- Web wins in White House race – but besides being good for Arianna Huffington’s daily me blogging – is it any good for you voters out there?
More than a decade ago the technology specialist, Nicholas Negroponte, pro-phesied the emergence of the Daily Me – a fully personalized newspaper.
During these times, the US presidential election campaign has demonstrated that the personalized newspaper is becoming ever more reality. As well, candidates have shown that they can use new media very effectively.
For instance, the Obama campaign folks have proved particulary adept at harnessing the viral properties of YouTube. Everybody from CNN to Realclearpolitics.com have made political blogs and websites central to their coverage and Arianna Huffington – the Huffingtonpost.com’s editor-in-chief – has created a website that is thriving.
Where is all this traffic coming from
ComScore, an internet ratings firm, has benefited as well from all this craze by being quoted much about this trend and web metrics it gathers. It estimates that Huffingtonpost.com and Politico.com, two politically focused sites, have seen their traffic roughly triple from the same period last year.
But ComScore’s statistics have some real limitations since they are based on panel data excluding any user surfing from work or using a business computer to do so as stated here:
CEO Perspective: Comparing the Proverbial Apples to Oranges
- comScore’s panel does not measure usage from public or office-based shared machines (e.g. shared machines at schools, libraries, Internet cafes, group PCs at work, etc.), nor does it include usage from college dorms, government offices, the military, school/university offices, or mobile phones/PDA’s.
In the above post by the CEO of ComScore it becomes obvious that the firm is not ready to manage social media successfully. In particular, when readers comment and ask important questions, the conversation has to be kept going and, most importantly, the CEO has to answer precisely. Surfers are still getting this page as one of the top results when searching for ComScore…. When will ComScore join the conversation and respond to reader comments?
Will the traffic endure when the campaign signs come down?
So know that we know that the traffic measures are not that accurate, will readers still flock to these sites once the election will be over?
Many sites, such as the Huffingtonpost.com, are news aggregators with a small percentag exclusive and in-depth content created by Huffington staff. What we think about quality content being wasted this way from the content owner’s point of view we have explained in more detail here:
Google, Digg.com and Twitter: Why such Drive-By Traffic is of Little Value
But some like Realclearpolitics.com have already seen the writing on the wall and supplement political commentary and news aggregation with sports and financial market news.
These sites hope that with expanding their coverage beyond the US presidential campaign, they will keep some of today’s readers and make them regulars by 2009.
Does all that traffic mean you have influence?
The above suggests that many of these websites that have emerged as indispensable clearing houses of election news, will have to cope with a drop in traffic, when the campaign signs come down.
Some experts believe that all this information on the web helps voters to be better armed to pick collectively through information. In turn, users can vet facts in the same way they might be doing on Wikipedia. Could be true, however, do not believe that this process means a better informed and knowledgeable electorate. We all know that validity is not reliability, neither does agreement by the masses (see Wikipedia) mean the truth.
So be vigilant and continue:
blogging for quality while attracting paying customers
Once again, unless your clients read your postings, who cares…. except that you may be pleased for the pageview statistics that are going through the ceiling. Nonetheless, will this increase sales of your accounting or investment brokerage services?
We should not forget that social media including your website or blog are about the bottom line. Namely, their only justification is helping you selling product, nothing more and nothing less.
Are we better informed thanks to Huffingtonpost.com and similar sites?
What we know for sure is that these sites have been speeding up the political news cycle just as 24-hour cable news channels did before them. And yes, campaign news may routinely break on the web by a blogger such as Arianna Huffington and her columnists that publish on her site, before working its way through the rest of the media.
But does it make a difference? Are we now better informed, do we know the candidates better, will we change our opinions having had all these additional outlets that bombard us ever faster with ever more news and data?
These things are still not known as of today or are they? And just to restate, gathering news from everywhere and feeding it to the masses via the Web does not result in readers becoming more skilled about new media. Neither does it mean your readers are more skilled in selecting quality instead of trash content, does it?
And finally, will all this bombardment with news and facts get you to change your vote or, most importantly, motivate you to go and cast your vote instead of failing to do so again this time?
Bottom Line or should you care?
Looking at sites delivering political content and their success in the US makes one wonder. Apparently it is not that dfficult to get lots of subscribers. Unfortunately, most of us will rarely if ever go beyond 10,000 subscribers to our e-mailed content.
Trying to go beyond 10,000 subscribers might be an unrealistic goal for a small and medium business (SME) . As a profitable and fast growing SME you must focus on your customers and any potential clients you want to reach. Neither do you have the time it takes to build such a huge subscriber list [e.g., on weekends – get a life – spend time with your family instead of checking the flood of tweets on Twitter :-)].
Having said the above, reality is that most writers, including myself, are obsessed over unique visitor or pagewview statistics. Therefore, whenever I get a chance I check on these statistics. However, putting a bit more focus on the wider measures of success such as reader comments is helpful. For instance, are these comments in depth, do they add beef? For a good example of what we mean see here:
Stephanie Booth on Safer Internet Day 2008 – 7 reasons why campaigns against online pedophiles must be coordinated
Such commentary can give you the motivation to create that great content that your readers and customers love reading. In contrast, having plenty of comments written for your posts with 99% adding little if anything does not give you the quality of conversation you wish to have with your readers – clients. See an example here:
2008-04-06 – Arrianna Huffington – Sunday Roundup
A more technical example about the low quality of much of the content or conversation blogs and websites get is shown here:
Apple lags MS in security response
Conclusion
Yes, the internet has moved from support act to leading role in delivering political content in the US. But that does not mean it’s of better quality and substance than the fare you get from traditional news outlets such as CNN, Fox or Bloomberg.
For an SME, the best strategy is to focus on serving your customers with content they care. Forget the 10,000 or more pageviews each day. Such numbers are very likely not in your cards. However, serving great content with good comments by your readers will get you more traffic. Most importantly, it will improve your standing as an expert and level of trust your clients have in the quality of your work. If that will not help your bottom line, what will?
Hence, forget Arianna Huffington – she is in a different league. However, she can teach you plenty of tricks when it comes to selling herself and using new media most effectively to increase sales. She is definitely a case study for how to market yourself better than nearly everybdoy else — except maybe for Paris Hilton — but that is another story.
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