Written on February 9, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: marketing
If fear, scandal, sex, and humor sell newspapers, it stands to reason that those topics would make for the most popular articles on news sites and blogs. Right?
Wrong!
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have intensively studied the New York Times list of most-e-mailed articles and discovered that it was an entirely unexpected emotion that caused the average reader to share an article.
“Emotion in general leads to transmission, and awe is quite a strong emotion,” [Dr. Berger] said. “If I’ve just read this story that changes the way I understand the world and myself, I want to talk to others about what it means. I want to proselytize and share the feeling of awe. If you read the article and feel the same emotion, it will bring us closer together.”
Apparently science-themed articles were among the most popular, with RNA, deer optics, paleontology and cosmology, among those most emailed.
Now, while the study appears to be very well constructed, there’s just one major flaw that I see here:
These were New York Times readers!
While we have many wonderful NYT readers that visit Marketing Pilgrim each day, I’d say that our general demographic is not quite the same. That said, you may want to consider how closely you mimic the NYT’s writing style. Here’s what worked for them:
More emotional stories were more likely to be e-mailed, the researchers found, and positive articles were shared more than negative ones. Longer articles generally did better than shorter articles, although Dr. Berger said that might just be because the longer articles were about more engaging topics.
For me, I think I’ll stick to scaremongering, controversial studies, and wild rumors! 
Here is the original post:
Please Email This Article; Researchers Say You’ll Feel Better
Tags: because-it-beat ,changes-the-way ,citysearch ,down-the-value ,feel-the-same ,marketing ,mimic-the-nyt ,online ,researchers ,same ,sell-newspapers ,the-researchers ,understand-the
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Written on December 23, 2009 by admin
Filed Under: book, marketing
I don’t quite ever remember a social network that I at first so loved, and then ultimately, so hated. Fortunately, the bad taste left in my mouth by MyBlogLog will likely go away at the beginning of the year–according to rumors that Yahoo will shutter the service.
MyBlogLog had so much potential as a network that connected bloggers with their readers. So much, in fact, that Yahoo bought the company back in January 2007. The ink was barely dry on the contract when the service simply started sucking:
That’s just a summary–and doesn’t include the now infamous event where a former Yahoo employee got egg on his face.
You can argue that MyBlogLog suffered because of better solutions from Google and Facebook, but in the end, I believe the company’s former co-founder Eric Marcoulier hits the nail on the head:
“So much of your company’s long term success when it’s acquired is based on the amount of executive juice it has. The only way it survives and flourishes is if you have an executive champion who promotes it internally. Shortly after we were acquired we were transferred away from our champion and under someone who didn’t feel the same way about MyBlogLog. In those circumstances, things simply slow down.”
Or completely suck. I wonder how many other Yahoo products have suffered the same fate?
Read the original:
MyBlogLog to Become NoBlogLog?
Tags: beginning ,book ,executive-juice ,feel-the-same ,forget-google ,friends ,google ,hits-the-nail ,include-the-now ,marketing ,much-potential ,permanent-link ,reinstates ,same ,widget
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Written on December 23, 2009 by admin
Filed Under: marketing
Shocked aren’t ya? It really is two days before Christmas because there is just not much happening. The folks at Harris Interactive are still working though and reporting that we are spending more time online than ever before. This will surprise no one but the report digs into some of the specifics of age groups which is always of interest. Honestly though, no surprises there either. TechCrunch tells a little about the study and what possible effects on the results could be:
Harris concludes that the average hours spent online have increased from 7 hours from 1999 to 2002, to between 8 and 9 hours in 2003 to 2006, and surged after that.
There was a sudden spike in time spent online in 2007 when the average hours spent on the Web increased to 11 hours. Last year, Internet users were online for 14 hours a week, double what it was from 1999 to 2002, although Harris says this could have something to do with the outbreak of the financial crisis and the lead-up to the presidential election in October 2008.
The study is about personal time on line and is not inclusive of e-mail time. Based on that, we are talking about just short of 2 hours per day online on average. Here is the data that may be of service to you.
There are no real surprises here. I think the shock of the proliferation of the online life is wearing off. There are likely to be other spikes moving forward like the increase of use of the mobile web that will be the new measure of growth online. I suspect that if Harris did some polling around that there would be great interest in the trending. Maybe that will help us identify when the real “Year of Mobile” was or is to be.
See the rest here:
We Are Spending More Time Online According to Harris
