Fizzler Emma Davies has a successful and growing following on Instagram, and she’s found a way to convert followers there into email subscribers.
Her recent success—plus a slew of sentiment from experts claiming that blogging is dead once again—made her wonder if there really is a non-blog strategy for her content.
On the show today we dig way into it, adding some much needed wisdom and experience to what is often a far too black/white question.
Great conversation. Enjoy!
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““Blogging is dead again.” Don’t make it black/white.”
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Show Notes
FREE GUIDE to Unique Selling Propositions
20 Killer USP Examples displayed in a free PDF guide you can download now. Use these examples to get ideas for your own unique selling proposition.
Fizzlers: Is traditional blogging dead again? – Questions & Answers – Fizzle Forums
Emma Davies on Instagram: What do you think of getting photo tips in your IG feed like this?
Signal v. Noise moves to Medium — Signal v. Noise — Medium
Ep. 12: Why You Shouldn’t Move Your Blog to Medium, and Lazy Vs. Driven | Corbett Barr
How to Use Hosted Blog Platforms for SEO & Content Distribution – Moz
Theron Humphrey (@thiswildidea) • Instagram
Simple Green Smoothies ✌️💗🍃 (@simplegreensmoothies) • Instagram
Everything Doesn't Happen For A Reason — Tim Lawrence
Learn how to set goals that actually stick!
The Top 10 Mistakes in Online Business
Every week we talk with entrepreneurs. We talk about what’s working and what isn’t. We talk about successes and failures. We spend time with complete newbies, seasoned veterans, and everything in between.
One topic that comes up over and over again with both groups is mistakes made in starting businesses. Newbies love to learn about mistakes so they can avoid them. Veterans love to talk about what they wish they had known when starting out.
These conversations have been fascinating, so we compiled a list of the 10 mistakes we hear most often into a nifty lil' guide. Get the 10 Most Common Mistakes in Starting an Online Business here »
Blogging will be dead when people stop searching for things on Google.
Boom!
That’s kind of what prompted my question. I noticed the audience that found me via Google has nearly 100% bounce rate. But the audience that finds me from social has 60% bounce. I’d also noticed a change in my own behaviour from a couple of years ago – if I Google something, I’ll read the answer and move on. I never, ever subscribe to a list from a blog I find via Google. I *do* subscribe and buy from people I know on social.
I was trying to understand whether my own audience behaved in the same way – that’s why I tried some new things on IG. For me, for now, it’s working.
Your a bit late to the scene. With smart phones most people don’t search for blogs on Google and mostly use it for shopping and twitter.
Search for actual blogs and look at the dates of each link and you’ll find mostly old stuff form 5 years ago or often older.
I don’t get why she didn’t simply put the same content on her blog automatically by using something like Zapier to build a wordpress post for each of her Instagram posts. At least if she loses her Instagram audience, she’d still have her email list and her content.
Just seems silly to take the risk of losing all the content if you can so easily reproduce on her owned channel.
she’s on Instagram … which is basically in its “wild west days” like facebook used to be … and there will be a pull back just like fb had to pull back.
if all of this is inevitable, why not build on a real foundation? just seems like she isn’t taking her audience seriously if you ask me.
I agree. Like Steph said, I don’t think IG will be like this forever, maybe not even for the next year. But for now if I can reach an audience there that I can’t reach on my blog (because they never read blogs) – isn’t it worth investing some time there?
I think my bigger point was – should we all blindly follow advice that was true 2 years ago, without really knowing why we’re doing it. In this case, advice that to grow your audience on your blog, the more you post, the better.
The whole exercise was prompted because I *do* take my audience seriously. I respect their time, and their content consumption preferences.
Yeah. Seriously joking!
It’s a good point, and one I think Barrett made – why don’t I repurpose the content, or at least as you say, cross post? I have been saving the posts I’ve been doing on IG to do something else with. I don’t think they’re a good fit for my blog because they’re too short, but I think a roundup post is a good idea once I’ve got enough.
Chase! Please do a tutorial on how you make these guides in Keynote! Please :)
“When there’s a moment, use it to your advantage and understand that they don’t always last so build an asset in the meantime.” Solid.
I loved that too.
Did she put her Instagram followers to her main list? Did she segment them? I’d be super curious to find out if they’re buyers.
Yes I put them on my main list, no I haven’t segmented them. If I had a million hours and Infusionsoft, I’d do that. It’s moving up my list of things I need to do ;-)
Personally I never used Instagram as a consumer (and also as a marketer for that matter), but the points which they touch in the show I think are pretty relevant. The feed oriented social sites just wants to push as much content as possible, images for that matter work the best as it requires a lot less effort to report to an image than read the text and try to comprehend! Nevertheless that you can use images also to educate people that’s something new (apart from infographics/memes which have usually little educational value). Also I had a bias that converting from social networks people is a lot harder than the ones which visit your site directly, because of the points I mention before.
Yes, I think it comes back to which audience you are trying to reach.
YES! I love this to the moon and back while riding a hoverboard. It drives me nuts every time I hear someone say “___ is dead”. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Google+, blogging, Instagram, or whatever. They’re missing the point. The people who claim XYZ is dead are usually the ones using it wrong, or trying to profit from a staged demise.
Except Myspace. That’s dead. Right? :)
Fair enough. I used a deliberately controversial statement in my original question, but I hold my view. I contend that blogging ‘as it was done up until as recently as last year’ is dead. ie. the advice to post daily if possible, put all your best stuff on your own blog and link to it from social, is dead. I think *as a new blogger in 2016* you would be better advised to embrace social media, and post natively there, to reach an audience that doesn’t want to click and leave.
Yes, have your own URL and have it as your home ground, but don’t feel you have to spend every spare hour crafting blog posts. One of the replies in the forum I thought summed this up – see yourself more as a media empire with different outposts, but put your content *on* the outpost, don’t just keep linking back to your blog.
I enjoyed this podcast.. Emma’s approach seemed solid ie asking – what is the best use of my limited time? and testing the options.The lesson seems to be to do what works, but make sure in the end, you own your own “assets”. So IG as a great magnet but the asset is your mailing list.
As for blogging being dead or at least feeling a little tired, I read somewhere that 2016 is to be the year of over-content and I tend to agree. I’m starting to feel that everyone is trying to tell me about stuff that I don’t really need to know.
A question for Emma is, “What is your experiment?” How are you getting your IG followers to convert to email subscribers?
They click a link in my bio which takes them to my optin. I’ve got a 48% conversion on that link. It’s working.
IF bloging is dead then how can I make it live?
Well I thing blogging cant be ever dead because we cant stop learning and hunting new stuff.
All I know is compared to 10 or even 5 years ago all the favorite blogs I go to are pretty dead with definitely no new people and the same group of people over and over talking junk far from the topic of the blogs.
Most blogs if you search only show up stuff from before 2012 unless you are exact about what you type in where before Google didn’t use to be that way and showed things instantly with very little tweaking involved.
Google mostly is filled with ad NONsense junk.