Part 4/5 – The Secret Sauce :: Being Awesome

1) You can’t really overestimate the power of just being awesome to people, and 2) up to 17 #FloresRewards in this blog post!

It should go without saying that for any publication to build a strong and loyal readership /audience, that publication has to develop unique, high quality, high value content.

In the previous sections of this series, we touched on the kinds of content that a growing Magic website / blog might or might not want to focus on to build such an audience… We did so without coming right out and saying what should have been obvious (the unique, high quality, high value thing).

This time we are going to move from kinds to qualities of that content; make that quality.

The most advantageous thing that a growing Magic website or blog can do in terms of content generation is to make content so good that other sites — presumably bigger, and with established audiences — will link to it. This can come in a number of ways. You can build awesome decks that warrant mention and analysis; you can delve into multimedia, and create videos that other sites will be willing to embed; and here’s a little bit of secret sauce — you can tag in your influencers.

What is an influencer?

Not all audience members are created equal. Of course you want to Cultivate as many as you can, but some of them are worth more traffic because they bring with them more traffic; they can affect the traffic patterns of other potential visitors and influence their future actions; hence, influencers.

Examples of influencers that an aspiring blogger might be able to influence:

• Some guy or gal with 10,000+ Twitter followers – What do you think a link from him is worth relative to a “regular” Twitter mention?
• Some guy or gal with his or her own more-trafficked blog – When they link to you, you can borrow some of their audience, and make it your own; you might even be able to keep some of those visitors if you do a great job with your content.

It should also go without saying that you should be as unbelievably cool as possible to as many of your audience members as possible… But you should take especial care of your influencers. Especially while you are growing, they are going to be the bread and butter of your future growth.

And how exactly is this going to take place?

You give them something they will link to, of course!

Now beyond the deck list or breaking news item, there are a couple of other kinds of content that you might be able to Cultivate to bait links. Here are some ideas:

• Evergreen Awesome Sauce – This would be a piece of content that doesn’t get old. It doesn’t have an expiration date like a deck list. If it is true, it will be true for a long time. A great example would be my blog post How to Cheat on Five With Flores. I wrote that over a year ago and it is still attracting links in from other Magic blogs.
• Controversy – If you say something really controversial (presumably in a high value, and intelligent way), you might be able to attract the attention of an influencer who either strongly agrees or disagrees with your position. For example, the first two parts of this series — about Limited content and Tournament Reports — attracted Twitter attention from editorial staff from three different major Magic publications. I was very surprised with both The Ferrett and Teddy Card Game linked to the second piece from Twitter and Facebook.
• Continuing Adventures – Give your potential audience something they love, and something to look forward to on an ongoing basis. They will come to expect a kind of content, long for it when it is missing, and talk about it when new installments appear. The early popularity of Jamie Wakefield or David Price as they ground PTQs could fit in this category, as could Jonathan Medina’s Pack to Power series (which itself sparked any number of imitators, which in turn drove more links to Jonathan’s articles).
• The Secret Sauce

So what is the Secret Sauce?

Create content that will specifically appeal to your influencers!

People make fun of me for liking anything that mentions me (presumably in a positive light), but honestly, most of us in the blogging / writing / content creation / personal branding silo like to see our names in print

You want a sure-fire route to free traffic, good will from your influencers, and the chance to borrow their bigger audiences?

Make something awesome — really awesome — that a particular influencer will love and be willing to link to. I am officially back in the “making MTGO game play videos” business as of last week, but over the summer while I was mostly focused on improving my play rather than writing my blogs, I did MTGO playtesting with KYT… Which he graciously filmed. I embedded game play videos from our various series on my blogs, TCGPlayer.com articles, and so on, and was responsible for one of KYT’s biggest infusion of unique views.

How did this work?

KYT was cool to me — he showcased my Eldrazi Temples arms locked with Jace, the Mind Sculptor… and he let me look good! This was something that I was obviously willing to share, especially with him investing all the time to edit the work.

In return I was cool to him, and helped bring him loads of eyeballs that he might not have otherwise gotten.

Everyone was cool to everyone else – You guys don’t necessarily see this but this process helped us to Cultivate a relationship that doesn’t just live on http://manadeprived.com (see what I did there?) or whatever site; we actually chat on MTGO and Facebook multiple times per week.

The vehicle was unique, high value, video content that I (and everyone else, ultimately) liked.

Another symbiotic influencer-cultivation relationship might be the one that mutually developed between YT and the Yo! MTG Taps (see what I did there?) guys (Joey and Joe). They will say that they got serious about podcasting because I told them I liked to listen to their stuff over Twitter; that is ridiculous of course (but I will allow them to continue to think their growth was nothing but my approving nods and smiles). I will certainly “admit” to being cool to them over social media even though I had never met them… But the thing is, the vice-versa is also true. Joey and Joe mention me and my projects at least as much as I mention theirs, and anyone who reads this blog knows that they are two of the most vigorous supporters of #FloresRewards.

You know what is awesome about these relationships? They are 100% just based on everyone being cool to everyone else, helping each other out as we all just try to have fun and bring value to the community.

Can you even imagine something cooler than that?

LOVE
MIKE

PS – #FloresRewards opportunities one and two (up to 2 points). Use the Share and Enjoy links on this page to share this blog post on Twitter and Facebook… One point each.

PPS – Feat of Strength alert! I’ll probably post something to the Facebook page separately. I am going to be spending the next week in Florida visiting the new Harry Potter theme park, doing Jedi Training with the kids, etc. (yes there will be nonstop pics on Twitter), but that means that the long-rumored Physiology Feat of Strength video will probably be delayed until the week after. So for this week – Rerun Week! Pick your favorite Feat of Strength from Season One (Ice Cream, Hamburger, Celebrity Crush, Hero of Fiction, Suit Up with Bread) and run it back. NEW PICS PLS TKS. But pick whichever one you want, run a new pic at http://bit.ly/FloresRewards and we’ll call it 15 #FloresRewards

PPPS – The best prices on Magic cards on the Internet today are at TCGPlayer.com (for reals!). You can simultaneously support Flores Rewards and Channel Fireball if that is what you want to do, but TCGPlayer’s marketplace includes tons of different vendors so you can shop for the best price on a per-card basis (I just usually choose Channel Fireball because I love LSV, Conley, and Brad); but you can support this effort and get awesome prices at the same time. Check it all out at http://TCGPlayer.com/FloresRewards

We’ll start dishing out Season Two prizes — which will be commensurately awesome to Season One prizes — when I get back from vacation!

Okay, any questions – Put ‘em in the comments below!