Do Blogs Matter on Empire Avenue?

I have been quiet for a couple of days on this blog. Sometimes, I just need to take a break. There is only so much I can pontificate about social media. I will continue writing. However, we have entered a new era on Empire Avenue and this blog will probably change along with it.

Next, why we still don’t have blog scores. As you may or may not have realized, Empire Avenue does track influence scores for blogs, but does not publish these. A number of little things have led me to speculate (and I emphasize that this is speculation) as to why this is. First, here’s the points that have led to my reasoning:

YouTube and Facebook Page scores debuted and were much lower than some other scores. The 100th people score on Facebook is 58. On Facebook pages, it’s one (1).
Dups (e)DUPS said that influence scores reflect not just how active the current users are, but how active future users could be. In other words, YouTube scores have to be able to handle someone joining who has published a series of viral video not just Rabid Lesbian Atheist of DOOM!, the current YouTube score leader (e)BIONIC.
In a conversation that Sleeping Dragon (e)SLEEP had with Dups, he reportedly mentioned they do not want to have to lower scores at some point in the future. This makes sense.
My market maker price adjustments have been noticeably more positive since the inclusion of Facebook pages and YouTube scores and my scores for those started at 6 and 4. Meanwhile, my EAv, Flickr, Facebook and Twitter scores are all higher.

As a result of these points, I think the reason that blog scores are not published is because they are very low. With this blog, EAv, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook, I had five scores. So, if my market makers are up and the top five scores are used, that means my blog score had to be lower than my Facebook pages score of 6. This makes sense. By Empire Avenue standards it might seem that I have a fairly active blog. However, when you remember that a site like Mashable is a blog, in that scheme of things, the Empire Building Network is really tiny.

If EBN is less than a score of 6, imagine what many other blogs on Empire Avenue would be. Writing a blog of informative tips, discussion and reporting is a lot of work. I would not have been too thrilled to learn that all this work was getting say a score of 4. In my case, Empire Avenue was right to keep that information to themselves.

From an influence score point of view, it seems like I am now better to put my energy into other scores. It is probably easier to increase my Facebook page score than my blog score. However, it is very important to remember that one’s share price is determined in large part by people buying your shares. I think it is safe to say, that that EBN has played a large part in many people buying my shares and that their buying created momentum which encouraged others to buy. Despite the small impact on the market makers, this blog was my competitive advantage if you will. For those with less than five other scores, blogs will also continue to be important.

So, how will this change my blogging? Well, I used to try to make sure I had good activity here. That meant that some posts were more about getting something published rather than something useful. With activity mattering less in dividends and now the likelihood that my blog is not in my top five influence scores, I can concentrate less on the score aspect here. For example, maybe you bought shares because of the cartoons, but I bet the tips have been more useful to you. I will still do cartoons, but I won’t worry about doing one to try to get three posts in one day.

It’s important to remember that activity across all services on Empire Avenue still matters to a degree. For that reason, I will continue to keep my Tumblr blog active sharing interesting general material that maintains blog activity every day. This blog also generates much of the Twitter retweets that I get contributing to my strong Twitter score.

Blogs serve another important function as well. They represent content that you own and control. Most of your Facebook history for example is not that interesting without the comments and interaction with your friends. With a blog, you build an asset of material, but with Twitter, that’s not quite as true.

What do you think of this analysis? Have you adapted your strategy since YouTube and Facebook Pages scores went live?

About William Pitcher

Bill is the founder of the Empire Building Network. He hails from Mississauga, Ontario, Canada just outside Toronto. For 23 years, Bill has been a fundraising consultant helping charities across Canada and in Europe conduct major capital campaigns. He is a total tech geek that took to Empire Avenue and blogging like a fish to water.

View all posts by William Pitcher →

http://twitter.com/Bleachin Rhys Powell

I don’t see why they should be concerned about what might happen in the future?

Shouldn’t scores behave in the way real markets do. If someone comes along with that series of viral videos, then your score should be lowered to reflect your current position in the whole scheme of things, its an incentive to work harder and achieve more.

