11 Comments

What Paper.Li Is Missing And What You Can Do Better With Your Own Site

Feb 1, 2011
by

Each day I see Paper.li tweets showing up in Twitter.  I see the NoAdTax one or the Todd Farmer Daily.  There is the Affiliate Summit Speakers Paper.li and a ton of others.  What I like about them is that I get to see what my friends are interested in and I have also discovered some new sites and bloggers via Paper.li.  What I also realized is that although Paper.li has become pretty popular, it is lacking one major thing: loyalty to the individual Papers.

Whenever I come across Papers on Paper.li, I see great content from smart people.  I also usually click on them to see what is going on.  What I have also seen is a lack of subscribers to the Papers.  I think the most I have seen is 10 subscribers.  The content is great, the delivery is great and you are easily able to share them with others.  What is missing is a clear way and a reminder to subscribe to that persons paper.

Things like a reminder, a light box or even just something that says “Have this paper delivered to your inbox daily” could help to increase subscriptions to people’s papers.  The Paper.li service is great and the idea is awesome, but what they seem to have overlooked is the engagement function. Which leads me to the other point of this article.  What have you overlooked that you could be doing better for your own sites and your customers?

We all know there has to be something better we can do with our sites.  If they were perfect we wouldn’t be here, we would be on vacation 24/7, doing charity work or having “me” time.  Have you ever sat back, looked at your sites and wondered if there was a way to get your visitors to want to interact with it more?  Is there a better way to get your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter?  Have you encouraged them to share your info, products or leave positive reviews of you elsewhere?

I think that sometimes we get caught up on all of the hype and buzz of what we should be doing that we forget the most simple thing, what can I do to make my visitors, customers and readers more happy.  How can I build up reader loyalty? How can I make my sales funnel better or shorter?  Is there a way I can get visitors to recommend my products or sites to their friends without distracting them into leaving the site or leaving the sales funnel?

Every once in a while it is important to take a step back and look at your site.  Think about what is not user friendly and what you can do to get people to want to come back and interact with it again and again.

Paper.li did an amazing job with getting their name out there and tons of people to want to use it.  The problem I see is that I have never had the urge to subscribe and I never see any major calls to action that ask me to.  It’s important to think about this to achieve long term success and repeat visits.  The content can be quality and it gathers itself daily, but if people leave Twitter because they get bored of it, then the distribution starts to die if no one has subscribed.  Paper.li may want to consider other ways to gather information and sources of copy as well, in case Twitter begins to die.  Until then I’ll still remember to visit people’s papers, but only when I am on Twitter and can see there is a new one in my stream.

About Adam Riemer

Adam Riemer has been an Online Marketer for over a decade. Having worked in house and on his own, Adam Riemer helps both large and small companies develop, execute and analyze Marketing campaigns for ROI and branding in both the B2B and B2C world. You can reach Adam or find out where he is speaking or which Clients he is working with by visiting his blog at http://www.adamriemer.me or follow him on Twitter @rollerblader.

Filed under: Business Tools + E-mail + Social Media
  • http://AffiliateMarketingPlan.com Todd Farmer

    Great points, and great suggestion, Adam. In fact, when I click to see my paper.li, I get frustrated with the music or other audio content that I can NOT turn off. There's another suggestion for that service. ;-)

  • rollerbladerdc

    One other thing that could possibly get users more active and creating more papers, as well as getting users to push for people to subscribe would be to do a rev share like many of the article sites do. They have ads on people's Paper's, but from what I could see you don't get to share the revenue. If they would do a rev share, people might be more interested in heavier promotion. This could also lead to people spamming and click fraud.

  • Pat Grady

    i still don't understand how you twitter types deal with the data overload. i know and trust you both, think you're both great people and professional, accomplished marketers. heck, i think we share a lot of traits. but on the "noise" trait, i'm oddly frail compared to you two, and most others. i know, i'm seemingly wandering off topic… but i'm imagining this papers tool you're talking about might be a way you're filtering the noise… is that the case?

  • http://www.adamriemer.me Adam Riemer

    It sort of actually creates noise, but at the same time is a way to find new sources of information. I started clicking on Todd's because I wanted to see who he was interested in and if any of them were providing real content. Basically, if you have someone who you think is smart and you can learn a lot from (Get your head out of the clouds Todd, lol j/k =0)) then you can read their paper to see what they read and what interests them socially, professionally and in general.

