Wednesday, June 21, 2006

This is why I'll never be an A-Lister....

...cause my self-promotional skills suck.

Last week I noticed that Marketing Sherpa was accepting nominations for 'best advertising and marketing blogs'. So I tried to nominate The Viral Garden (found out the blog has to be created sometime last year), then when I saw I couldn't, I tried to nominate BMA, and it threw up an error when I submitted the nomination form, so I said to hell with it, and forgot about it.

Yesterday I saw on another blog that the nominations were up, so I went back to Marketing Sherpa to check them out, and sure enough, BMA appeared to be about the only blog in the blogosphere that wasn't nominated. At first I got ticked, because here BMA is continuing to grow, with monthly traffic increasing every single month since it began, and the daily traffic average is now up to over 1,400 people a day.

So after almost coming to the realization that our traffic reports were wrong, and that BMA must actually suck, I went back and looked at the list of nominees again, and realized I had never heard of many of them. Doesn't mean they are bad, just that I had never heard of them. So I went and clicked on a few of them to see what they were about, and noticed the same thing at every one of them.

Every one of them had just left a post asking their readers to nominate them for Marketing Sherpa's blog awards. Of course, it never occurred to me to do the same thing for BMA.

I was talking to someone about such awards, and they told me that these awards 'really don't matter'. In a way they are right, but then again if they matter to the readers, then they matter. When a reader sees that a blog has 'been nominated by Marketing Sherpa as one of the best marketing blogs', then it matters.

So I guess my self-promotional skills need some brushing up. Ah well there will surely be another set of awards coming up soon...

18 comments:

Unknown said...

It'll be interesting to see how their results compare with other blog rankings. You're right in that Sherpa's starting point was not any sort of ranking but plain and simple nominations---in other words, a single nomination gets your blog on the ballot, and then it's up to the bloggers to self-promote and rack up enough votes to rise to the top. I tend to think your blog ranking method is a more accurate reflection of the quality of popular blogs, as it doesn't rely on hit and run self-promotion tactics.

Anonymous said...

You should just make your own poll, and only nominate youself. Then you'd win, for sure!

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't worry about it Mack. I think a better form of recognition is getting a positive endorsement from a respectable and well known individual or mass publication. The top 25 concept is still an amazing idea—you've got a bunch of other A-listers hooked. No small achievment.

Sherpa Shmerpa. ;)

Anonymous said...

I heard they were blocking 'Bama IP addresses!

They're scared of you, Mack!!!

[a private service message from the conspiracy of one committee]

Anonymous said...

Don't worry about it, you don't need the publicity. Personally, I was keeping an eye out for it and when the email went out I submitted. I looked at it as a free link to my site for a week or so.

Anonymous said...

Oops, forgot to leave my name on the last post

Eric Frenchman
www.ericfrenchman.com

Mack Collier said...

"I wouldn't worry about it Mack. I think a better form of recognition is getting a positive endorsement from a respectable and well known individual or mass publication."

Bingo.

As for the self-promotion, the funny thing is, if any of you had asked me if you should promote your blog for the nomination, I would have said to do it without hesitation. It just seems 'cheesy' for me to do it for my own.

I dunno maybe I need to get over myself.

BTW Clyde maybe they are blocking dial-up IPs....and since I'm the last person using dial-up to get on the internet....

Anonymous said...

Mack, I think you're going to have to explain this dial-up thing further. How is that possible? It drives me crazy if my computer locks up for 3 seconds. I don't think I'd have any hair left with dial-up!

Anonymous said...

Hey Mack, I think you were dead on in your post. You missed an opportunity to take things up a notch. Sherpa is a credible source of marketing information and their tacit endorsement, even in the form of a nomination, could only be good.

This is a MARKETING blog after all -- and a damn good one. For some reason, we marketers seem to be more than a little uncomfortable when it comes to marketing ourselves.

I've been watching John Jantsch post about the awards and I think he did it tastefully and effectively. With a simple announcement about the nominations on June 12 and then a post today about the voting.

Your Top 25, however, is a stroke of genius.

J.D. said...

Screw the contests. The worth of your blog is in the people who read it, and yeah, maybe you missed out on a little something, but you're not even a year old in the blogging thing and look where you're at! If you and all your blogs keep growing, by this time next year people will be nominating you without you even mentioning it.

I've always thought you put too much emphasis on these contests and various ranking devices. Just keep writing the good stuff.

Mack Collier said...

Paul I think it's one of those 'never had it so I can't miss it' deals. Believe me I do plenty of cussing at the monitor ;)

Doug I think my problem is, I've seen plenty of other bloggers that go to some truly outrageous modes to promote themselves. I still remember seeing one A-Lister blogger that told his readers that if they would LINK to him, he would add their blog to his BLOGLINES! IOW they link to him, and he'll agree to start READING them! I see such tactics and think to myself think 'don't be that guy'. I probably go too far the other way and don't self-promote at all, or at least not enough.

JD as many comments as you've made here about how many comments you've gotten on a post on your blog, or how many visitors you just had on your blog, I think it's obvious you take these 'ranking devices' as seriously as I do. ;)

I think the big problem I have with the self-promotion, is that it seems like any blogger that does that is trying to say 'hey! look what *I* did!'. No blogger does anything without their community. I've seen it here, I've seen it at BMA. TVG was already starting to grow, then the Top 25 list seemed to kick it up a notch. But the content didn't change, just that the community caught on.

Maybe I need to look at it as 'Self-announcement', instead of self-promotion ;)

Anonymous said...

I believe it was in Scoble's book: (paraphrasing) "It's not how many people you reach, it's which people you reach."

You've got a new reader, Mack. Thanks.

Mack Collier said...

"I believe it was in Scoble's book: (paraphrasing) "It's not how many people you reach, it's which people you reach."

You've got a new reader, Mack. Thanks."

Thanks Dirk, and you're exactly right. Here was one of the points I made in my 'Where's the Blogging Party' post on DF last week: "Focus on readers, not traffic. Right now there is someone reading your blog. Your job is to find a way to make sure that s/he comes back. Don't focus on trying to bring another visitor in, focus on delighting your current visitor, and let her tell her friends what a great blog you have."

BTW here's the link to Dirk's Blog

Dave J. said...

Hmm. And what if a blogger told his readers to install the Alexa toolbar? Shameless promotion would suddenly be punished by Mack.

Another thought--are these people in the nominations all A-listers? Or wannabes? The a-listers don't need the promotion and the b-listers who win won't garner much. (I've seen one previous winner whose blogline-count stay flat.) The only winner here is Anne Holland.

Anonymous said...

"Doug I think my problem is, I've seen plenty of other bloggers that go to some truly outrageous modes to promote themselves."

Yes. Please don't go there. It's a tough balance. Promotion is a good thing, but if you lose your focus on content and community, it would be a negative.

Judging from the comments here, your community very much appreciates your lack of self-promotion.

Mack Collier said...

"Hmm. And what if a blogger told his readers to install the Alexa toolbar? Shameless promotion would suddenly be punished by Mack."

It would? I think you might have misinterpretted my comments on this week's Top 25 list. That's not what I was talking about Dave.

Thanks Doug!

J.D. said...

Dang it, Mack, let me have my denial :)

Anonymous said...

Well, I should be up for the clueless award.
Didn't even know that my blog was nominated for something.

Someone out there has a sick sense of humor.
I get banned regularly from Google
and someone nominates me for an award?
What the h*** is the world coming to?