Analyze a Top Blog
Key Concepts:
Studying successful blogs in your niche will show you what’s working well for them as well as topics they might be ignoring which you could satisfy. Look closer and see how they implement advertisements or promotions and what their readers are asking about. It’s important to note you don’t want to copy another blogger.
Be unique, but allow them to inspire you!
Questions:
- Which of the areas discussed in today’s task are you most interested in studying about your niche and why?
- Content
- Reader Engagement
- Design
- Monetization
- Traffic
- SEO
- What’s one thing you could do to improve your blog after studying the top blogs in your niche?
Comment June 5, 2011 The Gist of my analyzing here is the person who created the original content was low on the list while someone who cited his content was much higher. Some never gave him credit. Being aware of where you content is being duplicated or used might be beneficial.
1. Identify a successful blog in your niche
2. Take 15 minutes to do some analysis of the blog in some of the following areas
- Content
- Reader Engagement
- Design
- Monetization
- Traffic
- SEO
Conclusion:
Your posting when scraped and used by others may push their site higher than your own. Watch my thought process here to understand the logic of my thinking.
As I looked at Technorati top list, I commented to myself, how did I not know about this list. I search all the time for top ten or 100 of a topic but never Blogs. Blogs have been under my radar, yet as I looked at the list, the names for a number of them were familiar and had been familiar. Most of these were in politics. Where are the the 31dbbb SITS girls topics compared to this?
When I look at Technology and Business, the names become more unfamiliar. It appears the most popular are politics. Will any of these other topics which become diluted with many bloggers ever be in that top 100 list – Photography, Travel, Mom advice or product reviews, Etc.? Technology Blogs seem to become very specific and some are product or company related.
Many of the new Fan Pages I see being created are a huge amount of Photography titles. The digital cameras have brought out a bunch of people wanting to make money with their photographs. None are in the top 100
Dividing my own interest into – Four blog topics: Social Media, Web Design, Photography, and Travel
Great video found from research. Followed trail back to original posting.
The original video was posted on YouTube on July 20, 2010. Guy Walk Across America is a stop motion and time lapse video reported on a lot of blogs each linking to another
Watch my sleuth skills here
Searched Technorati for Photography and the Blog with the most stories was Gizmodo One of the photography subjects found is Guy Walks Across America for a Levi Commercial. Trip was from June 17 New York to July 1 in San Francisco.
There was a link to where they found it at Doobybrain.
Searching further for the source, the video and stories were posted to over 10 blogs one of which was The Daily Beast which is high ranking in Technorati blogs.
Each one got the video from the prior one on the list and most did post a link about where it came from. How the story spreads with links and blogs. Nice to know your story can spread but better if you actually get credit for the story, right?
- Posted July 20 on youtube Guy Walks Across America
- Conscious Mind Production founded in 2008 and creator of Guy Walks Across America
- This is the company that created the video
- Direct site which gets its profits from the finished products
- Traffic – not sure but found it interesting that Technorati listed the one posted at Gizmodo which is the sixth away from the original
- Posted July 22, 2010 at Planet 5d Cannon EOS 5D Mark II Camera with more detail about the shots and f-stops and ISO
- Ads in side bar and in the middle of the article
- Writer met a participant Peter Cote at a NAB conference
- Rotating projects on front page of Planet 5d blog
- Monetization of the blog appears to be ads with some very targeted
- Posted July 23 Petat Pixel Map of their route
- Posted July 23 The Daily Beast Link no longer works http://www.thedailybeast.com/video/item/guy-walks-across-america/
- Posted poeTV Comments show the casting call – no indication where they got their link
- Posted July 23 Doobybrain.com
- Side banner ads
- Content varies
- Posted July 26 Gizmodo.com With photography search on Technorati this was in the results. Not the first one or any of the ones in between.
- Fascinating. What does it take to be picked up by one of the big guys? Yet the creator had already made money by producing the video.
- At least we assume they did?
So what is a successful blog in Photography if it takes six links before a bread trail is left to get back to your original content?
Looks like Gizmodo has ranking power in a higher ranked blog and got the recognition.
Recognized for something they did not create. Most people would have no idea to follow back to original . It is great most did link back so I could follow the bread crumbs. Many of us bloggers have talked about this one video while a small group created the actually product.
Word of Mouth advertising.
Follow all the links to the video and read comments on the blogs to get more of the story but Panet5D has a good amount of the story since they had contact with one of the original participants.
Goal isn’t just to write Great Content but make the links go viral back to your content with recognition to you. Contact the top company doing the ranking to see if you can get recognition or just make your company popular on the Internet. The video produced was great BUT they were not the one Ranked high for the content. Someone else was. Finding ways to get yourself higher on the ranking or picked up by someone else but given credit. We don’t know where our content goes once someone else scrapes it, do we?
Just be aware the better you write the more scrapers who will use your material. Find a way to be a extrovert and promote yourself. Go knock your audiences socks off!
Updated April 14, 2010
Other post Day 4
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Eileen Ludwig of Social Media School brings to the world decades of computer experience with a desire to learn and share current technology multimedia tools for communication. She is owner of four sites: FreelanceTourist , Digital Photography, Web Design School, and Social Media School Each are in different stages of development and evolution.
I can see how that would take all day to do and then write about.
Hi Eileen, I found you through the 31DBBB. I’m going to be completely honest… I hope that’s okay, because I think that constructive criticism helps us be more marketable and to understand our readers thoughts. I didn’t really understand this post. I know you’re commenting on the day 4 assignment, but I honestly had a hard time following it. I think it would be helpful if you tied in all of your thoughts at the end… sort of a “final conclusions” or “bottom line” paragraph. That way your readers can get something from the post that may help them in their quest. I’m going to look over at your social media content now, because that sounds really interesting and it’s an area that I need a lot of help with. I look forward to reading more!
Twitter: eileenludwig
says:
Michele,
Thanks for your interesting response
Short summary:
Niche = photography
When I searched on Photography, the site that came up was not where the original creation was made but where it got ‘air’ time. It was six degrees of separation (to use an analogy) from the original creators post. It was great it got air time. Content isn’t everything. Ranking is. The real content wouldn’t have seen the light of day. The actual source and the people did not get all the recognition unless you followed the path of links back to the source.
It is a weaved thread.
Hope that helps your understanding.
Eileen