I promise you. This is eventually a baseball post. It just requires a slight diversion first.
I have some ads on my blog. Hopefully there aren’t so many that they’re distracting or annoying. (If they are, let me know.) But they’re there in case they interest you. It’s just a little way for me to try and see if I can get this blog to be self-sufficient and see if that will allow me to do more fun things.
So, like most people, when I added the ads I did a little bit of research into how to make the ads as effective as they can be. Naturally, this being the internet, there are plenty of people out there giving you tips and tricks on how to get people to view your blog so they will view your ads. Some ideas?
You can use pictures. Pictures attract people’s attention. If they see a picture in a thumbnail, they might be more likely to click to your blog looking for more. Pictures also show up in image searches, which gives you yet another way for people to stumble upon your blog.
Linking to other posts in your blog is another great tip. If someone is reading a post including a recent interview with Miss Bay State, it stands to reason that they’d be interested in an interview with Miss Cambridge. Or even Miss Vermont. So, adding links to capitalize on those thoughts brings along even more hits for your site.
There are timing ideas. Posting in the morning allows your fresh post to show up all day. But, posting in the evening has it show up when people are apt to be home from work.
Social media helps. Posting a link to you blog on its Facebook page, or especially your personal Facebook page gets more exposure for your post. Tweeting a link on Twitter. Including a photo with a link on Instagram. Snapping a picture of your post. Pinning the post to Pinterest. All those places offer ways to get more people’s eyes on your posts. The more eyes are on it, the more likely there is engagement.
You can write clever titles to hopefully pique someone’s interest? “How to maximize revenue” is probably better than “My views on MLB.”
I’m sure there are even more. But, all these tips seem to ignore the best way to increase revenue. Write lots of quality posts. If you do that, people will seek you out. They’ll tell their friends about you. Sure, you can tweet a link to your 1000 followers. But, what if 100 people loved your post so much they tweeted it to their 100 followers to say how awesome the post was? Or 100 people tweeting to 1000 followers? Those are numbers that are much harder to reach on your own.
So, why do people talk about all the other tips? They’re much easier. You don’t need any talent to tweet out a link 1000 times. It takes a different talent to write a catchy headline than it does to write a 5000 word post that people want to read. It doesn’t matter what you post if you’re just posting it when people happen to be online reading any post they find. It’s a whole different skill set.
Which is why it always bothers me when MLB does it.
(See? Told you I’d tie it in.)
I’m assuming that MLB has some pretty smart people working for it. They know how television and entertainment is supposed to work. But, they still keep taking the easy way out. When should we hold World Series Games? How about at night when people are flipping channels anyway. Certainly not at a time when kids can see them. We don’t want to build our brand. We want to have people fall into us by mistake. We don’t want to be Seinfeld. We want to be the show after it that people watch just because.
It happened again with the intentional walk. They wanted to pretend that the game was improving. Look! We made a change to cut down on game times. Come watch us! You know what else would cut down on game times? Dropping an ad or two from the between inning break. Instead of cutting 20 seconds a game, it would be more like ten minutes. That’s significant.
But, it wouldn’t be easy. Because it would seem to cut down on revenue. Fewer ads equal fewer dollars.
But, they’re not looking at the long term. Fewer ads mean shorter games. Shorter games mean more viewers. More viewers mean more viewers tweeting that they’re watching games. That leads to even more people watching the games. That means you can increase the ad prices for the ads you have left.
Bingo.
You’ve now compensated for the loss in revenue from dropping one ad per inning break. And, you’ve increased your viewership. And, it’s not just viewers tricked into watching. They’re viewers who want to watch. Who want to watch again. They’re viewers who will follow you anywhere.
They’ll watch a daytime World Series game with their kids. They’ll buy your merchandise. They’ll spread your word.
You can’t do all that by following the “top ten ways to get more blog hits” lessons. You can only do it by “producing quality content.” I know it’s harder. I’m not even saying that I’m capable of doing it myself.
But you’d think MLB could.
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