What is Good Content vs Spam?

[FernHill]

Originally Posted by justaleaf

@nightcats

Our blogs where removed "guilty by association" it's not anyone's fault, fully.

-Garrett

This is a really important point. I hope people don't feel too offended about their article being called spam by Tumblr. If you know your article wasn't spam, feel confident in that knowledge and continue on.

[hurdle]

The 30 DC is an example of good content.

You come to this site, register and learn how to do IM for FREE.
Others out there would charge you top dollar for the same info.

Now, without saying anything obvious, we can all see that Ed provides other services which he charges for. If you want to sign up for it you can click on the link. Otherwise, ignore it and benefit from the content that is all provided for free.

After all this is done, how many people trust Ed and, if they had the money, would sign up for some other service, if they thought it would benefit them??

That's Web 2.0 marketing........

[cmiddlebrook]

This is a really difficult question to answer, and my answer is probably a bit controversial. When I first saw the two example Tumblr blogs on speed reading and wedding planning, to be honest, I thought they were poor. On Friday I did a search for Tumblr blogs and found about 70 of them which I looked at. Here's what I found:

* The majority had very little content - no more than a screen or two of information, just like the example ones.

* The majority had used the basic template with no customisation. In other words, they all started to look just the same!

* The majority offered no real value in the writing.

Now that's not all of them. Some had many posts, had lots of interesting articles, some images, and even some videos. These looked good to me but unfortunately out of the 70 I looked at, I would say there were only about 5 that fell into that category.

By nature a 'blog' is an ongoing conversation between the publisher and the reader. With a real blog you would expect regular posts. However, we were using a blogging platform to host a static page. Now that is ok but then it becomes a 'site', rather than a 'blog' and here is where I think the bar should be raised.

In my opinion a site that provides one page of information is probably lacking. 500 words is good for one article, not for the whole site. If you have a site with 5 or 10 500-word articles then great but if the entire contents of your site can be viewed with very little scrolling then I would consider that under-par.

I think that the message that Ed & Dan are delivering is superb, but I don't think they managed to get that message across properly in the training videos of the last few days. They kept telling us to publish excellent content and yet their example of excellent content was, in my opinion, no where near excellent and that's where I think the challengers have fallen down. Most people simply used the example sites as a benchmark and Tumblr has seen most of those as spam.

I think 95% of people fail at anything (not just internet marketing) because they are not willing to put in the right amount of effort. Ask yourself this - if you can knock up your Tumblr blog (or equivalent) in a couple of hours, is that enough work to truly deliver a wonderful user experience in your chosen niche?

I think not.

[gwineth]

hi! just to add my 2 cents...
I do write for a couple of online italian magazines and our two basic rules are:
1- neither too short, nor too long, that means no less than 900 characters (including spaces), no more than 2000: articles that are too long are abandoned by your readers before their end
2- use photos and use them often. People wandering on the internet are looking for full-sensorial contents. If you write about a movie, put movie images in the text (i.e. when I write an article about a movie, the article has 1 photo every 400 characters, more or less), if you are explaining how to cook sausages, put a photo of that sausages! People not only have to imagine results: they have to taste it!

[Lindiop]

Originally Posted by hurdle

The 30 DC is an example of good content.

You come to this site, register and learn how to do IM for FREE.
Others out there would charge you top dollar for the same info.

Now, without saying anything obvious, we can all see that Ed provides other services which he charges for. If you want to sign up for it you can click on the link. Otherwise, ignore it and benefit from the content that is all provided for free.


That's Web 2.0 marketing........

I don't know much about marketing. That's why I'm here but I do know a bit about Web2.0. and I think Hurdle is spot on.

• The team are providing good quality informative stuff for their niche audience (us!),

• They are writing an interesting and informative blog (with comments enabled),

• They are providing the information in a variety of formats,

• They are providing multiple spaces for a community to form around them.(blog comments, blogs, forum etc.)

This to me is Web2.0. This is interaction, connectivism, a community that is developing by learning from and with each other. It's powerful stuff. It's not over in 30 days!
(Must admit I was always a bit wary of the lack of comments on Tumblr)
There should be no problem once you've provided great content in also providing a route for those who want to dig deeper into the subject, and their pockets, to find out more. And that's the bit you monetise.
The rest of this thread gives some really good guidelines for writing that initial content :-) If you get it right you might find your community starts to create its own content and then things could really take off!

[scole]

Caro,

I think I was trying to rely too much on Ed's teachings and ignoring what I already know myself. The problem that I ran into is that Ed kept referring to the content as articles and having to write 2-3 articles a day on the topic.

