I’ve been experimenting with the viral power of tools like paper.li
The service’s goal is to present the best links and stories from people you follow on Twitter, or around a #hashtag or search or list.
Gaming the system would never work.. as you really don’t get much out of the few dynamic links… but it’s been fun to see what works, what get’s picked up and what people are looking for using paper.li and other services like it
Here’s on of dozens I was featured in today. GaryFPatton’s S-M-A-R-T Tips
That’s my Healthy Author promotion with a link to my blog and the cover of “Cut Your Health Care Costs Now” by Brandi Funk as the top story on many of the paper.li papers today.
At first, I discounted the importance of this. I get a tweet mention from the person who search included me and asked the founders of paper.li “Does anyone read these?”
I was thinking that some would create the daily paper and not even bother to read their own each day. I was wrong. The one pictured above had be retweeted 50 times when I got their shortly after it was released. I’ve seen others with a tweet number over 100.
I still haven’t cracked the code on what get these “papers” shared.. and frankly am not totally convinced those are live views. I know that far less than 50 will ever click through to my post.
When I asked other users whether anyone read, I got responses from some with local editions, targeted segmentation and loyal followings. My guess is that this is a growing trend. We don’t have time to read everything, so we go to the people who assemble things well.. even though the paper itself is http://bestsellerauthors.com/healthydone by software, someone had to pick who to follow or the keywords searched.
Which brings me to WHAT get included.
1. Photos
2. Links
3. Relevance
I’ve had dozens of links to posts picked up, likely more if you scroll down past the few that make the “first page” shown here. The FEW that get the most traction have had all 3 traits and never when I tried to get included.
How important will paper.li, et al become? We don’t know, but I since sharing relevant content, with photos and links works in every system or site, I will keep finding and sharing the best stuff I can.