A rant and a ramble into the Sphinn-o-sphere

Oh my freaking GOD!!! -- Here’s a new one… Marty ‘Sphinned’ some Sphinn comments that Lyndon made. This is just getting too funny. If things weren't already freaking me out over there, now people are actually starting to treat comments on the site as a 'News Story' - which in themselves are merely a poor excuse for a message board. Talk about redundant. This reminds me of marketing folks that ‘Blog about Blogging’ - Oh, and the actual comments of Lyndon’s were in response to Marty 'confirming' that the nepotism is still alive and well. 

The funny part? Well, it seems that even the one ABOUT the comments was a ‘Hot Story’ - according to the Sphinions ( the minions of the Sphinn Idol). Day by day I see more crap rising to the top over there and some actually interesting stuff that gets no more than a few hours of play on the ‘What's New ’ page. It is the same people over-and-over that are magically the purveyors of good information it would seem. I see the opposite happening, the Power-Sphinners are submitting just about anything they come across because the minions have convinced them they can’t miss and some pretty interesting stuff never sees the light of day.

How about this one – good for a giggle;

Blogging about bloggin. Diggin’ about Diggin and stumbling all over stumbled upon. Every story has a ‘Sphinn’ to it these days huh?

I was chatting with some one the other day and told them that writing for the marketing plan and optimizing for the search engines can have some consequences that may not be all together obvious.

I always liked listening to MC giving the company line (and personal?) of ‘build a quality site’ for reasons of getting natural links or for perceived quality from a search engine. I like this from the standpoint of conversions more than anything. It is the end product/service/offering of the site/blog/whatever that will dictate the actions of the visitors. Getting hung up on obtaining visitors at the cost of the offering, seems unsound.

If people get hung up on baiting with ‘Title Grabbers' and ‘flavour of the day’ posts – Digg-able stuff – they can miss the entire model of what they are trying to do. A brand is a brand.. person, place or thing, there is an identity.  The same can be said for search optimization, in that folks can start trying to please the search engines over pleasing the end user. I have seen this many times and finding the happy balance is important.

Well, this post has been a long time coming. Back before I fell into a hole and all but disappeared from the public eye (such that it is with my limited visibility) I had started really looking Social Media Marketing ( SMM ) and it’s true value on the larger scale, not only for the sites that already have achieved popularity - I also wanted to look at its over-all viability and ability to deliver a return on investments (ROI) for the time and money (yes some folks have to pay writers or have staff maintain these programs). In short I wanted to discuss it’s viability, from my own perspective at least.

Is it for everyone?

Right away, I personally believe it is not for every business/market. There are simply some types of websites/businesses that won’t really benefit from this. If you take Digg style sites for example, not every niche has one available and the stories that do well in Digg aren’t often about the mundane like plumbing or pea gravel. Sure, you could contrive a related story to post, but a long term love affair with the front pages of Digg simply isn’t in the cards.