Something has been eating me. Is the success of your website really going to be based upon the site’s quality? Is the success of the site going to be based on your social connections? Is the site going to be based on how well your site delivers its benefits to its target audience? Yes, yes and yes. It is all of those things and more. You might want to rethink your position on this topic though.
I started writing this post today after writing another post about how important it is to make a site that is link worthy in order to be able to attract natural backlinks as well as get people to approve the links you are trying to manually create on their websites. The idea behind making a site that is link worthy is that you need to make it presentable enough and have content that is good enough so that most people like it. Even if they don’t absolutely love it, they still need to at least like it.
During the course of writing that post something occurred to me. In the blogging world, your success is far more dependent on your social network than it is on the overall quality of your website unless you are actually successful in creating a wicked awesome site that people can’t stop talking about.
I make that statement because there are some popular websites in the blogging world that really aren’t all that spectacular. They are barely link worthy at all. Their content is average at best. They really aren’t all that engaging. Yet, they have a large following for other reasons. Do you want me to name some names? Sorry for that setup. I can’t name names. I am not here to pick fights. Those people are more successful than me and they deserve to be more successful for good reasons. I just don’t think that those reasons include how great their site content is. And I am talking about some of the biggest people in blogging.
Some people are exceptionally successful because they are really good at building one on one relationships with you very quickly and easily. They are masters at building relationships. Maybe they were popular back in high school too? Who knows? It is painfully obvious that these people have become successful because of their connections and not because of the superior quality material that they produce.
Some of those people’s blogs and non-blogs enjoy top rankings in the search results for really competitive topics. You see big name bloggers patting them on the back for their excellent work on a new post or you see a big industry popular person Tweeting a link to that person’s page. That happens because the person is connected. It is not happening because that person’s content is stellar. Watch for it. You will see what I mean. It is just like the good ole boy’s clubs that you see in the offline world.
It has become apparent to me that a person’s social connections are now more important than both their ability to produce great content and to deliver the right product to their audience. I thought it was supposed to be the other way around? I thought it was all about quality? Well it’s not. It is about the quality of your connections. It could take a gifted content creator literally years to get discovered if he doesn’t have any decent social connections. Yet a mediocre shmoe could turn an average site into an overnight success if he is well connected.
Is this why people are willing to fork out the tuition costs for an Ivy League college education? For the connections that they will make while attending that university? It must be. It certainly can’t be due to a superior education. Hmmm….. Funny how the world really works, isn’t it?
Out of the things I mentioned, what do you think matters the most? Look around at some of the more successful sites you visit. How many of them are really the highest quality sites in their niche?
