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Tuesday, August 30, 2011

A great authoritative new and positive blog post about you that you can retweet for free

I have been reading Zarrella's Hierarchy of Contagiousness: The Science, Design, and Engineering of Contagious Ideas on my Kindle. It is essentially a scientific approach to social media marketing. It is not that I am overly interested in this subject, but I was looking for something to read on my Kindle while exercising and they were giving the Kindle version away free.

The author of the book, Dan Zarrella, bills himself as a social media scientist and has conducted years of research on social media  and what he calls, "Contagious ideas" (although I would argue that social media hasn't really been around long enough for anyone to conduct years of research on it). I think "contagious ideas" are what most people think of as viral marketing or in other words the thing that happens when you forward links to videos of chimps peeing into their own mouths and falling off from a log to all of your friends and they in turn forward it to all of their friends so before you know it, everyone is watching videos of chimps peeing into their own mouths and falling off a log.

 In an effort help you  infect people with your contagious ideas, Zarrella has compiled lists of words to use in the Twitter world that will increase or decrease your retweetability (which I used to think was an uncontrollable urge to watch reruns of Warner Brothers cartoons featuring Tweety Bird) . The most retweetable words are: you, twitter, please, retweet, post, blog, social, free, media, help, please retweet, great, social media, 10 (which is technically a number and not a word), follow, how to, top, blog post, check out, new blog post. The least retweetable words are: game, going, haha, lol, but, watching, work, home, night, bed, well, sleep, gonna, hey, tomorrow, tired, some, back, bored, listening.

In theory then, I could post the following and get retweeted beau coupe times:  "Oh twitter you, please check out and retweet my 10 great new blog posts that help you  learn how to get top free social media tips." But if I post: "Game going haha but hey noone is watching at work lol & at night I'm gonna sleep well because I'm tired and bored of listening-Back tomorrow," no one will retweet it. We'll see, because I just tweeted both inane sentences.

Although Zarrella focuses a great deal on Twitter, he also touches on blogging. Basically he states that people will more likely read your blog if a) you present yourself as a guru or authority on a subject, b) write positive stuff instead of doom and gloom and c) don't write about yourself, because no one wants to read about you. They would prefer to read about them or something that is relevant to them. He also suggests that people will more likely read something that is written very simply with lots of nouns and verbs and not a lot of adjectives and adverbs.

Zarrella writes all of this in a very authoritative manner and seems very positive that he is right. And he seems to be directing all of this at me since it seems I have been violating all of these rules for years now which would explain why so few people read my blog. Though, one could argue that I am an authority on writing about my life since I know nothing about yours.

But hey, enough about me. Let's talk about you. You're obviously a fire, water, air or earth sign and serious, yet carefree. You like long walks on the beach while sitting by the fire enjoying a good book or television program while sipping red or white wine with a beer back. You don't like the two-party political system and wish everyone would quit talking about the economy and the weather. And I bet you've danced with the devil in the cold moon light.

So please, please follow my blog. It's all about you anyway!






4 comments:

Nachtigall said...

lmao... oh how I do love your words!

Time said...

Thank you :)

Benignjamin said...

Should I spare you my. "Awsomley Devine anurysm blowing Benignjamin"

I don't blog, so I just post tidbits here and there. They are
Serendipitous to me and to those who know me but others find me out of sync.

Or so it goes.
Benignjamin

Time said...

Benignjamin,

I appreciate insync or out of sync comments. So feel free to post as many tidbits as you see fit.