Articles by Glenn Stok
You're wasting your time when you try to get friends, family, and followers to read your content by posting about it on social media. They are not interested in your work because they haven't searched its subject for any particular reason.
The strategy with social media marketing is pointless, especially with Google sending traffic, as long as you write quality content that serves a purpose for organic readers. Therefore, it's better to let the algorithm bring reader traffic truly interested in what you provide in your content.
Your time is better spent putting effort into writing stellar quality content that ranks well with Google. You don’t need to struggle with getting readers when Google does an excellent job bringing an audience. So let the algorithm do the work. It does a better job attracting readers interested in your content than you would do posting about it.
Our published content suffers when we spend time on social media attempting to acquire traffic. After all, that’s what generates our revenue. We need to stay focused on putting effort into posting quality content that Google will rank highly.
It makes more sense to spend time updating existing articles. Google reacts favorably to authors who keep their content fresh with updated information.
Stellar quality and current information satisfy the search engine algorithms, bringing more readers than any amount of social media sharing can accomplish.
Many writers on the Medium platform decided to create a Facebook group where they shared links to their articles. The purpose was to get additional readers to engage with “claps” that indicated they liked the content.
That was an effort to get the algorithm to distribute their content to more readers. Unfortunately, most people in that group just clapped without reading, hoping that others would reciprocate with claps on their content
That game eventually backfired when the platform staff discovered what they were doing and removed “clapping” from the algorithm.
I avoided being involved with those Facebook groups since I preferred actual readers from organic search results. However, I have an account on LinkedIn and experimented with using it to connect with interested readers and other authors.
I made it clear in my LinkedIn profile that I only accepted connections with people who were genuinely interested in my written topics.
Two things occurred:
That second experience was disappointing. So I decided to try an experiment. I sent a message asking what subject of mine inspired them to connect. Very few ever replied! And many that did, had responded with absurd reactions.
I learned they never bothered to examine my profile first to determine if I were someone they would want to connect with for further camaraderie. After all, my profile included that note I mentioned earlier, stating that I only accepted connections if they were interested in my topics.
So it became clear they were blindly clicking the connect button in numerous profiles to build a false impression that they had a considerable following.
My experiment proved how useless LinkedIn is for authors to promote their articles. As I mentioned, I discovered that most people asking to connect were just doing it for illegitimate reasons. They had no interest in following an author for their content.
I had several ridiculous responses when I asked what caused their interest in their desire to connect.
For example, one fellow replied as follows:
“Sorry, but I just wanted to connect.”
He seemed to get confused when I explained:
“You asked to connect, so you must have had a reason. What are your interests? What inspired you to want to connect?”
His answer:
“I’m not sure.”
After many examples similar to that, I’ve become discouraged with LinkedIn. I want to have the time to work on creative and profitable written endeavors rather than vetting people for genuine and credible connections.
Is LinkedIn no longer viable for job seekers either? I never used it for that purpose, so I wouldn’t know that.
I understand that some authors use it to get writing jobs. But if the same craziness occurs with people trying to connect for unexplained reasons, I can see why that would hinder it for any job seekers too.
I think most authors use it in an attempt to get readers rather than posting job requests. But as I discussed above, it seems to be a waste of time.
Social media platforms are all about numbers. They try to get you to provide as much personal information as possible that they can use for dishonest purposes.
Think about how much time you spend posting and interacting on social media. Then determine what the return on all that work is.
When I did that analysis, I realized I was wasting time with anything I was doing on social media. I have more time to write articles that actually earn money when I don’t waste time struggling with social media.
When I pay attention to the benefits of various work, I notice that time spent creating new content for articles pays off much better than anything that can be accomplished trying to get more readers.
When we write quality content that provides well-researched answers to questions people search for online, we will get an audience without further effort.