  • http://twitter.com/djambazov @djambazov

    Have to agree with Adam on this one Pat. Paper.li seems to simply increase the velocity of the noise. In part because it's filter controls and engagement controls are not very refined.

  • http://paper.li Kelly

    I work at Paper.li and I find your comments really interesting. You are right. We need to keep our current subscriber base engaged and interested. As well we want to win back users who are not currently active. In short, we need to roll out features that add value to the user, and also their readers.

    Your comments on how we can improve are where we see that we can improve as well. We are working on enhanced functionality that will address a more service oriented delivery and more editorial control for publishers. Revenue and advertising are features that are much talked about and being worked on as well.

    We hope to continue to roll out enhancements at a good pace to keep publishers and readers engaged and enthusiastic. Feel free to drop us a line at info@smallrivers.com if you have ideas, questions, etc. We welcome the feedback to improve the service.

    -Kelly, Community Manager

  • http://www.adamriemer.me Adam Riemer

    Hi Kelly,

    Thank you for coming and commenting. You can tell we are definitely fans of your service. I'd love to do an interview with you about what's in store for Paper.li if you'd like. I'll send an email in a couple hours from my website email address. =0).

    Thank you for joining in on the conversation!

    Adam

  • Pat Grady

    "It sort of actually creates noise, but at the same time is a way to find new sources of information."

    1) thanks for the warning (nothing against paper.li – adam and angel are both close friends of mine, and they know i'm seriously handicapped when it comes to noise / multitasking).

    2) sheesh, how much info do you folks need? relatively speaking (in terms of human history), you're not only already below a literal ocean of info, but the ice caps are melting, raising the info-sea level very rapidly.

  • http://www.jeffmolander.com/speaking jeffmolander

    First of all, who cares what Todd Farmer reads?

    Now that I have your attention (at Todd’s expense). Pat and Angel are dancing around the fact: paper.li is a page of personalized links. WOW.

    Back to Todd. Todd, I don’t care what you read. I care what your opinion is about what you read. I care about the insights you draw from what you read. I don’t care about what anyone reads. **I don’t have time to**

    Myself, I publish a feed/email using delicious — telling all the whack-o’s that value my insights the gem of wisdom I found in an article or blog. Then I link to the source for the reader.

    This doesn’t tell the reader “Jeff’s reading this stuff”. Or even “Jeff thinks this stuff is important to read.” It tells the reader “this is WHY this is an important read” in summary. FAST.

    Example, I recently pointed at “One of the most useful, remarkably well-done bits of Groupon research I’ve found to date. Most importantly, it shows how retailers are measuring “effectiveness” of Groupon campaigns. NOT based on profitable customers and sustainability of Groupon promotions is called into serious question.”

    … and then link to the research.

  • http://www.jeffmolander.com/speaking jeffmolander

    First of all, who cares what Todd Farmer reads?

    Now that I have your attention (at Todd's expense). Pat and Angel are dancing around the fact: paper.li is a page of personalized links. WOW.

    Back to Todd. Todd, I don't care what you read. I care what your opinion is about what you read. I care about the insights you draw from what you read. I don't care about what anyone reads. **I don't have time to**

    Myself, I publish a feed/email using delicious — telling all the whack-o's that value my insights the gem of wisdom I found in an article or blog. Then I link to the source for the reader.

    This doesn't tell the reader "Jeff's reading this stuff". Or even "Jeff thinks this stuff is important to read." It tells the reader "this is WHY this is an important read" in summary. FAST.

    If you want to "get into my head" give it a look http://bit.ly/gjPI4N

    Example, I recently pointed at "One of the most useful, remarkably well-done bits of Groupon research I've found to date. Most importantly, it shows how retailers are measuring "effectiveness" of Groupon campaigns. NOT based on profitable customers and sustainability of Groupon promotions is called into serious question."

    … and then link to the research.

  • http://paper.li Kelly

    Hi Adam,

    Would love it! Shoot me off another email please as I didn't seem to get the first one.

    Thanks! Kelly