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| Evan Garcia photo sequence on Cascada Bonita, Argentina. Image: www.egcreekin.blogspot.com |
Part of what makes Garcia's blog so successful is that he uses it to promote not only himself, but his sponsors. From the helmet on which he mounts his GoPro video camera, to the dozens of paddles he inevitably breaks every year, what Garcia wears on is body in photos and videos is carefully scripted. According to Garcia, his sponsors are "psyched about how much exposure I can create for them on my blog" (Garcia). This keeps them happy, which keeps him in enough gear,
travel and beer money to keep the adrenaline churning. Sponsorship is a big
part of the life of a professional athlete, no matter how small the sport. So
being able to provide constant “proof of performance” of your promotional
duties is key. His sponsors require him to submit photos, video and articles for their blogs as well. I suppose this would put Garcia into the category of guest blogger when he provides content for these other blogs. He also uses the
talents of other boaters, photographers and film makers to fuel content for his own
blog, though he almost always is the author of any alphabetic posts.
Most recently, the publishers of Bomb Flow Magazine have created an entire video series featuring the footage that Garcia and his paddling partners have created. It's a great example of how collaboration can produce content that fuels not only a print magazine, but an online version, several athlete blogs and provides yet another avenue for Garcia to exceed the expectations of his sponsors.
Most recently, the publishers of Bomb Flow Magazine have created an entire video series featuring the footage that Garcia and his paddling partners have created. It's a great example of how collaboration can produce content that fuels not only a print magazine, but an online version, several athlete blogs and provides yet another avenue for Garcia to exceed the expectations of his sponsors.
Evan's audience ranges from young, hard-core boaters, many
of whom he meets on the rivers, to the curious, armchair adventurers that, like
most of us, will never huck themselves off of a hundred foot waterfall. He
pulls in 180 average visitors a day and is closing in on a half million page
views. His blog is popular year-round, since he provides fresh content, even in
the winter months, about his exploits in South America. His traffic comes from
search engines like Google, other blogs and from his sponsors' websites and blogs.
He generally posts about once a week, depending on his busy kayaking schedule, access to the internet and the video editing and photo processing that must be done for each post. He concentrates not only on the sport, but the lifestyle. He paints a somewhat wild picture, mirroring the extreme situations he puts himself in on the water. Of course, I'd probably have to have a beer or two just to calm my nerves after plummeting over the side of a cliff in nothing but a hallowed out piece of plastic. But Garcia and his followers seem to revel in the culture he has created (or perpetuated) in his rhetoric.
He certainly engages with alphabetic text, but much of what draws Garcia's audience is the photography, which occupies a majority of the space on his blog. And he keeps the images varied. How many different ways can you show someone hucking a waterfall? Evan Garcia and his contributors keep finding new ways. Whether he knows it or not, he seems to be on the right track. According to the DexOne social marketing team, pictures are the number one form of rhetoric viewed on social media (2011). And YouTube is now “the second largest search engine in the world,” (www.cosemindspring.com) which emphasizes the importance of video content on blogs. “People prefer to watch a video six times more than they would opt for printed information” according to the website's author.
On the previous page, I listed ten elements of a successful blog. So how does Garcia's blog stack up? Let's take a closer, more systematic look based on these more general keys to success.
1. Choose a topic that interests you: Garcia has obviously done this. "Kayaking is my life," is how he puts it. But that's not entirely true. Photo and video editing, networking, writing blog posts - this is also part of the life of a pro kayaker. And his passion shows through not only in his rise to prominence in his chosen sport, but also in the work he puts into his blog.
And it turns out there is much more to Garcia than just the man in the plastic torpedo. He is often introspective, like in the opening of his post titled Reasons: "I have been doing some thinking about what it takes to be a full time kayaker and at the same time, a positive member of society. In my past I have been on the edge of what most people would think of as a responsible and reasonable person...but I think that plays a part in being the man I am today. Kayaking has taken me to some wild places and confronted me with many challenges. What I've began to realize is more of those obstacles are off the river, not on" (Garcia). So, you see, it's not just kayaking, but life that Garcia seems to have a passion for. Life is a universal topic that we can all relate to. I think it's within these posts that the real gems are found.
2. Research blogs that have similar content: Garcia prominently features the blogs that he follows in his right-hand navigation bar on his blog. He lists over 40 blogs in all. Many of these blogs are maintained by his paddling companions. Garcia definitely stays plugged in to the "scene." But I do see a few things he could improve on in his blog. He doesn't always seem to follow blogging's "industry best practices." For example, he has no profile widget. Who is Evan Garcia? Well, you could probably figure out that he is a kayaker, but his blog doesn't reveal much about him. If people are going to invest their time into reading a blog, many would like to know a little about the author. Many of his fellow bloggers include details of expeditions they have been on, they feature their sponsors' logos prominently on their main pages and they generally list their accomplishments, like placing in river races and freestyle competitions. Garcia does little of this. Also, his blog is a little sloppy. Some of the photos spill over into the margins of the bounding boxes and obscure the text on the right nav bar. His usable space is also narrow, indicating that he hasn't updated his blog design since industry best practices have shifted to wider site formats. It's now considered acceptable to design websites for 900-1000 pixel widths. And Garcia, with a focus on the visual aspects of his blog, could certainly benefit from the newer width recommendations.
