Ad blindness is a growing phenomenon whereby social media users consciously or unconsciously ignore banners and ad-like information. In this case study, we’re going to look at how Smart Blogger used Quuu Promote as a solution to this problem.
If you have even the slightest interest in blogging, you’ve probably heard of Smart Blogger.
With over 3 million readers, Smart Blogger is the world’s biggest website about blogging. Founded in 2011 by the now globally famous Jon Morrow, Smart Blogger teaches people how to start a blog and earn a real, tangible income online.
As a wildly successful blog about blogging, clearly the team at Smart Blogger know their stuff. However, even the industry titans aren’t immune to the difficulty of getting content seen in the noisy space of social media. Despite their impressive readership, Smart Blogger were beginning to lose faith in the power of social for driving traffic – and every modern brand knows that, 3-million-strong blog audience or not, a social media presence is vital for maintaining relevance in the digital age.
The problem they had was this: “Facebook Ads allow us to target people who are interested in our topics, but they aren’t a complete solution. Many people ignore ads. Others long ago succumbed to ‘ad blindness’.”
Smart Blogger had hit a snag many businesses are encountering as blogging and social media have evolved: bombarded by so much content online, many of us have grown immune to ads – a phenomenon known as ‘ad blindness’. On top of that, traffic means nothing if it isn’t the right traffic. Indeed, this is the very premise behind the content Smart Blogger creates. In addition to teaching their readers how to drive a lot of traffic, Smart Blogger is primarily concerned with teaching their readers what they can do with that traffic.
This makes Smart Blogger the perfect match for Quuu Promote, which drives quality traffic and social media engagement from your target niche. For this case study, Smart Blogger’s team were kind enough to tell us more about their content strategy. Let’s find out how Quuu Promote has helped them overcome ‘ad blindness’, increase their content’s visibility on social media, and get their target audience onto their website.
Smart Blogger’s blogging strategy
“Smart Blogger’s content combines practical, strategy-infused blogging advice with a healthy dose of inspiration to keep readers going when things get tough (because they will get tough),” says Kevin J Duncan, Smart Blogger’s Blog Editor and Social Media Manager.
Currently, Smart Blogger publishes one new blog post a week, which they share on their Facebook and Twitter profiles. The overarching goal behind their content strategy is to drive traffic to their blog, so they can get more leads, then turn those leads into customers.
The main challenge Smart Blogger face in their strategy is, like most bloggers and content creators, time. This is where Quuu Promote comes in:
“Quuu Promote helps us achieve our objectives because it gives us something we desperately need: time. Time we would spend on social media promotion can instead be put towards teaching our students and creating more epic content. Without Quuu Promote, our Blog Editor, who also serves as our Social Media Manager, would have to spend more time promoting our content on social media. This would leave less time for writing, editing, and creating more content.”
It’s a struggle with which lots of startups and small companies, in particular, will be familiar. Working for this type of business often means combining roles that would be done by a whole team of people at a bigger corporation. Quuu Promote, which automates the content promotion process, takes some of the pressure off.
“We use Quuu Promote to do the heavy lifting in our social media promotion. Whenever we create a new blog post, we promote it on Quuu,” says Kevin.
How Smart Blogger use Quuu Promote
Both Kevin and Jon use Quuu to promote every single piece of content they publish: “We promote the four posts we publish each month, plus numerous pieces of ‘evergreen’ content we want to consistently drive traffic to.”
Since Smart Blogger occupies a specific niche, they tend to publish content mainly in the Content Marketing, Writing and WordPress categories.
“Our posts tend to fall into clearly-defined categories. We want them promoted to audiences we know will be interested in them. So, writing posts go into the “Writing” category. Content Marketing posts go into the “Content Marketing” category. And so on,” says Kevin.
“It can be tempting to publish every post in the largest Quuu category with the biggest reach, but it’s a bad idea,” warns Kevin. “You want the right reader, not just any reader, to see your content.”
Smart Blogger’s top tip for maximizing Quuu Promote’s potential is to pay close attention to your share text: “There’s lots of dull content on social media, so punch up your share text and images with power words and sensory details. Be professional, but don’t sound like a salesman.”
They also make use of their free, unlimited repromotions: “For our core, evergreen posts, we repromote them as soon as they expire. Repromotion is our favorite Quuu Promote feature. It allows our best content to be shared over and over. What’s not to love?”
Smart Blogger’s results using Quuu Promote
So, how do all those promotions stack up? Smart Blogger have always used Google Analytics to track their content marketing metrics. One thing that had long puzzled them was the lack of traffic from social media, despite their huge readership.
“Despite a sizable following on our social media platforms, our metrics showed ‘social’ was a distant, distant second to organic traffic for us.”
Thanks to Quuu Promote, social “has a fighting chance now.” One of Smart Blogger’s main goals for their content strategy in 2019 is to increase their blog traffic by 50%. With Quuu Promote in their arsenal, they’re confident they can achieve this: “By supplementing our organic traffic with a nice bump in social media traffic, Quuu Promote will (knock on wood) help us achieve our traffic goals for the year.”
As an example, one of Smart Blogger’s promotions in Quuu (which is still ongoing) has already received over 1600 shares on social media, and another has received over 700 clicks. When asked why they think these promotions have been successful, Kevin says “It’s pretty simple, really. Great content, plus targeted interests, equals lots of shares and clicks.”
Instead of spending hours scheduling social media posts for each new blog post every week, Smart Blogger can now rely on Quuu Promote to take care of their social media engagement. “This time saved allows our team to be more productive by focusing on content creation,” says Kevin.
Quuu Promote vs. Facebook Ads
As we mentioned earlier, Smart Blogger is a company that cares about quality. For them, Quuu Promote’s uniquely targeted audience sets it apart from other content promotion platforms, “To know our content would be shared by real people, who were interested in our core topics, was a huge plus…It allows us to reach people we wouldn’t have been able to reach otherwise.”
Even better, those real people are often high-profile influencers and thought leaders in Smart Blogger’s niche. “The reach of the people who share our content via Quuu Promote has surprised us. You expect shares to come from people with only a few hundred followers (if that), but we frequently find our posts being shared by influencers with thousands of followers. The impact this has on the number of people who see our content is considerable,” explains Kevin.
For Smart Blogger, “Quuu Promote was absolutely a worthwhile investment. Why? Because time is money. If social media is part of your content marketing strategy, and you value your time, you need to sign up for Quuu Promote.”
A big thank you to Kevin and Jon for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the role Quuu Promote plays in their blogging strategy, and how it’s helped them tackle ad blindness. To supercharge your content promotion, sign up to Quuu Promote here.
