How a "trending" topic is bringing thousands of viewers to Steemit
A few years ago, a friend of mine told me about Medium, and suggested that I join. I didn't.
It's not that I didn't trust this friend. I knew he was probably right; however, when someone tells me to do something, I am, at times, reluctant.
Months later, I eventually decided to create a Medium account. But the reason I joined wasn't because anyone asked me to, it was because I noticed I was clicking on an increasing number of articles that lived on Medium. There were incredibly interesting pieces of content that I'd connect with, and it just so happened these pieces of writing existed on Medium.
I do "20 questions" for two reasons.
The first is that I strongly believe these interviews are interesting content. In my opinion, the eventual success or failure of Steemit will be heavily dependent on how strong and unique the content is.
The second is that I think there is a great opportunity to show influencers (as well as their thousands of followers) Steemit in a way other than saying: "Hey, you should go check out this site and create an account." As I mentioned earlier, a close friend told me I should check out Medium. This was a friend I trusted and someone whose opinion I respected. But I still chose not to. What are the odds of a celebrity joining Steemit due to an unsolicited request from a person he/she has never heard of?
But an influencer who agrees to my request is typically more than happy to share that content with his/her followers via Twitter or other social media networks after the interview. The result is: They are exposed to Steemit, and their thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) of followers are exposed to Steemit. And it's all because of good, relevant content.
The votes v.s. view count problem.
An issue that consistently happens on Steemit is that votes exceed view counts. I think it's obvious that these view counts look extremely suspicious to someone coming to Steemit for the first time. Why would more people upvote content than actually look at the content they're upvoting?
Take, for example, the #2 trending post at the time of writing this:
And look at the votes v.s. view counts:
This week, I came to a realization.
A couple of days ago, I penned this post about the fact my blog post had earned more views than the top 4 trending articles combined. The point of this blog post wasn't for me to complain, it was simply an observation about rewards v.s. actual interest in an article.
At the time, the view count on my interview was 500, but the beautiful thing is, that number has continued to grow at an impressive rate all week. And I feel very confident in stating: the people viewing it aren't Steemit users; rather, non-Steemit users who are stumbling upon this content elsewhere on the Internet.
As of right now, the view count on my interview with John Goehrke is at more than 1,700 views. (It went up another 400 overnight).
Keep in mind, this post has only been live for 4 days.
To put that into context... the view count for the 2017 Steemit Roadmap (an incredibly important document that many Steemit users would be very interested in reading) is just over 1,250. And this is a blog post by Ned and Dan that has been accessible for 24 days.
Where are these views coming from?
At first, I assumed that the traffic must have been coming from the Tweets I put out about this interview. I tagged both John and Genie in the Tweets, but neither one of them ReTweeted the link, so it was confusing me how this post was getting so much traffic. Here is a look at the analytics behind both Tweets:
It was clear that the traffic from this post wasn't coming from Twitter...
But then I noticed this...
When you Google "John Goehrke," the third link (it was second as of last night) that comes up is my "20 questions" interview with John. That means, one of the top search results for this popular name is a link directly to Steemit.
But will people even Google "John Goehrke?"
Yes. When a story is trending, people want to know more about the individual(s) involved. Here are some Google Trend maps that show activity behind the name "John Goehrke."
Past 12 months...
Past 7 days...
Why does this matter?
For me, this week has been an eye-opener with regard to what I do on Steemit. My "20 questions" series has focused on Steemit users and established influencers; however, I see the great opportunity to also jump on "overnight influencers" whose stories are trending. If these people were unknown in the past, there is an incredible opportunity to put content out there, which is 100% unique. Also, there is an opportunity to land on that first page of Google when Internet users begin Googling names they've never heard of, which are landing in their "trending" feeds on Facebook and Twitter.
At the end of the day, that unique content, which people can't find elsewhere, is what is going to bring new users to Steemit
I get pretty excited when a post of mine brings in a lot of Steem... but this whole view count thing is giving me a new buzz :)
I tweeted this out to 55,000 followers on Twitter - let's see what that does LOL!!
Wow! Thanks so much for doing that.
How had I not previously come across your Steemit blog? You're an incredible writer, and I'm making a note of going back and checking out your previous posts.
thanks Wade - I appreciate that. BTW, I had one day on Twitter where I had an enormous amount of Rt's - I checked Twitter Analytics but never could get to the bottom of it - It was a one-off. Lately, I'm letting the Twitter site slide simply b/c as a writer I need feedback - it's part of my platform, but isn't really doing much than generating Rt's of links I post to my website
It must of worked 55K twitter followers.
I'm glad, Cassidy :)
I have noticed from the very start (last summer) that Steemit posts do Very Well in search engines. I'm glad yours brought so many visitors here!
My tweet of your post brought 44 link clicks from 1280 impressions:
https://twitter.com/KennyCrane/status/829410784824397826
I tweet out several posts a week. I encourage others to do the same. We can't influence who people search for, but we can get steemit posts on twitter. The more tweets the better. The author's tweet of their own post can bring some views, but if many others also tweet the post, the effect is multiplied!
Awesome! I didn't even see your Tweet before, but I appreciate you helping to share the story :)
That's a great point (helping to Tweet out others' Steemit posts). I agree 100 per cent.
Awesome piece, thanks for sharing! Upped and resteemed.
That´s why we all should optimize our content for search engines. Since the editor enables us to use HTML, we have all the necessary tools. I´ve recently published a short tutorial about key word optimization on steemit: https://steemit.com/howto/@surfermarly/how-to-optimize-your-steemit-blog-for-google-and-encourage-organic-traffic-9-steps-tutorial
It´s not only about the (exclusivity of) content, it´s also about how it´s prepared for search engines like Google.
Wow, I've bookmarked this post. Some incredible information! I would love to see a tool such as Yoast included within Steemit to make this easier for all users.
Yeah that would be great!
Thanks, I am glad you considered that helpful :)
the problem is... that optimizing content for people which are outside of Steemit is bad in short term for authors. They prefer to focus on users on platform, which already have a lot of SteemPower. Votes from 100 new users which will find your article in Google and even register on Steemit because of your article... those 100 votes will be worth close to nothing.
guilds could actually help with that, if they would focus only on content which is very popular also outside a Steemit but on Steemit is undervalued.
This is something the large stakeholders themselves should be paying attention to. Getting actual traffic onto Steemit.com = providing value to the network that should be rewarded.
That´s true, @noisy. I fully agree. SEO is surely an investment in the future and results will be seen in the long run. I totally understand that it´s a lot (maybe too much) work to do for the majority of authors. That´s why some helping tools (included in the editor) would be brilliant (keyword setting for instance).
Regardless, articles like this one here increase at least the awareness. That´s already a big step.
A good point here. Thanks for sharing!
You are on point with the views to votes inconsistencies. I feel the example you shared was not even such a bad one though.
My most recent post has less than 1 view per every four votes.
I regret to sound ungrateful, because obviously I'm happy about the $40 dollars, but I know that I would prefer 169 people to have read it and only 39 to upvote it, even if it reduced my pay out to a couple of dollars.
I'm often seeing posts with hundreds of votes and no comments, which I believe you are completely right when you say can spark some skepticism in the mind of anyone viewing from off-Steemit.
How do we fix it though? I tried reducing the size of my post and even putting the words 3 minute read within the title to get more engagement from those who haven't the time, but that has shown to be unsuccessful.
I'm hoping that when the achievements mentioned on the road map arrive, they will encourage users to actually pay attention to posts rather than just upvoting them and moving along. We shall see. But I know for me, I appreciate user engagement and people taking the time to read what I have spent my time writing, just as much as I value the monetary rewards- if not more.
Well done on hitting the first page on google by the way! And without SEO.. You are doing a good thing for Steemit.
Thanks for this comment.