Personally for me this caused my mind to focus on the wrong thing.

Now I believe I know what will work for me and what would make for real quality content.

And that is... First and most important... JUST BE MYSELF...

The rest will come naturally with the assistance of the golden nugget and other content gathering techniques.

So this is going to be my approach on content.. Caro, let me know if I'm completely out to lunch.

Niche: "Chickens with Diabetes"

So basically the first thing I will do is research the market myself and find sites that already have quality information (Google news, blogs, authority sites, etc) and look for ways that their content can be automatically imported into my own system. Usually this would mean looking for an RSS feed to import the feed into my RSS reader (blogline, or my personal choice - Google Reader).

Once I have a collection of quality information and resources that is automatically piped into a central area (rss feed -> rss reader) I will then keep and eye on the market.

So each day, I will read the new articles/blog posts/news for that market and take note (Google Notebook) of anything that is cool or interesting. Anything that has a wow factor. It could be something as simple as a statement "90% of chickens with diabetes also have inverted toenails" that is part of a 1000 word press release. Basically anything that's worth noting!

By doing this content gathering each day, I will soon have a priceless collection of information all about the market I'm writing about.

So whenever I need to write a blog post, an article, a ezine, or whatever, I have this information at my fingertips. I can review what I took note of, pick a few interesting things and write the content from there.

In no time, I have quality useful content that no one would consider spam! Well maybe tumblr still would, but that's another story.

~Shannon

[wizent]

I'm glad to hear that the fault isn't entirely my own. (see the message on association) I admit I had an affiliate link, but very unobtrusively. My article wasn't so very long but was written in such a way as to indicate that much more on the same subject was to follow. Before I could post any more articles the site was blocked. Maybe the guys at tumblr were just a bit too hasty and didn't take the time too actually see what was good or bad.

[midiwhale]

IMHO good content isn't 2x 500 word paragraphs.

Look up a subject on wikipedia.org or about.com and see the standards they maintain.

Sure magazines articles are around 1500 words with pictures, but a magazine also has 100+ pages to flick through.

My gauge is "emotion". Does the content make me feel something. Does it challenge what I think already, does it feed me new stuff, does it provide a platform for me to participate.

Emotion also comes from "design" and picture content. AKA is it beautiful to look at.

I don't personally think you'd ever make much money by doing a "classified" advert version of short paragraph stories.

Sure people like brief snippets (headlines) but you don't have a relationship with those sites, to go "and whilst I'm reading that headline", I'll just buy this... That's why banner adverts exist on pure info sites.

AYK if you look at the majority of blogs, they survive on time sensitive news, centralising several feeds (corner shop convenience), brief analysis/overview coupled with in depth articles and breakdowns and of course, reader contribution.

If you just want to write paragraph copy, then open a web shopping cart, as when shopping that is what people want. But to promote your store, to give it uniqueness and identity and form a "relationship" with your audience, you will probably need to do more. To offer advice, genuine opinion, real and unique recommendations, etc..

We all have shops we go in, and others we don't go in, even though they sell the same stuff. The 1 we pick may even be dearer.

We do that because of the ambience (design) of the place, the staff (the value and opinion of the copy), the product selection (range of topics/subjects on offer), the convenience of 1 local shop, and so on...

The problem with the web, is getting that across.

Look what Amazon and countless others are doing to blog-up their stores with user reviews.

Of course, for some topics, a list of good URL resources, is also appropriate.

So it's not a black and white topic.

Ed summed it up in one video with the phrase "imagine you are talking to friends".

Do you read your friends classified adverts in the pub?
Do you just read your partner the headlines at breakfeast with no detail?
Do you just go "oh my" and then say nothing else all day?

I'm not saying anyones site was like this, I didn't see them, but this is what separates content.
If you wouldn't enjoy it, why would anyone else.

I think Ed also meant this in "getting to know the subject" for real.

AFAIC the web is totally about relationships. You know how complicated relationships are! You need to work at them constantly. You need to keep it fresh. You need to value your partner (constantly). You need to entertain them. You need to share experiences. You need some solo time apart ;-) or with external friends. You need to nurture and sustain them (post sale care). You need to value and listen to their opinions. Both your presences need to make a difference. You both need to have dreams you can aspire too (next purchase).

You can't do that in 2x 500 paragraphs. Can you?

We are not human RSS feeds.

Sorry if this isn't very coherent or helpful.

JMTCW.