Writing but not promoting... bad idea?

1. 87

   Wolfyposted 6 years ago

   Hi guys, I'm hoping for some advice. Basically here's my issue: I enjoy writing informative articles that I believe will be useful to people. However, I can't stand promoting my hubs.
   
   The thought of spending my time scouring the Web looking for places to post it, opening tons of social media accounts at different places just to engage with the community so I can on occasion post my articles, or other promotion tactics make me cringe. I feel like a spammer. I just want to write, but I do get excited when I see good traffic numbers.
   
   The question: Am I working against myself here? I understand that not promoting your hubs gives up some temporary traffic but I don't care about short bursts of traffic, I like long term, steady increases in traffic to my hubs.
   
   Any thoughts on this? Any input is welcome!

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   1. 87

      theraggededgeposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      Apart from pinning the odd image on Pinterest, I never promote my hubs. Maybe I should, but I have no interest in doing so. Like you, I'd rather spend the time writing.

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   2. 60

      Fellow Mumbaiteposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      HubPages receives most of it's traffic from notable search engines such as Google. Hence the hubs definitely get visible if they include quality content. You could try promoting your hub on social medias such as Facebook or Twitter, but they do not give much success. My experience was not so good with Facebook and hence completely stopped using it.  Ideally just posting on hubpages is sufficient. Posting images on Pinterest and accompany it with a hub link helps.

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2. 82

   kaiyan717posted 6 years ago

   I don't promote beyond a couple of Pinterest posts every now and then. I've found that putting it out there and letting everyone else promote it works just fine. I've had millions of views and never once did more than click on a little button on the side of the article. It will happen organically.

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3. 84

   Marisa Wrightposted 6 years ago

   Join the club.  I hate promotion as well.   I haven't been a very active member here for years (except on the forums, which are my way of avoiding work - er, I mean of taking the occasional break).  I just let my Hubs collect traffic organically.

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4. 87

   Wolfyposted 6 years ago

   Thank you for the replies! I am feeling a bit better. My fear was that I would have a great hub getting little to no views because I don't promote it like I should. But I guess if it is truly a great hub it should do well over time under it's own power then.
   
   Kaiyan717 - That gives me hope, thank you!
   
   Marisa Wright - So do you still do promotion on your hubs then even though you hate it, or do you just sit back and hope that if it's a good article it will grow on it's own?

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   1. 84

      Marisa Wrightposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      Sorry, I should've answered that properly in the first place. No, I don't do any promotion at all.
      
      A really good strategy is to make Made For Pinterest images instead of just plain photos. I've never been bothered with it, but only because I had moved on to running my own sites before Pinterest became fashionable.

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5. 62

   EricFarmer8xposted 6 years ago

   I am promoting my Hubs but I am still trying to work on a social media strategy that works. Right now the amount of views I get from Facebook, Google Plus, Pinterest, and Twitter are tiny. Most views I get come internally from HubPages or Google.

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   1. 87

      theraggededgeposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      Oh too much faff for me I've had waves of traffic when a hub has been posted by someone on Stumbleupon or Facebook. It's so transitory, it's not worth pursuing. For me, anyway. I expect it depends on your niche whether social media is effective or not.

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   2. 87

      Wolfyposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      So, if you get your social media strategy dialed in, do you think it could really produce good long term "hands off" traffic? Or just short term bursts of traffic during the days when you are actively promoting it?

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      1. 62

         EricFarmer8xposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         Right now it feels more like a short bursts thing but maybe with a large following it would work better? I remember reading some old forum post or something about some hubbers getting good amounts of traffic from Pinterest.
         
         The fact is being a social media content creator is a job in itself. I just try my best to share my work while also providing other useful related content so I am not spammy. I tend to share other Hubs I like. I cant say how successful this tactic is but it is fun and doable.

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   3. 84

      Marisa Wrightposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      That is normal.  For HubPages as a whole, 90% of all traffic comes from Google.
      
      You mentioned building a "large following".   You can't build a following on HubPages. Your followers are other writers - no one joins HubPages just to follow their favourite writer.
      
      If you've been reading advice on how to build a following, you're probably reading advice aimed at bloggers, which is totally different.  On a blog, people can sign up to your RSS feed, or you can invite them to sign up for a newsletter.  Once you've got that email list, you can start marketing to them.  On HubPages, there is no way you can ever know who your readers are.
      
      You can get around that to some extent by starting a Facebook Page and recruiting your readers there, but that only works if you specialise in one particular subject. 
      
      It's a trade-off.  It's much easier to write on HubPages than on your own blog, because HubPages handles all the advertising and technical stuff.  You can also write about any subject you want, whereas on a blog you must choose one subject and stick to it religiously.  So there are pluses and minuses.

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6. 97

   eugbugposted 6 years ago

   From my experience of trying hard to promote on social media over the years, the only entity worth sharing on is Pinterest. I've posted thousands of tweets on Twitter, complete with hashtags and relevant photos. I've done the same on Facebook but with very little success. Pinterest generates about 5% of my traffic. However you need to create images that are "Pinterest friendly" so that people will "collect" them onto boards because they look nice or have a catchy title. When you add an image to a board on Pinterest, you accompany it with a link to your hub so a reader can visit and check it out.

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7. 81

   LiliMarleneposted 6 years ago

   I completely agree as I made the same experience with Pinterest and Twitter. I don't like FB and don't use it.

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8. 90

   Titiaposted 6 years ago

   I don't promote my hubs either. I once in a while put one on my FB if the occasion is right, but many of my FB friends (Dutch and foreign) don't care mucht about my articles. I do have a Twitter account, but never saw the fun in that and I never bothered to get a Pinterest account.
   
   I've always read/learned that browserviews are the ones that count on HP so why puting in valuable time in medias that don't count or at least not much.
   
   I'm mainly using my own photos in my articles and what I'm doing now is working on their captions. I never realised but the right photo captions are important to get them on google images.

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9. 87

   theraggededgeposted 6 years ago

   Also... as a 'consumer' of written media, I rarely ever click on anyone's link on FB or Twitter, so why would I expect others to do it? However, I do click on Pinterest images to get to the original source.

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10. STAFF

    Paul Edmondsonposted 6 years ago

    We suggest focusing 99% on content. Depth, usefulness, and originality.
    
    We haven’t talked much about this, but we have a small team we’ve hired for PetHelpful to identify and promote articles. We are seeing how much it helps. If it works, we will expand it.
    
    Our total focus is helping passionate experts with services - tech, monetization, editing, and now promotion.
    
    I think there is one more level of service we need to offer. We need to help authors build their brands and promote our niche sites in more holistic way.

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    1. 99

       DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this

       It appears to be working well. I am sure you keep up on the numbers when you have the chance; mine are up several thousand per day since the start of January. I had expected them to go down this month.

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    2. 39

       Shogunposted 6 years agoin reply to this

       "I think there is one more level of service we need to offer. We need to help authors build their brands and promote our niche sites in more holistic way." - If you're able to provide the proper infrastructure not only for Hub monetization, and improved SEO, then letting the writers worry about the content is a solid plan.

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11. 82

    kaiyan717posted 6 years ago

    Only about 1/20th of my views are from Google. The majority comes from Facebook and Pinterest.

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