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| Best in NBA - Michael Jordan. Best in Golf - Tiger Woods. Best in blogging locally? |
This post is inspired by
Mrstyleking's recent post where he put himself in a comparison with a few other Singapore blog awards finalist and winners to see where he stand.
In his post, he pointed out a few facts about blog ranking and also highlighted one of the most popular tool that I use for my work to ESTIMATE* a blogger's influential power on the net.
Not only did he openly but also bravely compared his own blog stats with three other bloggers, 2 winners and 1 other finalist of the recent Singapore Blog Awards. In his post he also subtly (or maybe not) injected the fact that he has better readership than all 3 of them. And obviously better than mine considering the fact I've never been the best bath room reading material anyway.
So what makes a blog "best"? What are the judges' criteria since the winners did not have a better readership as compare to other finalist or MrStyleKing himself? Is readership everything? So what if you write good articles but you can't market it or no one is reading it cause your blog is being piled under the other 98612935714 blogs in Singapore? Is content still the king or is marketing yourself more important? Nice pictures or good command of English? What makes you a GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) in the industry? What puts you on the top of the world, shoulder by shoulder with Xiaxue or Mr Brown? Another same but different question,what makes you a popular or famous blogger?
Popularity Vs Fame I am not an expert when it comes to explaining words especially when it comes to English. (Really, I might fare better in my Cantonese.) To me the simplest way of explaining this is that
you can be famous but not popular and at the same time popular but not famous. Popular simply means people likes you and famous(Fame) basically means people knows you. Quote one of my friend who has nothing to do with the industry at all and asking this purely out of curiousity -
"All your so call famous bloggers friend all I never see or hear before leh. They are like HDB bloggers right? Popular and famous in their own neighbourhood but once they go into a big market nobody knows them. So you sure marketing product with them works?"Sad to hear but that is the hard truth smack right in most of our faces. I can attend media event and meeting new faces who tells me "Oh, Smith! That Smithankyou right? I've heard about you!" No doubt about such words making me feel all happy but the fact is that nobody knows me when I take the train or bus and in fact every where else. I'm just another Joe isn't it? So how much does Alexa ranking or your 100,000 readership tells regular people about you?
Nothing. So would you prefer to have 1,000,000 knowing you and only 10% likes you or 100 friends who really loves your writing? -
Choice.Have you ever asked yourself this question about who reads your blog? I do. I ask myself all the time like who are these people seriously. I am sure you have Newpaper to fill the slot of trashy writing if you really needed to read some. Why read my blog? What do they want from me and what should I do to be the "Best" in their eyes?
As a Reader. (Those that really enjoy following and reading blogs.)Blog readers like your blog cause you are interesting. Cause they want a life like yours. They want to be like you and eat the food and watch the movie you watch. They are your reader because of who you are. They are basically your fans. They would really love it when you keep updating your blog. In this case, content is king cause you keep them engaged and that's why they keep coming back for your content or way of writing.
As a Marketing/PR/Brand person. He or she probably don't really care about what you write as long as you write for his/her product or event. You will be the best if you join their campaigns and blogs for them religiously or even better with a video. They would love it when you don't blog about their competitors and would love it when you have a good positive image for their clients' product. They care about your numbers(Readership). The more the better and it will be the best if your blog comes with a clean layout that looks professional. They will only read your blog when they invited you for something.
As another Blogger/Friend. I will read your blog cause I like you as a friend. Cause I bump into you at another event and we probably took some pictures together and you featured me and linked me up. Your blog is best to me cause it's funny and you engaged me as a friend and I wish to know what is happening in your life. Your blog will be the best for me if you are pretty. I am shallow like this but this is my own reading habits. I love beautiful things and beautiful woman. Your blog will be the best to me if you are hot and you show me what I want to see.
As a mass Audience. They don't know who you are. They don't care who you are. They probably forget about your URL the moment they clicked the cross button. They fall onto your blog all thanks to Google. They probably Google about "Singapore best food", travel or some new gadget. (or in my case, some leaked of nude photos or boyzilian experience.) Basically they want information. Your blog will be "best" if you have all the information. Oh, and don't forget the postal code because it is GPS friendly. They probably leave your blog the moment they get what they were there for.
In conclusion...I am happy for Mr Style King for his readership and followers count is where it is today considering the fact that his blog is fairly new! I'm actually very
jealous impressed with how he get all the invites and concert tickets or what not. Blogging is like showbiz, it doesn't matter how long you are at it or how good you are as luck and "right time right place" plays a very big part. For example like myself, I had my Twitter account for the longest time and only at 1,900 followers and there are some who gets support from thousands of followers over night or in some cases after being in a movie that talks about their non-existent army life.
So what makes your blog the best blog? Is it you? Is it your content? Or is it even how you market yourself and the blog? Is being the best even possible when everyone is "selling" different product? Can we compare apple to banana? In fact the real question here is -
Does it even matter if you are the "best" or not? Mr.Smith, not popular, not famous, but never mind, as long as I enjoy it and have fun! *ESTIMATE: I use the word estimate cause I've a few tools I use for work but none of the traffic really says a lot so I choose to use the word estimate.
**This post does not represent any of my clients or organization I work for. This is purely my own opinion. 本故事纯属虚构，如有雷同实属巧合。
