How I Built a Digital Ghost Town

One of the most satisfying experiences is having a website take off in popularity.

People are linking to you and sharing your stuff, responding to your emails, spending time and leaving comments, and in some cases opening their wallets.

It’s a love train of feel-good moments, back-patting, fist bumps and fist pumps.

I’ve been lucky enough to be part of this a few times.

But I’ve also been on the other side of the proverbial digital media tracks. In the area where you roll your windows up, put your head down and wait for it to be over. In a ghost town on the web. 

It happened on a recent lark of a side project where I didn’t take my own advice and ended up making some stupid mistakes. (But, as with all content marketing playgrounds, there’s plenty of knowledge to extract from otherwise meaningless failure).

Fueled (and blinded) by my own idea, I killed my last blog before it truly had a chance to live. Here are the lessons I learned:

I made decisions too quickly, and didn’t think about their long-term impact.

Fools rush in and I was right behind. It’s best to map out ideas, wireframe concepts, storyboard the user experience and think logically about your approach.

I underestimated the amount of resources it would require.

Building digital traction takes and patience. I put too much emphasis on launching and not enough on the marathon march that comes after. With a broad market to cover, I quickly became overwhelmed with trying to keep up with posting and coverage was a mile wide and an inch deep. No one was visiting because:

I failed to identify a niche.

Success stories usually stem from people who looked to solve something very specific. Where they identified a niche, guarded and served it.

I jumped into a fast-growing market without thinking specifically about what the angle and voice would be. (list examples of sites that do this well). In today’s climate it’s “the nicher the richer.”

I focused on technological functionality, not content.

It’s easy to buy a domain, install WordPress and a fancy theme, set up an email program and create social media profiles.

That’s because these are the known knowns. The things that are straight forward and come with instructions. The kind of things anyone can do, technically speaking. But there’s a difference between a digital presence and a digital footprint – the footprint actually leaves an impact, and takes time to develop.

I didn’t give it a face.

And it had no unique brand qualities. I didn’t put my face on it and I didn’t associate myself (or any individual human) with it. People like to know who they are hearing from. The “voice of God” is dead in journalism and that is especially true online. The social media revolution was built on the idea that people want to connect with people. Trying to invent a brand out of the ether – especially one that people will connect with – is a tough exercise.

I focused too much on structure, not enough on content. Too much on the launch, not enough on the carrying-through. I didn’t have a unique perspective and I didn’t act human.

And I ended up creating just another ghost town on the web.

[Image: wm_archiv]

This post was originally published on Social Media Explorer.

UPDATE: Below is a screenshot of the actual ghost town. It once had so much promise.