5 Mistakes to Avoid: Why People Ignore Your Awesome Stuff

I needed something quiet to do. From 05:00 to 09:15 I read Producer posts on beBee. 

I had an ulterior motive. 

John White, MBA and I created a simple system. Bees can add buzz @beBee to any Share-to-Twitter from their own articles. BeBee will share it out on its massive social presence. That's the word "buzz" + a space + "@beBee".

The plan was to start with "buzz @beBee," then add "buzz @otherBebeeAccounts" as it took off.

To qualify, those articles must have at least 20 relevants and five comments. We won't whine if you use buzz @beBee as long as the sum of relevants and comments is around 25.

(X)The trouble is, not as many people are using it as we expected. (Y) By way of comparison, the Twitter account @beBeeEmbassy polls participating ambassadors' posts to find new articles to tweet. That one has nearly 500 tweets stored.

The automated collection of tweets using buzz @beBee has less than 20. Many of those are from my efforts of this morning.

UPDATE: Along with buzz @beBee (the space is important) you can also use #buzzBeBee. Same function, different triggers.

 My idea was to go over articles to find the ones that qualify. Then, I would comment with a reminder that the system exists.  That was my ulterior motive.

That's when I found some real gems with very few comments, very few relevance, and even few views.

I was surprised.

The beBee system is designed to give people full organic reach and then some. The Hive system lets you leverage massive distribution. 

I didn't understand how some posts would have approximately 100 views spread over a couple of weeks.

I dug deeper. 

There were at least 20 Producer posts that should have views in the hundreds if not thousands. They all have ~100. 

They should have many comments. They all have next to nothing. 

They had other things in common. Are you guilty of these mistakes? We all are at one point or another. 

Make them a habit and your engagement will suffer. 

Side Note: These are my personal opinions. Take them. Ignore them. Print them out to line bird cages. Whatever.
Me

#5 - Your image doesn't match your title

This one has a second flavor, "I can't figure out what your image is." A beBee feed is not Twitter-fast. It's still a busy place. The reader's eye moves like this: Image-Title-Click or Image-Title-Preview Text-Click. 

#4 - Paragraph Length

Some posts had a decent number of views but little or no comments or relevants. That probably means no one actually read them. 

I did. 

You really missed something. I won't mention them here. I don't want to embarrass anyone.

Most of those had humongous paragraphs. One post was a single paragraph of over 800 words.

Tip for Mafiosi: The best place to hide a body is on line 6 of a 12-line blog post paragraph.
Me, again

I read on my laptop. It has a nice wide display. I pity the poor bugger who reads on a phone.

Keep paragraphs short. Since so many people read on their phones, keep them very short. 

A 3-line paragraph on a laptop will be 6 lines or longer on a phone.

There's a trick to simulate that if you write on a laptop. 

You may wonder why I put an "(X)" and a "(Y)" up above. Scroll back up. Do you think that paragraph is too long?

It's borderline. Normally, I would break it at the (Y).

Here's why.

If you are reading this on a laptop, knock the browser out of full-screen mode. On Chrome it's the icon (top right) that looks like two stacked pages.

Click and drag from the new window's edges to make a size that is roughly the size and shape of your phone.

Now, look at that paragraph again. Is it too long now? 

Now imagine it was double its length. OUCH!

People rarely read huge blocks of text unless they have to, or really want to.

They don't have to read your post.

Some writers can get away with long paragraphs. (Yes, Phil Friedman, I'm thinking of you). Even Phil couldn't get away with a single 800-word paragraph. 

Break the buggers up.

3 - Text Complexity

This could also be called complex sentence structure. B2B writers are most often guilty of this.

Avoid the passive voice. Use, "John ran home," rather than, "John has run home."

Limit adverbs. They rarely add anything. Use them sparingly like seasoning, but only if absolutely necessary.  A little goes a very long way

Let's write that again.

Limit adverbs. They don't add anything. Use them like seasoning only if necessary. A little goes a long way.  

See what I mean? 

Forget your ANDs and BUTs. Forget your commas. Forget compound sentences. That's lazy writing unless used to achieve a specific effect. That's the classic run-on sentence that detracts.

Yesterday, I went to the store and bought some chicken for supper, then I crossed the street to pick up a bottle of wine, but I forgot the crusty loaf and the pasta, so I had to go back to the grocery store to get them, and forgot why I went back because this sentence is even more annoying to write than it is for you to read.

One thought per sentence, please.

I won't go deep into the Flesch-Kincaid thing. You can paste your text into www.hemingwayapp.com. It's free and will point out your errors. It won't point paragraphs that are too long. That's a blogging error, not a grammatical one.

Quick thoughts on Reading Levels: I aim at Grade 3 to Grade 6 reading level, even if my natural style is closer to Grade 13. I never let anything go out past Grade 9. The way I see it, if you can't explain it to a pre-teen, you don't know it well enough.

2 - Your Titles don't tickle

Think of your title as your salesman. The image will stop the reader's eye. The title makes him/her click. A blog post is not a novel. It's closer to a direct marketing piece. You have a split second to get that click or your post dies.

Brutal but true.

https://coschedule.com/headline-analyzer# can help. It too is free. Pop in a possible title and hit Analyse Now. Read the result. Adjust and repeat.

Don't use a title that scores less than 70. Every point above that is much better than the one below.

Here are my tries for this post. The first is at the bottom. The number is the score.

77 - 5 Mistakes to Avoid: Why People Ignore Your Awesome Stuff: 

70 - 5 Things to Fix So People don't Ignore your awesome stuff

76 - 5 Reasons People Ignore your awesome thoughts

76 - 5 Reasons People Ignore your awesome work

71 - 5 Reasons People Ignore you

70 - 5 Reasons no one reads your stuff

AND .  .  . The # 1 Reason a beBee Producer Post only hears crickets is 

1 - You don't use Hives properly

I get it. I didn't either when I first got here. 

Most of us came here from LinkedIn. We saw something called Hives. We assumed they were just a cute name for Groups.

They aren't.

Let's look at the math.

Say you have a hundred followers. When you post, it will show up on every follower's feed. Full organic reach is a beautiful thing.

Many will miss it. 

No worries. Every time someone comments or shares it, it will pop right back up again. Eventually, you reach a good percentage of your followers.

But that's only 100 people.

But, wait! beBee lets you post to up to 3 Hives. Hooray!!

DON'T WASTE THOSE 3 HIVE POSTS. 

Don't post to three empty Hives you just founded. 

There lie crickets.

My Suggestion: Don't post to your hives at all. Post to the larger, busier ones that are relevant to your topic. You can always ask someone else to share it back wherever you want.

Hives are not Groups. Hives are Distribtion Channels

Me, yet again

Choose your Big 3 for size. This post is not headed to beBee Cheat Sheet. I'll ask for someone to share it there in a comment. I don't waste distribution. This post is headed to English (15,800+), Marketing (63,800+), and  Professions, Workers, Careers (106,600+).

Granted that's not as good as having those 185,000 people as followers. 

It's still a lot better than 100.

Hives are the great leveler on beBee. Use them right.

Once you use these suggestion (if?) don't forget to use buzz @beBee or #buzzBeBee for even more distribution. 

Please only the post's author should use buzz @beBee / #buzzBeBee. 

Only use it if the post meets the requirements.

That's the word "buzz" + a space + @beBee added to the text of a beBee Share to Twittter.

Cheers