Monday, December 13, 2010

Science Of Blogging Tips From Dan Zarrella - Part One

Posted by Amanda Walsh

Last week, I tuned into “The Science of Blogging,” a free webinar hosted by Hubspot and Dan Zarrella, HubSpot's social media scientist. Zarrella presented a lot of data from surveys and research on optimizing content on your blog, Twitter and Facebook. There was so much valuable information that I have written two posts. I’ve included a few takeaways from the presentation below.

• You should have a blog. People are reading them and not just once a week, typically once a day or even more.
• Readers want to know who you are and why they should follow you.  Identify yourself authoritatively on your blog. Zarrella discovered that words like founder, expert and speaker increase your following.
• Positivity sells. This may seem like a no-brainer but obviously happy messages are shared more.

Why do you read blogs? What makes you want to read a certain blog?
• Zarrella’s findings revealed that readers wanted to learn about the insights and opinions of that specific blogger. People liked the blogger’s analysis of information and their unique point of view.
• People want to hear from you not about you.  Zarrella presented some interesting findings about Retweets (RTs) on Twitter.  He found that self-references in tweets do no increase RTs. He advised sharing useful information with your followers.

Should I post videos or pictures? 
In order to figure out what you should use on your blog, you need to assess what your goals are. These goals will dictate the type of media you produce.
• Videos are shared more on Facebook than Twitter.
• Videos get more links, but photos get more comments.

Give your readers a call to action. 
If your goal is increasing RTs on Twitter, why not ask for others to pass the information along? If you want comments, ask for them.
• Most viewed words: Insights, analysis, answers
• Most linked to words: recent, insights, on, answers
• Most commented-on words: giveaway, recruiting, gifts, job, money, comments
• Most shareable words on Facebook: “why, most, how” Zarrella explains that people want the bigger picture and also sited that news story-type headlines are effective on Facebook as well.

Lastly, content is still king.  Zarrella’s surveys not so surprisingly revealed that readers want to read good, quality content.  Excellent bloggers should foremost be excellent writers. Use correct grammar and punctuation, always. Period.

No comments: