I decided a long time ago that my main audience will be myself in the future. A blog post is the output of a project which at a minimum forces me to organize my thoughts on something important, and usually involves getting my hands dirty to understand something at a deeper level. I don't care about SEO because I'm writing for myself, not robots. That said, I feel for people trying to monetize because I know I never could.
Some notes on influenceering
51–60 of 106 posts
Re: Some notes on influenceering
#52I decided to stop writing blog articles and my podcast recently. It's just a ton of work and non existent gain.
Unless I wanted to do current news and entertainment, traction is just near impossible. At some point, there's no point dreaming of how things should be, or what could be, but look at the cold hard reality that is today.
Re: Some notes on influenceering
#53> Some of my most popular posts are throwaway quips and memes that went viral on social media. One of my life’s crowning achievements is this: [witty, throwaway, quip tweet]. > In contrast, some of the work I put weeks or months into essentially lost the SEO game and gets nearly zero traffic ... Even though I don’t write for money, there is an immense pressure to produce clickbait — even if simply to add “hey, since…
Michael Goldharber - People have limited attention to give anything, but unlimited capacity to receive attention.
The Attention Economy has been inflated exploiting the above inequality.
Bottom line is the social media is not designed to optimize allocation of limited Global Human Attention. It does a fine job squandering it. And people are begining to notice.
Re: Some notes on influenceering
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Closer to the minimal amount of information I need It makes me wonder what this 'need' is that can be filled by memetic drivel.
If I had to guess, "memetic drivel" gives off the same subconscious signals as safe, healthy communities. Demonstrating that the speaker is at ease, receives broad support from listeners, and can say things without fear of reprisal.
That's very interesting food for thought, thanks!
Re: Some notes on influenceering
#55> Some of my most popular posts are throwaway quips and memes that went viral on social media. One of my life’s crowning achievements is this: [witty, throwaway, quip tweet]. > In contrast, some of the work I put weeks or months into essentially lost the SEO game and gets nearly zero traffic ... Even though I don’t write for money, there is an immense pressure to produce clickbait — even if simply to add “hey, since…
> The highest engagement content content of mine tends to be thoughtless social media comments I make without thinking.
I think this goes deeper than just comments. I've noticed a similar phenomenon with artists posting their work. Some of their most engaging posts tend to be pencil sketches, rather than their most polished pieces.
I think we tend to be more impressed with things that seem like they were achieved effortlessly, in general. If I was to guess, I'd say it might have something to do with our brains craving energy efficiency, and rewarding us for discovering someone who's more efficient than we are at some task.
Re: Some notes on influenceering
#56[deleted]
Re: Some notes on influenceering
#57> Some of my most popular posts are throwaway quips and memes that went viral on social media. One of my life’s crowning achievements is this: [witty, throwaway, quip tweet]. > In contrast, some of the work I put weeks or months into essentially lost the SEO game and gets nearly zero traffic ... Even though I don’t write for money, there is an immense pressure to produce clickbait — even if simply to add “hey, since…
> The highest engagement content content of mine tends to be thoughtless social media comments I make without thinking. I think this goes deeper than just comments. I've noticed a similar phenomenon with artists posting their work. Some of their most engaging posts tend to be pencil sketches, rather than their most polished pieces. I think we tend to be more impressed with things that seem like they were achieved eff…
> effortlessly
Re: Some notes on influenceering
#58> Some of my most popular posts are throwaway quips and memes that went viral on social media. One of my life’s crowning achievements is this: [witty, throwaway, quip tweet]. > In contrast, some of the work I put weeks or months into essentially lost the SEO game and gets nearly zero traffic ... Even though I don’t write for money, there is an immense pressure to produce clickbait — even if simply to add “hey, since…
My experience on the internet suggests that high-signal information usually has very low memetic fitness. All the good sources of information I've found have been buried away and I've come across them serendipitously. Not particularly surprising though, entertainment is the lowest common denominator so it's much easier for that kind of stuff to spread. High-signal information is the complete opposite: very few people…
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Re: Some notes on influenceering
#59> Some of my most popular posts are throwaway quips and memes that went viral on social media. One of my life’s crowning achievements is this: [witty, throwaway, quip tweet]. > In contrast, some of the work I put weeks or months into essentially lost the SEO game and gets nearly zero traffic ... Even though I don’t write for money, there is an immense pressure to produce clickbait — even if simply to add “hey, since…
I think the dichotomy here is a false one. There is plenty of well-researched, in-depth content that does well on social media. The trick is that it’s also presented in an accessible way that provides value at every step, even the “superficial glance” one.
The mistake many of the “I spent hours researching this piece” creators is that they don’t package that content in an accessible way. Instead it’s a huge block of text without any coherent organization or entry point. Ergo it’s not surprising that it does worse.
Re: Some notes on influenceering
#60One of my most ambitious projects, I spent nearly every weeknight for 3 months building a tool. I made a good video to present it, and a website. It barely got 100 users.
Then for fun, I randomly made a 60 line bookmarklet, converted it to a chrome extension, posted a shitty video, and it grew to 100,000+ users in like a week.
The masses absorb drivel, not true effort