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Guests
Lorraine
EricaI’ve always been adamant that we stick to the ‘quality over quantity’ rule when it comes to blog posts. Speaking for myself, (Erica may be able to blog her heart out daily) the reason we only blog weekly is because I’m afraid that if I wrote more often, most of the posts would be drivel – I just don’t think I’ve got it in me to come up with something daily that others would find worth reading. Besides, I don’t write well under pressure. So to keep things interesting and (hopefully) keep the readers coming back, one of the things we turn to are giveaways and contests.
You know how when you’re pregnant, suddenly there are pregnant gals everywhere you look? Well in a similar way over the past week things have been jumping out at me causing me to reflect on where our site is heading and left me wondering: Are we in danger of the giveaways taking over?
1. I became conscious that 90% of my Tweets were advertising giveaways.
2. “@xxxx therein lies the issue. Authenticity versus lots of eyeballs. Some companies prefer the eyeballs.”
Do you ever spot an intriguing half conversation on Twitter and have to investigate further to see what the heck they are talking about? I do. I feel vaguely guilty ear-wigging, but hey, there is no such thing as a private conversation on Twitter. I’ll admit I’m a curious person; some (including my husband) would call me a skicky beak (an insult I’ve always wanted to use since it was hurled at Mrs Mangel by the poodle-permed Charlene in Neighbours circa 1987). The above mysterious eyeballs Tweet was one I was drawn to. And it turned out that the root of the conversation was a Tweet about giveaway sites:
“OK, feel confused. I have reviewed 3 blogs requesting product for giveaway/review that are just review/giveaway sites. Is that blogging?”
3. My current bed time read is Chris Evans’ It’s not what you think. In a rant about commercial radio gone wrong the UK radio and TV presenter writes “Entertainment must come before advertising. It can never be the other way around – content is king. In the long term, the audience will realise what’s going on and vote with their dials, anyone who presumes otherwise will be out of business, probably for good and rightly so. Surely, the better the entertainment, the more money you can make around that entertainment, but there has to be entertainment there to start with.”
I salute people who blog simply because they love to write and are good enough at it that people visit their sites for no other reason than to read the quality posts. I’m not claiming to be in that league of purist bloggers by any means. Of course we are trying to sell our book. That’s the reason we started a blog. But over the last two years our site has become much more to me than simply a promotional tool. I love hunting out or stumbling over guest blogs; posting news stories; finding quality innovative products to give away. And yes, most of the time I enjoy the blogging too – as long as I’m inspired and not trying to write under pressure.
It’s not the best time for this post given that our site is currently littered with giveaways and promotions as we lead up to our Twitter party. But the truth is we try to remain true to our brand and simply spread the word on great products designed with the objective of making a rookie mom’s life a little easier – a perfect example being the Wean Cubes which are the brain-child of mom Melissa Gunning that we’re featuring this week on the guest blog. I’m a great believer in moms (mompreneurs if you must) working together to help each other achieve their goals.
I hope on our site we’ve got the balance right. Do be honest and let us know what you think.
Filed under: Blogging Tagged: | blogging, Chris Evans, contests, giveaways, promotions, Twitter
