Manifesto
How attention flows on the web
This highlights how a photo of Mount Fuji posted to reddit resulted in thousands of visits to the original photographer’s website. No one looked at anything else. No one bought a print. They came. They stayed for that one page. They left, never to return.
I’ve seen this happen loads of times myself. A post goes up on a popular hub site that undoubtedly has a huge readership. There is a nice link back to a client’s blog or similar and a good reason to click. The result is a few hundred or thousand referrals. No repeat visitors. Essentially worthless given the effort involved.
Welcome to the world of content marketing and an industry totally at odds with the reality of how attention works on the web.