Lichtman Consulting

A better subtitle for this blog could be: “Throw a bunch of spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks”

I keep an eye on the Google Analytics reports for this site. The past couple of months, there were an unusually large number of hits from people searching for info on Twitter. I just tried a couple of searches on Google.com and Google.ca this morning, and for “twitter purpose” (and a variety of other combinations), we’re showing up near the top of the first page. In the past, we’ve also had searches for people looking for info on Askme.com, DandyId and other specific topics that I’ve written about here.

I think the general principal, one that has relevance for SEO (search engine optimization), is that it’s just about impossible to determine in advance what the zeitgeist of the moment is going to be. As a result, place content on your site that covers a wide range of related topics, and there’s a good chance that something that you write will be relevant to somebody, somewhere, at some point in time.

This is otherwise known as the spaghetti principal – when you don’t know what precisely will work, try a bunch of different things, and record your results. This isn’t a new idea by any means. Bloggers, internet marketers and SEOs use this tactic all the time, in a variety of different ways.

With thanks to Chris Brogan (http://www.chrisbrogan.com/100-blog-topics-i-hope-you-write/) for the idea

In my experience, build traffic to a site is easy – it just takes work. The same goes for building a following on social media sites like Twitter or Facebook. If you’re willing to dedicate the time to posting regularly, promoting diligently, and continually learning new tricks, eventually everything will come together.

The questions that seem to be unanswered for the most part, revolve around what to do once one has traffic and “followers”.

The biggest blogs in the world measure their traffic in millions of visitors per day. Is this a natural built-in limit, or is there a way to increase this by orders of magnitude?

How does a blogger capitalize on traffic? Is it just ad revenue and possibly selling some merchandise or books? Are there revenue models still waiting to be discovered?

Are there better ways to connect with people via a blog? Is there a better model than Twitter for letting the whole world know what you are doing (without spamming!)? How can we create more value through the content that we write? Is there more to Twitter than just reposting links?

I don’t claim to have answers to these kinds of questions. And if you do, you’re probably not likely to tell me – you’re probably making too much money to give away your secrets!

I think at least part of the solution involves the following model though:

Create better / more interesting / more targetted content
Find better ways to categorize / tag / cross reference it so that there is underlying semantic meaning
Find better ways to allow the content to be found / broadcast / directoried
Find new and more relevant means for people to comment on, “riff on”, rip off, or otherwise respond to the content
Discover new models for turning it all into dollar bills
Figure out how content creators and content “consumers” (although everybody is a bit of both) can build better relationships with each other
Repeat.

I’m sure none of the above is original in any way manner or form. I’d love to hear what you think though!