Too Much Clutter, Not Enough Content!
As some of you probably realize by now, I have a couple of eBay based businesses.
But I am not only a seller on eBay, I am also a buyer... which means I spend a good bit of time perusing people's sales listings to see what's available in the market place.
The thing that gets to me sometimes is the sheer volume of "explanatory garbage" people seem able to include in their listings, while all but forgetting to write a single thing about the item they are actually offering for sale.
Our "Heart shaped rock monument" in the garden
Maybe I am just being silly here, but I don't need a 2000-word dissertation about how you ship, and when you ship, and what kind of box you use, and how your grandma parts her nose hair! Especially not when I waste five minutes sifting through endless shiny page separators and self-congratulatory text about your selling record and return policy... only to discover that you took all of eleven words to actually "describe" the product (not!) and failed to include the dimensions!
What is WRONG with you???
Product FIRST, all the other stuff is secondary or tertiary.
And yet, this sort of practice/priority setting is pretty common.
And now I am seeing shades of this invade Steemit!
WTF, mate?
Leaves starting to turn for autumn...
Yes, I have a banner and a couple of mentions of other sites at the bottom of my posts, but earlier today I came across posts where there were quite literally 12-15 "guild banners" and other stuff on people's posts, and the actual "post" amounted to less than one-quarter of the actual verbiage on the page.
Instead of posting all this garbage, why not just stick to your actual content?
I guess the reason it concerns and bothers me a little is that when you "overuse" something, it completely loses its marketing effectiveness, because people just tune it out. And that defeats the whole purpose, doesn't it?
What do YOU think? Have you noticed any Steemit posts that have more marketing banners than actual content? How do you feel about such posts? Do they annoy you, or do you just ignore them? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!
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Created at 180912 00:32 PDT
One two many banners, one two many of the same pictures, and all of their art work in one post never made sense to me. Yet, it has been done.
The worst, I’ve seen is one post that took longer than a minute to load because they put all of their art work into one post. They did this, after posting about each individual artwork, why so repetitive?
For some reason they decided to put all in one post and it was a disaster.
Hi Kubby! Yes, some of those posts are a freakin' disaster zone!
They scream "Hi, here's everything I do, and I belong to 30 guilds, and here are links to my 12 web shops, and here's a page of tag spam, and have a nice day!"
I might just have a nice day, but it will be withOUT that person!
Hahah, yes exactly. I often wonder about their thought process. Was there no one there to tell you don’t do it, this must be stopped ?!
Yikes, I’ve seen some pretty bad clutter on here but a dozen of those things is just... a bit much.
I would venture a proposal: the amount of features available on a site is directly correlated to the amount of clutter in the post. That is why you see insane amount of boilerplate on EBay and Amazon, while a site like Etsy (with the feature available of making your own “store”) is much cleaner. Same with here. Go to a personal blog, and all that boilerplate stuff is available in permalinks in the navigation tree (generally speaking). But on here with no such tools available, people shovel it into the bottom of each post.
I’ve experimented with a new footer that links to my last few posts in the same genre. I have seen a few other accounts do something like this and I find it so much more pleasant than an army of banners.
I would submit that your proposal is precisely right.
And I can offer a splendid piece of supporting evidence:
Way "back-in-the-when" you might recall that MySpace actually burst onto the social media scene before Facebook. Although the two served very similar purposes... the massive difference was that Facebook was strictly standardized... while MySpace became an increasingly cluttered circus of customized blinking gifs and backgrounds.
Eventually, the ability to customize one's profile page made much of MySpace unusable. Circa 2006 computers and web bandwidth simply couldn't parse the number of "blinkies" people would add to their pages to gain attention.
And this wasn't small potatoes, let's remember. MySpace was the most visited web site on the planet in 2005-06... and yet? By 2008, they had been utterly dethroned by Facebook and many other sites.
I don't mind that people want to hype their guilds and groups, but pick one or two and stick with it. Experience tells me that nobody is able to keep up with multiples, anyway... so its basically clutter.
what do I think?
I think that you just described 95% of internet marketing....
...including Amazon and Walmart.
and ALL of youtube.
Miles and aisles of garbage.
Figuratively speaking, in an Internet sort of way.
The more I look at it, the more it seems like a thinly veiled Ponzi scheme.
"Growth" is king... but I will never need more than one toaster oven.
The demand for growth can't keep supporting itself.
At some point, the house of cards has to fall.
Yep. I've definitely noticed the increase in this. There are so many mutual support communities it's hard to keep up with them all. I've only ever been a part on one but I left because there were too many rules and regulations for me! 😁
I treat them like any other post these days. If the content doesn't capture my attention I ignore it. I'm far more relaxed about it then I used to be.
Not holding myself above reproach here, as I have a couple of "plugs" at the bottom of my posts; one for @steemitbloggers, which has been "my community" for almost a year, and one for @steempeak because I happen to believe it's the best way to access Steemit content these days.
But I'm not part of several hundred mutual admiration societies. For one, I don't have time. I'm not going to join something and claim to "support" it, if I am not actually SUPPORTING it.
I have never used any banner on my post yet. I like to keep it simple. I think, It's personal preference. Some like to have more banners to show support to their guilds, or to advertise their business.
I think it's great to have banner, one or two. But not more than that. But this is just my opinion. 😂😂
I belong to several Discord communities and various groups... but the only one I plug is SteemitBloggers; which is also the only one I have put a lot of support effort INTO.
I agree, on keeping it simple.
I will admit to partaking in the banner signature line in some of my posts- yes... guilty here.
SO now I am on a mission to condense the situation down some- so I thank you for that.
What gets me is when I see an awesome and unbelievable post title that interests me and I click over only to find it is a a link to a video with about a gazillion previous posts on steemit from nine months ago.
In retrospect, I realized that (sadly) the people I was calling out with this post are probably the LEAST likely to be reading these words!
Your posts are not particularly clogged Dawne, as you have plenty of content first... as I said elsewhere, I was mostly calling out those posting a couple of sentences, followed by a bajillion banners.
And yes, I know the sort of posts you're talking about... can you say "click bait?"
I see that often too. I wonder why don't they just pick one, maybe it's because they think adding all that extra banner-age makes their post look longer. What's even worse, in my opinion, is people who don't separate their post from other typed jargon they put on there. When you are reading it all of a sudden you find yourself wondering what does that have to do with it before you realize it's something standard they place on all their post.
That's where I end up getting annoyed, particularly with eBay... I realize that I am actually having my time wasted with a bunch of information that is of ZERO RELEVANCE to what I am looking at.
Here on Steemit, it just reeks of "trying too hard." It's a bit like someone wrote a paper about some topic, but spent more time explaining why they chose the topic than writing ABOUT the topic...
I feel that way about my own banners lol. But I kind of feel as if I'm going to offend someone if I take one off and I do like all of the tribes that I am in otherwise I wouldn't put them at the end of my post. However I do write good content I feel and I have never written a post shorter than about 5 paragraphs lol so I think I deserve my pretty banners. Haha
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Well, if you're actually active and contributing to all the tribes and guilds, that's one thing. But I see these long lists at the end of people's posts... and when I crosscheck to SteemWorld and see they only voted on eight posts that week, it seems a bit... stupid. And showy. And attention seeking.
In this case, I was mostly challenging those who contribute absolutely nothing, but have as many blinking banners as an old fashioned MySpace page!
And yeah, I know YOU greate good content.
I fully agree and hate bollocks - but i do want to see pics of nose hair
I have to say, that IS some of the finest nosehair I have seen in a long time.
So thank you for that.
/ᐠ=ᆽ=ᐟ\