My Brand: how I may have damaged it

The Set-up

It's kind of a long story of how it came about, but recently I was asked to share one of my blog posts to an authority site called Medium (dot) com. Medium is similar to other popular sites like Quora and Reddit.

Before I go any further, I want to be clear that I actually like Medium. There is a massive amount of information and knowledge to be read there. I often go there for content ideas and to see different styles of writing.

There are also many authoritative, well-known and popular marketers that post content there. There are hundreds of blogs within the site that have their own following there. One of these blogs requested that I share one of my posts there. Needless to say I was flattered. Not only did someone like my work, but liked it well enough to suggest I share it with their subscribers. (Which incidentally totaled over half a million).

The Mistake

I should mention right here that the editor of this particular blog requested the article be posted there in its entirety. They wanted a cut-and-paste of the entire article and not a link to my blog.

Now before all of you SEO experts out there reach through your computer and give me a virtual slap in the face for doing that, let me explain.

I am a newbie to the online marketing space. And furthermore, just by nature, I learn by doing and experimenting. I do have the capacity to read something or watch a video about something and learned from that.

However, in other instances I just have to see it for myself. In this case I wanted to see if posting on an authority site would gain me some leads.

WooHoo!

I had almost instant engagement. I'm not sure of the exact numbers of likes I had, but it was high. I also had comments and questions in the comment section.

The next morning I woke up to find that my article had been featured on the front page of medium's website under the subject of marketing. There were more likes and more engagement in the comment section.

But I can hear you asking a question now, "but did you get any leads?"

Reality Sets In

The answer is yes.... one. I received one lead in that first 48 hours. Now all things considered, you might look at that and think that's not too bad.

But let me continue.

By the third morning my article had faded into obscurity; buried by a never ending inflow of new content. Engagement dropped off to just a trickle, and then eventually none at all. My "15 minutes of fame" had come and gone.

Lessons Learned

The good:

• I proved to myself that I can write valuable content that will appeal to my readers. that was huge for me
• I proved that if used PROPERLY, authority sites can be used to drive traffic to your own blog.
• I proved to myself that I need to nurture my own brand and not someone else's

The bad:

• having duplicate content on multiple sites can seriously damage SEO for your own site
  
• Though authority sites have a lot of readers, they also have a lot of people posting there. Anything I post there has a short shelf-life in the constant churn of content being posted there. So if my article isn't found in about a 48-hour cycle of content, it most likely will never be found there.

So, to all you veterans here who have mentored me thus far in my journey, I apologize for straying from the path. ;)

To anyone who is just getting started, stay the course. Build your own brand. Build your own site. Be patient with the process. You'll be happier in the long run.

Until next time...always be helping others.

Have a great Day!

jeff