When you start to be interested about social media, you are suddenly overwhelmed by gurus and service providers that provide you with heaps of data. And also promises to enhance dramatically traffic on your site and earn big money!
When should one post a blog to optimize its impact? What words should be used to optimize visibility? At what time in the day (!) should something get published? Where should which field be on the front page, in which color, to increase the probability of a click?. And there they go in huge graphical analysis and lengthy discussions.
Funny thing is, most of the examples of outstanding successes of books, blogs or social network references did not start doing all this. They just started delivering great contents and engaged tightly with a group of followers. They continued delivering consistently, over time. Eventually sometime they became mainstream, as the group of followers increased.
Can one really manipulate success? Short term maybe. If you want to build a long term brand, should it be your own or your organization’s, dont’ really bother. Your site, blog needs to be good, not crappy, but do not spend time and energy trying to over-optimize it. Spend instead time delivering great contents and value. Engage emotionally with your followers, give them value.
Change their lives.
It does not matter if you blog at 2am to achieve that.
