Here’s how crazy we talk, Eric: “For the …

Comment posted on Blog Comment Traffic Research: Signed, Sealed, and Delivered by Arturo@Starting Your Own Business

Here’s how crazy we talk, Eric: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” 1 Corinthians 1:18

Now, let’s stick to topic, shall we?

I think Ana and Lisa did a decent job with this brief study and I concur in saying that it isn’t common sense to expect traffic from comments. In fact, it’s not common sense to expect comments from anyone, since often I’ve witnessed that nobody comments until somebody first “breaks the ice”. That means lots of eyes and no fingers doing the walking until somebody voluntarily walks the tightrope at least once, risking a reply from the host or some other reader.

Notice that Lisa had to craft provocative comments and be first in line before the comment thread got too long and she disappeared in ignoble irrelevance for getting there too late. As an unknown to those sites, she was also risking alienation as a newbie or perhaps even hostility. Some blogs I know of require secret handshakes for you to fit into a thread.

Is dealing with all this common sense? Nope. This is deliberate planning. It’s strategy.

Same goes for expecting traffic from people reading those comments left behind. What would prompt anyone to follow a commentator? Just the fact that that person left a comment? C’mon! How many of us would follow a commentator who only said, “Ditto, Ana. Cool stuff you wrote just now…”?

It matters what kind of comment you leave. It matters in its positioning, voice and prose style. It matters in its value proposition to the reader and to the comment host. It matters in its call to action.

And, when you can’t say “Hey, click here to go to my site where you can learn how to start your own business if you’re a graduate student looking to become an entrepreneur to get out from under-employment” (yeah, sneaky I know…crazy, huh? ), then you know that you got a particularly unique challenge to overcome in generating traffic from just a comment, which we cannot presume common sense will take care of.

So, I would argue that there may be a particular way of commenting that could more effectively yield better results for the purpose of traffic generation and not just back-linking, which is what I perceive most of us seem to be in the business of leaving comments for.

Therefore, I’m all for further experimentation and a bit more rigor in the practice.

Carry on valiantly, Lisa and Ana!

Get crazy!

Arturo@Starting Your Own Business also commented

• Lisa, same goes to you as I said just now to Lou Barba. I wrote encouragement to you not criticism. I was countering Adoro’s remarks on whether the work you did was mere common sense, and Eric’s quip about church folk talking crazy.

  Please read my stuff more carefully next time.

• Lou Barba, you need to re-read my post. It was not addressed to Ana or Lisa until the very end, and I closed it with plaudits to them. On the contrary, I addressed it to Eric, particularly the opening verse from 1 Corinthians. And at no time was I angry in the least, though now you’ve bothered me.

  Your presumption I do not appreciate. I have been following Ana’s blog for several months. I attacked no one, while you misread and fired off hastily without thought and sanctimonious criticism.

  Is that wisdom?

  Is it, considering you ought “make sure you have all the information before you get angry and attack people, especially your brothers and sisters”?

  Besides, if you have an issue with a brother, what does Matthew 18:15 tell you to do?

  You can reach me privately at my blog, if you’d like to be obedient to the Word.

Recent comments by Arturo@Starting Your Own Business

• Ana Hoffman vs Nick Cardot Twitter Faceoff: Quality Trumps Quantity
  Now it’s my turn to say WOW, Ana. This is a GREAT compliment coming from you. Thank you!

  On your point about visibility with the right people maybe in the end not generating similar results, like traffic, relative to collecting a mass of lower quality contacts using automation, I’d just like to point out how successful Nick already seems to be by the mere fact that he is connected to — who else? — you!

  Imagine if he had a Twitter list of 2,000 Anas (I know…I know…fat chance, but…), which might have taken him, um, a couple of years to build up, right? That list represents, let’s say, one-fifth of the size of your own list that might have taken you 6 months to produce with automation. Can we assume that with 2,000 Anas in his Twitter list, eagerly interacting with him in well-nurtured relationships, his tweets might get not merely RT’ed but, more importantly, his tweeted posts might get linked-to by these powerfully influential and referencing Ana sites?

  I’d bet you a hole in a virtual donut that they would, and this would drive traffic to his site a la Twitter. That would be the kind of interaction that he would generate, which certainly differs from your kind of interaction which begins at your blog with Twitter strangers.

  But note the disparity in time between you and Nick before there is an effect on the traffic needle. I can’t prove it inductively, but by logical deduction, if we assume that the weight of intimate relationship is greater than that of a mass of connections to total strangers, then relationship building, though it takes longer to accomplish Nick’s style, would eventually prove good for business traffic-wise after a LONG time of nurturing these high-quality Twitter contacts.

  Personally, I’m not willing to wait that long. I think there are other media that can more effectively develop these high-quality relationships than a microblog. So I’m with you in the end.

  And what am I betting in potentially being wrong? Not much, just my future business.

  But at least we’re in it together.

• Ana Hoffman vs Nick Cardot Twitter Faceoff: Quality Trumps Quantity
  Ana, having read both entries, I think you make a more solid argument for your case than Nick, though I understand and do not fully disagree with his position regarding the significance of nurturing quality connections through Twitter.

  However, I find both your cases a bit flawed in one regard. Neither one of you explains why either methodology really works. Your aim is to argue why one is superior to the other. But both of you argue that the two have been successful in their own ways. And that’s because the two of you seem focused on achieving different objectives through the same mechanism — Twitter.

