It?s funny how our mindsets change with the onset of age. Or experience. Or a mixture of both.
Take social media. When it first started gaining traction with the masses around 2009, it was seen as ?the great connector? ? a way for everyone to share, learn, support, and more.
[Read more…] about The Personalization of Social (Or Why We Need to be Architects)
Imagine you’ve worked hard on your home, and you’re really excited to start inviting people over for get-togethers.
You make the place look nice; you make it feel welcoming; you work hard to be a great host, so anyone that visits leaves feeling happily satisfied and can’t wait to come back.
Now, imagine if one of the guests was telling people afterward that, yes, they should totally visit your home – but only if they come to that guest’s house afterward.
[Read more…] about Why a Share via Content Jacking Isn’t Really a Share
A month ago, I published a post about an experiment I was going to run – what happens when you remove social share buttons from your blog?
The gist of the experiment was simple: having run a bunch of tests through Google Analytics, it was clear that – as the direction of content here shifted – social was becoming less important a driver of traffic for me.
Don’t get me wrong – that’s not the same as saying social media has no value. Far from it. However, there’s a difference between being valuable and being a referral source.
Additionally, social share buttons – depending on how they’re coded – can actually hinder the experience of the visitor, especially if they’re on mobile browsers.
There was also the question of whether having share buttons took away attention from more important CTAs, or calls to action.
For example, would a sharer then not comment, or subscribe, if they’ve already taken the action of sharing a post?
To find out, I decided I’d remove sharing buttons for a month, and see what happens – and this was the result.
In my post from last month, I shared what the breakdown was of the traffic here. From that post:
As you can see from the image above, social traffic counted for just under 10% of all traffic to this blog, with search by and far the leader.
Given that social networks can up and leave at any time, or make changes to the way they benefit bloggers and content providers, this wasn’t such a big issue for me.
Note: As my friend Jim Connolly advised, some “dark sharing” of posts on social media may not be reported as social traffic, and skew the numbers.
@DannyBrown Hi mate. Been doing some research this afternoon. Seems Google analytics still “thinks” traffic from Twitter / FB is “direct.
— Jim Connolly (@JimConnolly) December 12, 2015
While you can work in some campaign tricks in Google Analytic to overcome some of this, it’s a fair point by Jim.
So, for the results of the experiment, I’ll be comparing like-for-like on social traffic only, as defined by Google.
With that in mind, here’s the current breakdown of the 30 days of traffic since removing the share buttons.
Organic search – 58.1%As you can see from the previous chart, organic search remained pretty consistent at around 58%. Other and email also remained consistent.
What was interesting is the rise in percentage of direct traffic along with the decline in social traffic. Especially if, as Jim mentions in his tweet, much of that increased direct traffic is from social media.
The thinking behind that is simple: if there are no share buttons on a post, it’ll either be ignored, or the URL will be copy pasted and shared directly to a network.
[bctt tweet=”Does removing social sharing buttons hinder or benefit a blog? #socialshares” username=”CraftBeersblog”]
If we think along the lines of social sharing buttons (and their ease of sharing) accounting for the social traffic in the chart, it makes sense that this section would see a decline.
However, if the increase in direct traffic is a result of manual sharing, that offers support to the argument by Sam Solomon that if people really love your content, they’ll share it.
Now, admittedly, this is as much anecdotal as it is empirical, given the way Google Analytics isn’t the greatest when it comes to slicing and dicing some of the data behind the data.
But it’s an interesting result, nonetheless, and gives a pretty good argument for anyone wondering how effective social sharing buttons are.
If the previous part of this post showed that removing sharing buttons doesn’t necessarily mean a lot percentage-wise, when it comes to actual traffic the story is a little different.
While direct is up and social is down from a percentage perspective, both have actually suffered from an actual traffic point of view, as you can see below (click image to expand).
As you can see, there are a lot of red arrows. Given, it’s not a full 30 days since the experiment, so I’ll update this post accordingly to include this one’s stats.
Regardless, it’s clear that removing buttons does impact real traffic – which, to be fair, I was kind of expecting.
