Look, if you're not a student of the game, stop reading now. It's not gonna make sense to you.
BUT if you want to know the Why behind my stuff in the Politics stream, keep reading.
When it comes to upvotes, I care and don't care. Upvotes are a vanity metric. Useful, but not the end-all/be-all of what you should be tracking.
When it comes to the Politics stream, it's a largely conservative audience. I'm super progressive.
I'm not going to be able to write, in a sustained way, memes that appeal to conservatives. A couple of one-offs, sure, but a stream of them? No.
I'm a progressive, so I write progressive content well. Progressive content will not play well to a conservative audience.
So, my expectations of upvotes in Politics are low. A great one will get between 5 and 10. A really great one will get to 15. An average of 6 upvotes means I'm killing it.
The best one I've done in Politics for Upvotes is
imgflip.com/i/2w18xn. 23 upvotes.
Another good one is
imgflip.com/i/2w7p09. Another one at 12
imgflip.com/i/313v3q
But I largely consider these to be failures.
Because the REAL metric in the Politics stream is comments. The more comments you get, the more successful the post is.
Like this one: 2 upvotes but 7 comments:
imgflip.com/i/33d7li. That's more successful than the ones above. But a real killer?
Like this:
imgflip.com/i/2swui5. (6 upvotes) but 73 comments. Now that's what I'm talking about- I got a reaction out of conservatives.
And if you're all "oh, you post memes to get a REACTION OUT OF SOMEONE?!?" Shut up. We all do. And you're clearly not a student of the game, go re-read the first sentence in this post.
Are upvotes important? yes but no. Upvotes are lazy. They're one click and they're done. But a comment? Oh, yeah. That's the stuff. IN the content marketing world (what my actual day job is), comments are everything. You have to hit reply. You have to compose the response. Make sure it makes sense. That it makes the point you want to make. You take the energy, the focus, and most importantly the TIME to reply.
Because with that time spent, you are thinking about what I want you to think about, you're doing what I what you to do. Engaging. If this were a brand, one or two more engagements then the Faceook & Twitter re-targeting kick in, and then it's only a matter of time before you convert and buy something.
Comment below with your thoughts!
Caption this Meme