  Granted the aim of the debate was to show us how Twitter is a terrific means to build an online presence and drive traffic to our sites to monetize it there through sales, you did a far better job showing us your own experience in achieving part of this, by sharing empirical evidence of your success (Google Analytics report).

  But in the end you don’t explain why your success could transfer to me or someone else. And I think that’s where I find the flaw in both arguments, because Nick did likewise.

  I have a theory to share with you that might help here and, since you’re a Christian, I’ll preface it with a couple of biblical reference. One is in the book of Judges 1:7. The other is in Matthew 22:35-40.

  The former reference tells the story of king by the name of Adoni-Bezek. He was the leader of Canaanites, known as the “lord of lightning” who, upon realizing the defeat of 10,000 of his men at the hands of Hebrew champions Judah and Simeon, by the order of their captain Joshua, fled from the city, was captured and dealt a blow not unlike that which he had dealt to his own foes. He loss both his thumbs and big toes, rendering him thereby incapable of keeping balance for further flight or delivering useful manual labor. He became incapacitated by losing 20% of his digits.

  Now let’s jump to the book of Matthew. There we find the story of Jesus answering to the question posed by a lawyer, who asked “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And Jesus gave him 2 commandments out of 10 that God had given Moses. He said to the lawyer, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

  There is a natural phenomenon that has come to be known as Pareto’s law, which amounts to “the law of vital few” that says that roughly 80% of the natural and social effects of anything come from 20% of their causes. It is not known why this proportion holds in nature. But it does.

  And, as you can see, even Jesus in saying that 2 out of the 10 commandments generate ALL the important principles spoken of in the entire Torah and the prophets, and just as Adoni-Bezek’s loss of his thumbs and toes rendered him powerless as a warrior, so does Pareto’s law give us insight into why using Twitter either for quality or quantity makes sense. And here’s why.

  Twitter can give us access in the most effective and direct way to people who we might otherwise not be able to reach. That means that by focusing on getting connected via Twitter to the most vital individuals to our success, we may be able to side-step the quantity issue entirely. Why? Because those few, high-quality connections could generate the critical visibility, traffic and business that we want. The trade-off? Time. We’d need to spend 80% of out time seeking for the 20% of people who would produce 80% of the results that we want. That’s Nicks’ approach.

  Now let’s look at your approach.

  You prefer to spend your time blogging. So, to produce 80% of traffic results from a source like Twitter without spending 80% of your time tweeting, you need to play the numbers. You need tons of contacts and an automated process to procure them, with an added token element of humanity to ensure that you’re not perceived as being just an automaton but an actual twitterer. So you’re willing to spend 20% of your time creating the accounts and setting up the automation platform and loading the tweets to produce the 80% of results which, by the very nature of using automation rather than personal time, will produce a ton of contacts of lesser quality than any number of contacts that Nick would have secured in the same timeframe.

  In short, both of you are using the Pareto principle but in different application, because the two of you have different preferences in how to use your time.

  The question for the rest of us is how do we want to spend our time? Will more quality produce better results for us long-term than greater quantity short-term? Will greater quantity give our businesses short-term a greater likelihood of success long-term? Is there a happy balance between the two and can I find it as it applies to my particular circumstances and objectives?

  That I think is a more intrinsically significant series of questions to ask than whether quality or quantity trump each other.

  But then I’ve been known for being too professorial in my conversations. So, if I’ve already lost half of you with what I’ve shared, just tell me to buzz off next time.

• How Two Days Without Internet Made Me Stumble Upon a Great Idea
  Ana, you like to interact. So your comment addiction is an enjoyable thing. But is it lucrative? What’s your return on investment (ROI) for the voluminous time you dedicate to commenting?

  Allie is correct. For newbie bloggers you’ve reached comment Nirvana and in only 7 months, except that Nirvana is characterized, among other things, by the extinction of desire and individual conscientiousness. For a Latin this sounds more like limbo. In time this amount of work can kill the drive to keep up the pace, i.e. burnout.

  I think you do well to rely on your most faithful followers to support each other, since that’s the essence of a community — to bear each other’s burdens. That indeed is brilliant thinking. But I would caution in one regard.

  If you give away too much for free, it will become extremely hard if not impossible to charge for it later. Plus a reliable community is one that self-regulates. Paying an admission price initiates this type of self-regulation out of self-interest, because the price of admission gets rid of free riders and leaves only those participants who really care enough to stick around because of the value that they get from subscribing to the community for a price.

  So, what I’m saying is that perhaps at some point you should consider creating a for-pay section of your site, where you offer your best advice, which comes in no small measure from the interactions that you have with your paying clients, while you leave another portion of your site open to the public. That way you don’t have to answer every post, but can prioritize your answers, delivering your best to your clients first, while they help you help one another.

  For those on the outside looking in, that might be worth the price of admission.

• Blog Traffic Challenge: Did You See My Glove Laying Around Here?
  Ana, great contributions from a fine group of fans! Since I’m feeling like Brando, and “I coulda been a contenda”, I’d like to know when are you opening the ring for another write-up opportunity and a new chance at the DoFollow title?
• How Ana Got Her Twitter Groove Back
  Anna, do you have any tips on how much content (tweets) to generate per Twitter account and how often to publish them throughout the day? Also does Twitter Adder permit you to publish tweets in blocks of 3 or 4? I recall reading that you encouraged this.

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