After all, if you remove the ease of use to share, there’s more likelihood something won’t be shared, as Mitch Mitchell stated over on Twitter when I first started the experiment.
https://twitter.com/Mitch_M/status/675107840835624960
Note: I’d recommend clicking through to the bigger discussion around that tweet, some great thoughts and discussion points.
It wasn’t just Mitch that wasn’t a fan of the removal of sharing buttons.
I received a few emails from subscribers, as well as messages/comments on Facebook, that suggested removal of share buttons would stop some folks from sharing my posts.
Going by the stats from Google Analytics, it’d appear that they were right. Mostly.
One thing that should be mentioned is during the experiment, I closed my Google+ account. Given this used to be my #3 social referrer of traffic, some of the lost traffic can be accredited to that.
As a final comparison in share numbers, I used ShareTally to count the overall social shares in the 30 days prior to the experiment, and the 30 days without share buttons.
This is where things got a little bit interesting.
This ties back to the increase in percentage of sharing manually on social. As you can see, the posts got over 100 extra shares by not having buttons.
And yet… the actual traffic from these extra shares didn’t equate to the percentage benefits.
While there can be a few reasons for this, my own belief is this – with the sharing solution I use here, I can customize the way each post is shared.
This means I can create customized tweets, encourage readers to “tweet this” with the same customized tweet, optimize images for Facebook and Pinterest, and much more.
In essence, I can make the CTA for each blog post much stronger for each of the main social networks.
As someone who crafts copy for a living, I can be a bit more creative with how the post is described, which – in turn – when shared could attract more attention.
It’s not a given that this is the case, but it’s one of the reasons I believe has impacted traffic. After all, the share numbers are still there, just not the clickthrough.
So, how the post is positioned on social can mean a difference.
Keep in mind that it was the holiday period as well, and people may not have had as much interest in reading blogs.
All that aside, I was pleasantly surprised by the positive outcomes of the experiment.
Given that my core goal for this blog is conversations and email “conversions” (to plan ahead for less social networks), the experiment can be classed a success.
[bctt tweet=”Who knew that removing sharing buttons can increase email subscribers and blog engagement?” username=”CraftBeersBlog”]
From more standard metrics – site traffic and social traffic – the experiment was a “failure”. And that’s okay.
The whole point of blogging is to experiment to see what works for you, and what enhances the user experience and what inhibits it.
While I may yet remove sharing buttons altogether in the coming 12 months (I’m curious how the networks will play out in 2016), for now I’ll re-enable them again.
However, they’ll be pretty unobtrusive – sidebar floating as opposed to top and bottom of content for desktop readers, and removed altogether for mobile readers.
If the Social Warfare team is reading this post, it’d be great to have the option of what sharing solutions are active based on visitor. Perhaps a future addition?
In the meantime, I hope you’ve found this post useful for your own goals regarding social sharing options on your site – what are your thoughts regarding the future of social sharing?
Earlier this year, as summer started to get into full swing, I published a couple of posts that talked about getting back to pure blogging.
These posts – Why the Real Driver of Traffic is Content That Matters to You, and Pure Blogging and the Experience We Give Our Readers – saw me taking a step back and looking at how the chase for traffic, shares and monetization was making us forget the reason we started blogging in the first place.
Not for glory. Not for fame. Not for fortune. But for the sheer joy of writing (or video blogging, or podcasting).
The joy of just putting something out there, with no other agenda than to share your thoughts with the world, and see if anyone responded and started a conversation with you.
It’s the direction my own blog had been moving in for a while (from its initial premise of marketing and social media topics), and – going by the comments after each of the two posts linked above – many others wanted to see a return to the “pure blogging” approach.
So, after thinking about it for a while, and talking with some fellow bloggers whose work and style I admired, I launched the Pure Blogging project.
And it’s one of the most enjoyable projects I’ve been part of.
When you land on the Pure Blogging home page, one of the first things you’ll see is the bold tagline, “It’s all about the content.”
This is something that was the driver of the project to begin with (and remains that way today).
Instead of worrying about creating the kind of “viral content” [*cough*] that many bloggers and content creators are happy producing, Pure Blogging is the antithesis of that.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Here’s to Pure Blogging, where the only thing that matters is the content. #pureblogging” quote=”Here’s to Pure Blogging, where the only thing that matters is the content. #pureblogging”]
No buzzwords. No clickbait titles that have little (or nothing) to do with the post. No easy listicles like “Top 50 Content Rules for Content Marketers”, blah blah.
