specifics you’ll want to check your web analytics toolkit and figure out “why.” For example, a post I did about two free fiction submission sites you don’t want to miss received a lot of attention and more comments than I usually get. Why? Someone thought the post was worthwhile enough to use StumbleUpon, causing it to be my highest-trafficked post on my blog.
From abandonment to click-through rates for RSS feeds, you can find out a lot of information about your reader’s behavior to ensure that you’re writing great content that they’ll want to read (and you’ll want to write). The same can be said for commenting, in my opinion, because they are somewhat related. I like to think about it like a party. Before you can ask people to have a conversation, you have to invite them to your party. Before you can invite them to your party, you should probably get to know them and engage them, to find the right group of friends that will stick around.
Hope you enjoyed this post as much as I enjoyed writing it. Admittedly, I don’t always practice what I preach due to time constraints (and a touch of procrastination, too), but commenting is a good way to build community and to get other people familiar with your own work and personality. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I have to find some blogs to go comment on today! Have a great one!