A list of counterintuitive behaviour that will improve your use of the web

Traditional media people – journalists, marketers, editors - are just like other professionals. They do the same things in print and via emails year after year because of intuition.

Success came about by

• hoarding the content
• broadcasting to the users
• expecting a response
• trying to please everyone
• assuming everything was read
• not engaging with the competitors

The more you get to use the web, the more you realise it works the opposite way.

• the more you focus on a niche than a whole community, the quicker your traffic will rise
• the more you comment on other people’s sites, the more comments your site will receive back (even if they are not from the same people)
• the more annoyed you are that you still have no comments, the harder still you need to try
• the more information you contribute to your community, the more you will be able to develop those relationships
• the more frustrated you become with the lack of response from your community, the less response you will receive
• the more open you are in your networks (even if there are traditional competitors), the more information you will get back 
• the more you link to other sites, the more sites will link to you (even if they are not the same sites)
• the more questions you answer on Twitter, the more others will answer yours
• the more specific, even lengthy, your keyword phrase can be, the more qualified will be those who find your content
• the more you can make your navigation like your online competitors, the more easily people will find what they want on your own site
• the more quickly your subscribers increase, the more quickly they will decline
• the more you block the wrong people from following you on Twitter, the faster your followers will grow
• the more rude a comment is on your blog, the more you should presume that the commentator did not mean it

Can you think of  other web behaviour that is counterintuitive?

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Photo credit: Payton Chung