I agree, the example I took at the time was a quick scan of the trending page, and definitely not a knock at @krnel (I certainly hope it didn't come across that way). Many of my posts have 15 views and 80 upvotes, so the same thing happens to me as well. This trending 20 questions situation (way more views than upvotes) is a rare instance, and showed me that it is likely content that is connecting with people outside of Steemit.
It seems as though this is starting a conversation with regard to the views v.s. upvotes. Some people have possible solutions as well, so hopefully there is something that the majority can agree is good for Steemit.
Yes, I noticed some good comments on the post.
I think this revelation has got me very curious now. I may go and look at my recent posts and see if there are any that have had views from outside of Steemit..
EDIT: I had a look and I noticed three pizzagate posts that had 500-800 views in contrast to only a 100 or so votes. There was also a recent satirical post about a Trump impeachment that had 50 or so more views than upvotes in spite of a voting trail picking that one up.
I think you are bang on the mark about trending topics gaining attention for Steemit. I am going to make more of an effort to make posts relating to current trends, as well as word my titles in a manner that matches what people will be typing into the search bar on google.
If it helps Steemit, then it helps us all.
Great post @wadepaterson. I agree about unique content driving users to Steemit. In the past I would post cigar reviews for my fellow facebook users, which by the way were short hand and did not compare to whats available on other sites.., however with Steemit I feel invested, I want to produce quality, and I want to improve even more until I am the best. I will keep posting, because people searching for a cigar review years from now will find Steemit articles I have made.
Thank you for this great article!
I recently started tweeting my recipes after noticing them doing quite well on google searches. You are right here and this is fabulous stuff. It's the way to drive people in!
Awesome stuff. The more eyes on Steemit content, the better.
What a powerful article exposing the state of our platform, its potential on the web in general, and its social potency. Awesome work, thanks for sharing this goodness with us all! All for one and one for all! Namaste :)
Wow. Thanks for that compliment. I've been fascinated by how many people clicked on my interview this week and I wanted to dig into why that was happening and how I can leverage that information going forward.
Your article was quite educational in that fashion, thank you so very much for sharing this with us and it has been a pleasure to be able to provide for some extra goodness going your way! Namaste :)
Thanks! Followed.
By the way it's easy to mark up the numbers if they're causing too much confusion rather than positive feeling -- just add the number of votes to the number of viewers. I'll make a github issue for this.
that would be terrible idea. Having 260 views... and only few or no comments will be equally depressing. That would cause even worse feeling of ghost town.
We need to discourage autoupvoting. In my opinion, rewards for curation should be removed.
I vote for good content regardless whether I will be reworded or not. I know, that I could wait few minutes to receive even greater reward for curation... but I prefer to upvote content immediately to support good content even stronger.
There is a reason why other social media websites do not have to pay for peoples votes. People really like to vote if something is worth voting for.
I appreciate both comments/thoughts here.
I don't know that adding the number of votes to number of views will solve the problem. It's not so much that this is causing confusion as it'd be valuable to be able to identify which posts are are trending due to high view count (not only which posts are trending due to Steem earnings).
Thank's for sharing your opinion, i've also been thinking about this IMHO removing rewards curation would solve the problem in the root.
Removing rewards completely would be rather big step, but with new upcoming feature of communities, it would be great if each community could set own rules. It would be great opportunity to test various variants.
We need more discussion on this topic! :)
Very cool, thanks! Pretty soon, the possibilities will be limitless.
That's the hope :)
Yup, this is SEO 101 and exactly why I put in the extra effort to SEO my images, add video and other media to my posts. Then I Tweet them all over the internet. I use RSS to share certain content all over the web to include Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, Google Plus, Diigo and a few other places. All of these links point back at the articles and lift it in search. This is just good SEO practice for users on Steemit. I see you use H1 and H2 tags in your posts as well. Great work!
I think your actions are a great example for all of us who are hoping to take our SEO efforts to the next level!
Stay tuned for your 20 questions! It's been a busy week, but they will be coming eventually!