Nope. None of that would be encouraged at Pure Blogging.
Instead, it’d be what moves you at the time of writing.
It could be a personal story. A story about someone or something that shaped who you are today.
It could be about personal battles, or supporting those going through battles of their own.
It could be a story about faith (or how faith was lost).
It could be something as simple as why someone has so many pets.
The only caveat that I gave the folks kind enough to be part of the project was simple – no hate, bigotry, bullying, or any of that crap. Everything else was pretty much good to go.
Because of this open approach, Pure Blogging has resulted in some amazing posts, and the kind of topics that more often than not get bypassed in lieu of “content this”, “social media that”, etc.
http://forbloggersbybloggers.com/1953-woody-old-spice/
http://forbloggersbybloggers.com/this-is-not-a-dress-rehearsal-this-is-your-life/
http://forbloggersbybloggers.com/a-question-of-faith-or-why-are-aliens-less-believable-than-religion/
http://forbloggersbybloggers.com/one-child-worth/
http://forbloggersbybloggers.com/wrestling-time-dinosaurs/
http://forbloggersbybloggers.com/the-day-i-died/
http://forbloggersbybloggers.com/a-writer-stops/
As you can see from these posts above, there’s a huge variety in the topics being discussed.
Some are funny, some are sombre. Some are introspective, some are optimistic. Others are somewhere in-between.
The one thing they all have in common, though, is they are written from the heart, and talking to you – the reader – as if you’re the only other person in the room.
In short, they’re pure blogging at its finest.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with creating content for the masses. There is zero wrong with creating content that needs to be created a certain way to meet business goals.
That was never the reason Pure Blogging was started.
Instead, Pure Blogging came to be simply to counter the easy, lazy way of content creation that seems to be ever more pervasive today.
If shares, comment counts and page views are the goals by which you set your content strategy, then Pure Blogging is probably not for you.
Although, ironically, by ignoring all of these goals and simply concentrating on the content, Pure Blogging has a decent amount of each – go figure!
However, if you’re a fan of blogging from the heart; blogging that inspires; blogging that makes you think differently from when you first landed on the page… then I invite you over to check out the posts currently on the site.
You may just find you have a new favourite blog. Well, apart from this one, of course… 😉
And if you’re finding you want a change from writing for social proof metrics alone, and you want to get back to creating the content that really matters to you, there’s an open invite to be part of the team, which you can find here.
Here’s to Pure Blogging, where the only thing that matters is the content.
I?m a little tired. Not physically. I could always do with a little more sleep, but then so can everyone.
No.
I?m more tired about the constant ?The End of PR?, ?The End of?Marketing?, ?The End of Blogging? and ?The End of Advertising? missives? that seem to be flying about at the minute.
I can?t open my email subscriptions without the latest link shouting?out ?The end of?. Where now for Industry X??.
It seems?that there?s an ?End of?? blog post for every *normal* one at the?minute.
Why?
Why do we have to bang the nails into the coffin of industries that?are still very much alive?
Why do we have to look at an industry that?s been around for years as ?ending?, just because there are new tools?available?
Is there really such a thing as an ending, anyway?
Instead of saying an industry is ending, how about we say it?s?mending instead? If an industry is really viewed as being broken, should?we be closing the door on it or helping it back on its feet?
If your pet breaks its leg in an accident, do you immediately want to? put it to sleep or do you love it back to health?
If you break the?point on your trusty pencil, do you sharpen it or throw it in the bin??Even when that pencil eventually writes its last word, you don?t stop using pencils ? you start afresh.
But it?s still with the same type of?pencil.
When you?ve taken your last step on a particular journey, it doesn?t mean your travels are over ? it simply means there?s a new journey to? begin.
It?s easy to say something is finished ? you don?t have to worry?about it anymore as it heads for that big garbage bag of irrelevance.
The harder part?is making irrelevant into relevant.
It?s not easy, but if there are solid enough foundations already there, isn?t it better than starting again?
