What is the difference in outcome between a compelling website, and that same website attached to a popular blog? Is blogging worth the immense extra effort?
This article will illustrate the enormous difference: In combination, a compelling website with a popular blog can increase visitor count by more than 1,000,000 to 1.
Impossible? Exaggerated? Read on.
THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT
It is said that if a butterfly flaps its wings in China, eventually the effect of that very small motion can be felt all across the world. In theory, the butterfly effect suggests that “a minor change in circumstances may cause a large change in outcome.” In the case of Social Media, a well-crafted article can bring millions of visitors to the writer’s website. The graphic on this post, (click to enlarge, click again to enlarge further), tells this story in a fashion understandable by every reader, regardless of their level of Social Media awareness.
THE TEN STEPS REQUIRED TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN:
The process begins in every case with the preparation of content in the form of an article. The article must be interesting, useful and relevant to your potential visitors. It should address an issue considered important by your target market, and should impart knowledge not readily available from other sources. And, of course, it should be well written. The result of this first step should be submission of the article to Digg and broadcasting of the article to all of your Twitter followers.
Many Twitter followers have Facebook accounts, and if the article has sufficient merit, many will post the article to those accounts. Of course, the writer should have a Facebook account as well, and should post the article there immediately.
Major blogs, having seen the article on Digg, will increase its circulation by posting a link on their blog to the Digg article.
Digg users will post important articles to Reddit.
Smaller blogs, having seen the article on the larger and more respected blogs, will post the article to their blog hoping to increase their own visibility.
Twitter followers will re-Tweet the article, and their followers will also re-Tweet the article in turn. Remember, the Twitter universe is enormous, currently numbering over 192 million, and is increasing in size exponentially.
The Facebook friends (from #2 above) will share the article with their friends.
StumbleUpon users will “vote up” the article, increasing its visibility.
If the article is very good, it may be circulated within both AOL and Yahoo, increasing the visibility by over 186,000,000 unique users.
And finally, the Google result for the article will be stellar. This is an outcome for which there is no equal. Internet Nirvana has been realized.
For those of you who have been calculating the math, the 1,000,000 to 1 ratio mentioned at the beginning of this post is actually an understatement. Of course, this is a “best case” outcome. But even at 1/100th the result, can there be any doubt that Social Media and blogging is worth the effort?
