I’d like to my triple twitter traffic, Julien, but I’m not sure I got the answer as to how…

Yesterday, Julien Smith (co author of Trust Agents) wrote a post titled “How to triple your twitter traffic in 7 days“.  The main goal of the post was to explain how he discovered that by writing less content and only writing 10/10 posts his site traffic increased dramatically, and was even higher than normal on days that he didn’t write. The post explained that in order to increase traffic, we need to write better titles, stop writing 7/10 posts and only publish 10/10 posts.

After reading the entire post through twice, I was in a complete quandary.

Everyone commenting made it seem like the post revealed some big dark secret. But what I didn’t hear in the post was anything that made me stop and go “a-ha! Now I know what I need to do to get more traffic”. I didn’t feel like it gave real answers, or real solutions, so I started writing down my questions on his main points. Who knows, maybe Julien can answer a few for me?

“This results in a majority of posts which rank 6, 7, or 8/10″

The first key point in the article is “If you’re anything like [him], you write your posts, and your titles, with yourself as audience. This results in a majority of posts which rank 6, 7, or 8/10 with the outside world”. Unfortunately, that point does not go on to explain how to know what the outside thinks of our posts, only that what you think about the post is wrong and that you should only write 10/10 posts. But Julien, you just told us we don’t know what a 10/10 post is…so, how in the heck to we write a 10/10 post if we don’t know what 10/10 is to our readers?

“I also stopped having 7/10 ideas.”

He continues to say, “When I stopped accepting 7/10 posts, I also stopped having 7/10 ideas. I started having 10/10 ideas, and suddenly I started recognizing them, and I suddenly had three in the span of one week.” I’m sorry, but you stopped having 7/10 ideas? What? Um, okay, well I am pretty sure no matter how many brilliant ideas we have, we all have crappy ideas sometimes too. Ask Einstein and Ben Franklin. You can tell me you had less of those bad ideas come up…but you can’t tell me they never came into your mind at all. Can you please explain this one in more detail, because I would love only brilliant ideas?

“Maybe you should just stop being a fucking pussy”

The next section covered titles, and how important they are to make the posts sticky and share-worthy. He explained that his post last week started as “You are nowhere near the edge” and ended up being titled “Maybe you should just stop being a fucking pussy”. This was his one example of improving a title. Taking it from English to obscenities. I’m sorry, but if that is what it takes to write better titles, I say no thank you. Seriously, I felt dirty just typing the post title and it isn’t even mine. I feel a big need to apologize to anyone reading this post (including my mom!) and not expecting to see those words on their screen. And I especially want to apologize to anyone reading this at work whose boss just walked by and saw the words on the screen. Swear words like this in a post may work for him…but I do not feel comfortable writing in this manner to get traffic, it’s just sleazy. So how do I write better titles without stooping to inappropriateness or trickery?

“The delivery is simply not strong enough”

He wraps up his discussion on titles and better content by telling us to look at what posts get the most traffic and use that for the future. In reference to the post mentioned above, Julien said “This week helped define what I wanted to be to my audience, and it helped me understand what I wanted this blog to be about. It helped me see what people on Twitter respond to. I had a kind of realization, one in which the content really does market itself, and if it doesn’t, it’s because the delivery is simply not strong enough.” Okay, I get it, my delivery sucks. By the way, what do you mean by delivery? Just the title? The content itself? What about the posts you write that you think seriously rock, but others don’t like? And then there are the posts that you write quickly and think nothing about and they sky rocket your traffic? What if when you read them, you don’t see a difference in the writing? What then? 

“What’s nuts about this is…”

The end of the post he tells us “I’m telling you stuff you already know”, which I appreciated. Because it was pretty much the same thing that @Unmarketing said at the Blogworld Expo keynote (paraphrasing, “people don’t spread crap, so stop writing it. If you don’t have anything awesome to write, don’t write at all”). And copyblogger revealed in the comments of the post that he’s been telling Julien (and his readers) this exact same thing since 2006. So basically, I read this entire post and even the author is telling me it’s the same stuff everyone has been saying for years. Hmmm… so the key is to just say the same thing everyone else does with a different title?

Anyway, Julien’s final big point is that we as bloggers “…have to push how edgy your content is, and how sticky it is. Add handles, make it more blunt, or appeal more specifically to an audience. Push it closer to the edge. If you do this, it will get retweeted, and linked to, more. Your content deserves this.”

And for his final point, I have one final question: Where are the concrete examples of how to actually improve the posts, the titles, or the delivery?

Julien, anyone, care to help?

Related posts:

1. 5 pieces of a blog management puzzle
2. Do you ever get stuck?
3. 7 ways I keep myself excited about my content