William Pitcher

From everything I have picked up, the Empire Avenue team wants to stay out of adjusting scores as much as possible. They do it when despite their best efforts, the current scores are not working. So, if they can avoid a correction in the first place, I think they want to do so. This is unlike the market component of Empire Avenue your share price which is much more free to go up and down. However, even share prices have market decelerators that kick in on active stocks. Empire Avenue has to balance openess with creating a positive experience for the casual member.

http://twitter.com/BlazePyron Nick Gibson

I also think that part of the reason scores for fan pages and Youtube channels are so low is because people aren’t as popular on those places as on Facebook and Twitter. Some of these Youtube scores of 1 are mearly people who go around and comment on things instead of creating popular videos. Some others are people who make videos that have 20-40 views or so. I’m fairly active on Youtube, and my vids are averaging about 100 views per vid right now, and I have a score of 17. This seems appropriate, considering I could be a lot more popular.

However, shouldn’t Youtube’s increased difficulty of raising your score make its activity more valuable? It seems that blog activity also boosts scores more than other channels.
http://twitter.com/dailybayonet dailybayonet

Good post, but I’d be disappointed if you were right about blog scores. As far as influence goes online, blogs are leaders, imho. I read more blogs than I do Tweets or FB pages and whereas the latter two are fun for social interactivity, blogs have something I’m far more interested in – deep content that can make me think, laugh or even change my mind.

When I look at my blog’s traffic referrals each week, Twitter barely registers and Facebook is not much better. Over 98% of my traffic comes from subscribers, other blogs linking to my content or Google searches. My own online behavior confirms this – I don’t click links in Twitter if they’re shortened.

EA is supposed to measure influence and I suggest that blogs have far more real influence than Twitter and FB combined, yet EA stocks can be rewarded for tweeting nonsense all day long but a blog post that gets thousands of views scores… what? Which is really more influential – telling people about the first frothy latte of the morning or writing opinion about something in the news, or even reporting news?

Since joining EA my blog’s lowest traffic week was 15,000 page views, the highest many times that. I write about a topical subject that is both political and controversial, which is traffic catnip to a blogger, trust me. Judging from comments on the posts, both agreeing and otherwise, I know I’m influencing readers.

If EA can’t figure a way to measure that influence then the site remains just a game, not a tool and that would be a great pity.

Alexa measures web site scores by traffic – I don’t know how, but the results seem reasonable: Google is ranked #1, Facebook #2, iTunes #44 – of all websites. The Daily Bayonet scores in the top 250k, EBN is around 400k.

If EA can figure a way to measure traffic and convert that into an influence score, that would be great, but so far it’s not happening. I persuaded a blogger friend to join EA, he left his account open but quit being active after a week. He told me to let him know when it ‘got serious’ about blogs. As your post demonstrates, I can’t tell him to come back, yet.

William Pitcher

I don’t suggest that they don’t take blogs seriously or that they can’t measure them. What I do suggest is that the typical diary style blogger is not getting much of a score. You with 15,000 views would be doing alright. Still, how would you being doing against a Mashable? I don’t know. You are right about blogs being different than Facebook. Because they take so much work, one has to be careful how they are publicly rated.

Anonymous

The content from my blogs is posted on all of my social sites – so in a way it’s creating more things to talk about in those mediums. Creating a solid conversation about specific topics is important not just for eAve but for your online networking in general. So while the blogging scores don’t account for much more than a tweet or FB post, I still benefit by gaining a loyal and interested audience and that in turn boost my numbers.
http://adrielhampton.com Adriel Hampton

Well thought-out post, Bill. I think the EBN (both the blog and the page) is ultimately more valuable than anything else you do in social media, because it develops your thought leadership in a new and growing niche as the go-to place to learn and discuss Empire Avenue.
http://twitter.com/tturbo Tess Gleason

Great post don’t forget the advertiser angle they have yet to launch which may be better for the blogs and websites. There has to be a link to this so the need to keep true to what you believe in be it hockey or gardening or photography or tattoo art is likely to matter to potential advertisers I’m thinking.
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