3. Develop content that is search engine friendly: Garcia's blog is laced with the jargon of his industry. "Browns" and "stouts" fill his prose. And there is no doubt that the word "kayak" features prominently. But he could likely draw more search engine traffic if he followed the advice here and inserted a few trending key words into his writing. What likely attracts a lot of his traffic is the use of location information in his text. He travels to and blogs about the rivers that many dream of boating. And because much of what he does has little information online already, Garcia's blog is one of only a handful of sources directly addressing this particular audience.
4. Develop a social media presence: 3,600 Facebook likes is not bad. But it's interesting that he doesn't have a Facebook link from his blog. He has a ton of activity on Facebook and he obviously gives it quite a bit of attention. But he could probably capitalize on the social loop better if he featured his pages better on both sites. He also has established YouTube and Vimeo pages, but has been delegating the video projects out. This is another area that could probably stand some updating and improvement.
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| Garcia's Facebook Timeline. He has over 3,600 friends, adding to his online presence. |
6. Find an appropriate word length: Here Garcia sticks to industry best practices for most of his posts, getting in that 300 word minimum. His posts are usually either short, around 100 words or less and they lead into the "eye candy" portion of his rhetoric or they are somewhere between 500-600 words. A lot of his posts are image-based and, therefore, not very SEO friendly. He could improve this by adding what's called "title" and "alt" tags. This is easily done by clicking on the image and then clicking "Properties" while in the editing window. This basically allows you to add text to an image so that search engines can recognize and catalog them.
7. Acknowledge your readers' posts: Fortunately or unfortunately, this may be what becomes most memorable about a blog. How you respond to the comments section of your blog can either reinforce the tone you set in the rest of your blog or it can ruin it. But perhaps the most important thing is that you respond. Garcia certainly does this. Unfortunately, he has had to back-peddle in a few instances. Spending any amount of time on Garcia's blog, you realize that not everyone is a fan of his rhetorical style. He has been accused of having an inflated ego and trying to "show everyone how cool" (egcreekin.blogspot.com) he is. It's caused him to lose his temper and he has engaged in some back and forth bickering with some of his audience. But those that subscribe to his theories on life back him up in their comments. And Garcia insists it is mainly his passion for sharing the sport of kayaking that drives his blog. He enjoys all that goes into creating his posts and reading the comments that his followers leave.
"I respect all the other paddlers out there. I don't feel I'm any better than anyone else. Just luckier in some cases, I guess. I get to do this for a living, at least for now. I work hard and play hard and it's reflected in what I do every day." It should be noted that some of what Garcia does is simply for the camera. I know him as a pretty quiet guy who is entirely focused on enjoying life. I admire him for chasing his passion. I believe that's his ethos. People gravitate toward stories like Evan's, mostly because they would never take the chances that he does, either in life or in a kayak.
8. Pay attention to the numbers: There is one number that Garcia pays the most attention to and that is his page count, which has made him the top blogger in his tiny niche. Certainly there are industry sites out there that have more traffic, but he attracts as many, if not more, monthly traffic than some of his sponsor's main websites.
9. Vary your content: Garcia's content has a great mix of text, pictures and video. As I mentioned above, he has even partnered with a local company called Bomb Flow to help edit and produce much of his video content. He realizes that many of the photos he produces for his content are what brings his audience to his blog. They are of the highest quality and tell a story that would be hard to accomplish with alphabetic text. But he also realizes that he can share his opinions on the sport and stimulate conversation through alphabetic text, which is an important part of the community aspect of his blog. His posts are thought-provoking and he does quite well for a kid who has never set foot in a college classroom.
10. Making money: Garcia doesn't sell ads. He doesn't subscribe to any ad services. He makes money by keeping his sponsors happy, which he accomplishes by doing what he loves and by sharing that love with the rest of the world via his blog. He could certainly make a few extra dollars a month simply by clicking a few buttons and setting up Adsense on his blog, but there is a certain amount of time required to manage ad services. This is simply not what he wants to focus on. His website is surprisingly non-commercial in a day in which commercials rule the headers and sidebars of websites. Perhaps the graffiti background speaks to the anti-establishment nature of Garcia and his blog. He doesn't do things the way most people do. And that has helped differentiate him and keep a relatively high number of his followers coming back to follow his exploits.
As you can see from my analysis above, Garcia falls short of some of these recommendations. In some cases, he flat-out ignores them. But what he does well, he seems to do very well. And that, I believe, has led to his relatively large audience. I have no doubt he could do better. Garcia must keep in mind that technologies like the web in general, and Blogger specifically, change rapidly and the online audience is a fickle one. In the blink of an eye or, as he says in the video below, by injuring himself, he could easily lose a large majority of his audience. His is a demanding field where you're either pushing the boundaries or your sport and you're at the top of your game or you're just like everyone else. The same seems to hold true for blogging.
Conclusion
Success can be measured a million different ways. In the world of a blogger, success can mean simply having the time to post once a week, it can mean holding sway over the way millions of people find their daily entertainment, or it can be part of a larger passion, such as kayaking. Clicking "Publish" opens a blogger's writing to the world. But it is up to you to make sure that your target audience finds it. Blogging about your passions is a great way to start. But you also have to become passionate about blogging.
I think this video by Andy Maser ties everything together. While describing what it's like to prepare for throwing your body over a waterfall, Garcia states, "you have to look at it as a whole picture before you can even think about connecting all the pieces together." Blogging is like putting a big puzzle together. It usually helps to have a clear picture of what it should look like before you start trying to create it. Then, and only then, will you ensure you make a successful landing into the vast ocean of blogging.
Works Cited
Wow, I didn't know about using the properties portion of pictures to make it more search engine friendly. You put a lot of work into this. Good job!
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