Someone Please Stop My Charlie Brown Compulsive Behavior

Among the many issues Charlie Brown deals with as a young child, there’s one that continues to resonate with me (and perhaps you as well). It’s a mistake that I continue to make, even though I’ve identified it and even counseled others not to do it.

My problem is, I just can’t help myself.

Charlie Brown & Lucy

For years, Charlie and Lucy would march to the top of the hill and Lucy would promise to hold the football for him while Charlie ran at it to kick it.

Each and every time, Lucy would pull the ball away at the last second, causing Charlie Brown to kick at nothing and fall on his back.

Despite being embarrassed and hurt from the fall, Charlie never, ever learned!

Time and again, Lucy would make the same promises and assurances and Charlie would believe her. 

And fall on his butt once more.

Confession Time

I, too, have a serious compulsive behavior that’s not unlike Charlie Brown, hoping that once… just once… Lucy will hold onto that football and finally let me kick it.

It has to do with writing blog posts that are focused on pop culture.

Now, to be clear, that’s different than making pop culture references within a blog post. That remains a valid technique to this day.

My issue, actually, is that I continue to try to use pop culture — usually film and television references — to serve as a vehicle for sharing some brilliant insight or lessons.

And they fail miserably, every time.

My Latest Failure

A few months ago I learned that Disney was going to be releasing an all-new Beauty and the Beast only this version would be a live action remake of the original animated classic.

After I saw the trailer, and particularly after I saw a side-by-side comparison of the animated trailer and live action trailer, it occurred to me that Disney was doing some really interesting content repurposing.

Unfortunately, few besides myself found that interesting.

I spent a lot of time crafting, what I thought was, an excellent article, and published it on Monday, Jan. 16th.

To say it underperformed would be an understatement.

Now, please take these metrics with a grain of salt. I know that every blogger and blog is different, so what’s important in this analysis is to consider how this article compared to other average articles I’ve recently published.

On the first day it was published, the article received 120 page views, followed by 88 the next day and just 16 so far today.

While the downward slope of interest is quite normal, the relatively low numbers demonstrate the near-total lack of interest on the part of my audience for this topic.

One recent comparison would be an article I wrote about Tailwind’s new Instagram features, which generated twice as much activity over a similar 3-day period.

When I wrote about how to increase your Reach on Facebook by 10x, that article accrued 1,458 page views in 3 days.

And when I wrote about Vine’s demise as a social network, I reached 17,294 readers within 72 hours.

Another way to compare is by looking at my email subscriber community. On Jan. 10th, an article I shared received a 2.8% click through rate, while Monday's debacle received just 1.2%.

Traffic isn’t the only indicator though.

While I can’t determine what the social signals were for a specific post during a specific date range (only the totals to date), it’s always obvious to me when there’s little interest in a topic I’ve shared. My social posts will get 0 comments.

Nada. Zilch. Niet.

Usually, depending on the topic, I’ll get questions from readers, perhaps some discussion on the topic… at least a few Thank You’s for providing the information.

So within a few hours of sharing a new article, I can tell whether there’s real interest or not.

And with this article, there was virtually none.

But… But… But… Why Don’t You Like ____ As Much As I Do?

My problem, clearly, is that I think other people will be as excited and interested in a marketing angle for a particular topic, based solely on my perceived level of their fanship.

Beauty and the Beast is a popular movie, so people should be really interested in what I wrote, right?

WRONG

First, I continue to lose sight of the fact that fans of a particular tv show or movie are not necessarily part of my target audience.

Understand that I write about social media marketing and blogging, which means that my target audience, to put it simply, is people who would be interested in reading about those topics.

Being able to sing along with every Belle tune, while admirable, is hardly an admission of interest in how to create more effective content.

Yet part of my reptilian brain thinks that because I like those things, my target readers should and would too.

Second, just because an article on Entrepeneur.com about the marketing lessons we can learn from Disney gets 2.5k shares doesn’t mean I should follow suit. 

Remember what I said before about everything being relative? Entrepreneur has a massive audience and online presence. Even their worst, most uninteresting articles get massive reach. So I shouldn’t compare my aspirations to their thin veneer of success.

Get The Help I Need

While I’d like to say that I will never, ever, write about a pop culture topic and try to relate it to a marketing lesson… well, who am I kidding? I will.

And it will most likely be an even more enormous flop.

BUT! I think sharing this with you has therapeutic value. Just admitting my problems and how they’ve impacted my blogging sheds light on the issue and brings accountability to my compulsive behavior.

The next time I write, “How Sherlock Holmes Would Suss Out Your Social Media Audience” or some other such drivel, you can be the first to remind me what a terrible idea that was.

Instead, I clearly need to focus on providing the kinds of stories you’re really interested in: how to use social media, and what’s changed recently with the various social networks.

I won’t let you down next time!