'In the Spotlight' Hubs, How Do You Choose Them?

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   Digital MDposted 8 years ago

   I've been wondering how you guys decide which hubs you put up in the "In the Spotlight" carousel rotating in your profile. There is only limited space for multiple hubs, so what are your factors in deciding to put there?
   
   Do you prefer to put your most interesting hubs as startup to attract more possible viewers? Conversely, would you rather put the  lesser performing hubs I terms of traffic to get more attention?
   Are you displaying the new ones as soon as they are featured?
   
   I know probably it differs from person to person, with no hard and fast rule. But maybe new hubbers like me will be able to pick up something from those who have published hundreds already.

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      NateB11posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      I used to put ones up there that I figured outside readers would want to read, but now I put ones up there that Hubbers would want to read; because those are probably the only people that are going to look at my profile. Readers from the search engine just come to read an article that they're looking for, they are mostly not interested in looking at an author's profile.

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      tsmogposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Sometimes I share my profile at FB and twitter. I choose my two most popular Hubs for the spotlight usually. Three takes too long to cycle through when a glance is given. I put the most popular first hoping the title and image grabs them to look. I also hope they scroll through the hubs.
      
      I agree with Nate that more than likely it will be another Hubber looking at a Profile. With that in mind I have today 4 Hubs that make up a group on writing internet articles. So, I place those in the spotlight. Maybe they will read one and connect another spotlight title to the More in this Series for the Hub Group.That is how it is set up today. I think it works at times because I will see several of them read on the same day.

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         Digital MDposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         Well, I might need to churn out more writing to expand my collection of hubs across different topics. This hub page was really dedicated for topics pertaining mostly on Helath and Diseases since that's what I do everyday.

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   Glenn Stokposted 8 years ago

   This is a very good question. It's not easy to decide on the best hubs of the spotlight, and I find myself switching around a lot. But I do have a few ideas for you that might help.
   
   1) I find that it's best to spotlight hubs that pertain to the hubpages community rather than organic traffic. The reason for this is that your profile is viewed mostly by other Hubbers and not so much by other visitors.
   
   2) I combine hubs that fall into the same topic rather than list miscellaneous hubs.
   
   3) I examine my stats after a week or so to see if the hubs in my spotlight have attracted more visitors. If not, I change the spotlight list.
   
   4) I also find that filling the carousel with too many hubs is overkill  and can be too overwhelming for a visitor because they are not going to keep staring at it to watch the carousel switch around. Spotlighting just two or three hubs at a time seems to work better.
   
   5) I also like to experiment with placing just one spotlighted hub in my profile at a time.  Sometimes by not giving a visitor a selection works best.
   
   6)  I find that placing a newly published hub in the spotlight is useless because it's the first thing people see anyway right below it in the listing.
   
   With all that said and done, it's really up to you to experiment.

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      Digital MDposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for answering! I figured the spotlighted hubs give significant impact on the overall feel of your profile page. I've browsed profiles of many hubbers having dozens of hubs under their belt, and you cannot easily see most of the hubs given the single file listing of the hubs.
      
      Even if one provides a specific subcategory, browsing the hubs may be tedious sometimes.

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         Glenn Stokposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         Yes it is tedious to search though the listing in profiles. And most visitors don't even know that they can select the filter to list specific categories.
         
         So what I did to solve that problem, I made my own "author site" where I list all my hubs under individual topic categories in the home page. Then people can simply click on the topic of their choice and it takes them to a list of only those hubs. You can see my author site by following the link icon from my HP profile.
         
         You can get a domain name for under $10 a year. And web hosting is not that expensive. There are some good host companies that have good deals. You DO need to have the ability to do HTML programming though, especially if you want the flexibility to do things your way. Or you can use a web design template service.

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   jansharesposted 8 years ago

   Welcome to HubPages, Digital MD. I use my carousel frequently. I use it the way you mentioned in your three examples. I also use it based on what's happening, for example, what's trending, what's the HOTD, what topic is hot in the forums, etc. I prefer to use all six positions although most readers will not hang around to see your fifth or sixth feature. But I still like to use them all and sometimes switch positions if a hub needs traffic. I always put a new hub in the first position for a few days. I also like to group hubs of same topics, i.e., recipes or relationships. Good luck and enjoy your time here.

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   Marisa Wrightposted 8 years ago

   I agree with Glenn and Nate - choose subjects that will appeal to your fellow Hubbers.  Outside readers do NOT visit your profile - it's one of the disappointments for new writers, who fondly imagine readers will visit one of their Hubs, be mightily impressed with their writing, and rush to their profile to read more. 
   
   HubPages doesn't work like that.  Readers who find your Hub on the search engines are looking to solve a specific problem or get a specific answer, they're not in the mood to browse around and enjoy articles for the sake of it - so they are far more likely to click on the "related hubs" than go to your profile. Most external readers won't even notice who you are.

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      Digital MDposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Thank you guys for the insights. Seemingly it really depends on the situation, and the types of hubs one offers.
      
      Hopefully we could also edit the hubs on the suggestion in the "More in this Series" and "More by this author" since they are the ones more visible for people from search engines. It will be more appealing rather than directly putting a link from your Hub A to your Hub B which are correlated, or may be read in a series.

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         NateB11posted 8 years agoin reply to this

         You can decide what goes into "more in this series" by creating Hub Groups; you do this in My Account and go to the Group tab. Then the next couple of Hubs show up at the bottom of a Hub in that group.

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   FatFreddysCatposted 8 years ago

   I keep it simple - my six most recent Hubs are displayed in that rotating carousel thingy. When I write a new Hub, it gets added to the rotation and the oldest one gets knocked out.

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