Who’s ready for a little web experiment? I’ve been saving web site design
blog articles all over the place. Some are notes, others are half-formed
ideas. They either sit in my drafts folder, on notepad docs, or on crumpled
napkins with running ink and coffee stains scribbled all over the place.
Half Formed Ideas
Each of these articles have a ‘grand purpose’ behind them. Some tailored to
direct questions that people have asked me. Others are just search engine
optimized queries that I came up with after researching the numbers and I
predict will bring a lot of traffic to my site. A few are even articles I
started to write that would provide background for other articles.
Confused? Yeah, me too.
The Essential Problem
I’ve got some hundred half-started articles. I never release them because I
want them to be perfect. I want each of them to have the perfect title,
meta descriptions, links, formatting, expert quotes, etc. In my quest for
these perfect posts, I never release them. And it’s a shame because even
half formed, these articles have some tremendous value. Value to readers
looking for information, value for me with traffic.
My Thesis
My thesis is that these articles are more valuable posted even half formed
than they are sitting on my hard drive.
The Experiment
I am going to dump these articles into my website the easiest way I know
how – by emailing them to my WordPress install and just going live with
them. I’ll use Google Analytics to focus on the results. Good thing I built
out my website to 1) accept emails and turn them into posts and 2)
automatically title posts and give decent formatting.
Experiment Follow Up
I may do any of the following over the next few weeks:
- Tweak meta descriptions
- Cross link
- Update content
- Respond to comments
- Tweet, FaceBook, or LinkedIn any and all articles
- Elaborate
- Change categories, tags, etc
80/20 rule to ignore the bad and really jazz up the good.
You’re Part of the Experiment
It’s your input as a reader that will determine how the experiment goes.
What links you share, what comments you send, what items you click all
determine what else happens on the site.
