Short and sweet today –
One of my favorite blogs, one I read everyday without fail, is Valeria Maltoni’s – Conversation Agent. First rate content always.
Apartment Blog Trunk
I gave up on RSS feed reading about a year ago as I spend more time in my inbox. Nearly every blog I read is done through Outlook now and as such I give more time and attention to the things I read. In other words, I generally do not skim the headline and move on.
About a month ago Valeria made the decision to truncate her email subscription delivery meaning we only see a portion of the message and are forced to click on a link to see the rest.
Result: I read fewer of Valeria’s material to the end. Sorry Valeria.
I understand the reasons for cited in her Saying it in 200 Characters post back on Aug 10, 2011.
My question – should apartment marketers truncate their blog post offerings? We are trying it a Mills [Shameless plug – the Mills Blogging Team is Putting a Dent in the #STL market place].
Would love to hear this communities thoughts? And, thank you in advance for taking the time.
0 Responses
This is a great question Mike, as I have wondered for some time now if we should remove the RSS Button and Email Button displayed at the top of each blog post. If you are doing this for links, and traffic, you get little to no value unless the reader visits your site. That said, that seems shortsighted, And, to your point, you still aren’t visiting Valerie’s site even with a “shorter” post aimed at getting you to click through.
E
Really appreciate you taking the time to chime in here – given your long run with the Urbane Life blog.
Our test at Mills might not prove out anything as we have a very limited number of email subscribers at this point. Nearly all of our traffic is organic and or intra-company sharing.
I had a Facebook friend chime in – #STL influencer – to say he hates truncated messages. I have to say – I am in that camp for now but want to test it out for my own piece of mind.
Interesting discussion Mike. I think it’s more a case of delivering your content the way people want to see it. I typically will click on the full article in my Outlook RSS (even if it’s there) to go to the site. Something about being on the site just gives me a better experience. But that’s me. I wish there was a way to give the people that sign up a choice. That would satisfy everyone I think.
Great idea! I don’t think it solves Valeria’s complaint about scrappers unless I am a complete misunderstanding of her beef.
In my opinion, at the end of the day the real goal here is to share content and perhaps make a ‘dent in the industry/world’ ;). We can still track things like subscription rates, comments, views, etc. I don’t think it will hurt in the long run. If people are compelled to read your content and possibly comment, you are doing your job. My guess is that if you really wanted to read it, you would click.
Could there be or is there an option for people to opt out of the truncated version or when the email is opened it could count as a view? Hmmm…someone make that happen!
MD!! Thank you for taking the time!
Your guess is right – I do CT to a few of the articles. Usually, the ones with compelling titles…
Is your thought then to go back to the way we were doing it before and scarp the test? I 100% open.
Thanks for the amazing job that you and the team are doing with this strategy – you all rock.
M
I guess its just me but I just don’t see the big deal. It’s one extra click. I do have an issue when that click leads to being forced to pay before reading the rest of the content or forced to subscribe to continue reading, but if that title or those first few sentences interest me, one extra click is irrelevant. And when I do subscribe, its because I’m a fan and one extra click in my inbox isn’t going to ruin it for me. Call me crazy.
I have a few bloggers that I follow that only show the shortened version in a reader or email. What it takes for me to keep reading is simply the power of the title and the opening lines in the post that make it important for me to continue on. That’s craftmanship to me. All too often a title has less than the necessary glitz and it reminds me of a limpy handshake. Reading some of the comments below helped me realize that subscriptions are not necessarily the golden fleece. We have seen excellent results by including portions of our blogs in our email marketing newsletter with a “read more” tag. We are about to launch a substantial campaign this fall to take it to the next level and see how those numbers translate. Currently we have an excellent click through rate with a weak email marketing approach. It will be interesting to see the future stats. Great topic sir.
M, I think the answer is a solid “depends.” It depends on your goals for the site and for the content that you’re sharing. If you need pageviews on your site (to sell advertising based on impressions or something along those lines), then truncate away. If the goal is simply to stay in front of the reader and keep your brand top of mind, I’d say don’t mess with it. Let them get the full effect however they want.