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The Sad Launch of a Failed Crowd-Sourcing Campaign

By Monique Gaudin

For the first timers out there dipping into the pool of social media, do your research, evaluate the options, and above all else, know what you are trying to sell, before you try to selling it.

Over the past eight months as moniquee2e.com has been focused on providing stories on local flavor, historic places, and local education, the audience has steadily been building. Two weeks ago, at the onset of launching a social-media campaign on the upcoming mini documentary on the Nevada Testing Site, now Nevada National Security Site, the traffic to the site, plunged downward.

Since changing focus on the upcoming mini-documentary and promoting it, traffic has steadily declined. Image: Monique Gaudin
Since changing focus on the upcoming mini-documentary and promoting it, traffic has steadily declined. Image: Monique Gaudin

At that same time, the focus of the topic changed from a personal historic retrospect with an emphasis on an era to one on a place, a site, then and now.

The great film director Frank Capra said, “I made mistakes in drama. I thought drama was when actors cried. But drama is when the audience cries.”

Knowing what makes your audience cry is at the heart of creating a media following.

The moniquee2e followers are now accustomed to a variety of topics. It is not in the differences that they came back, it is in the single underlying focus of the personal story. The achieving students, a band rocking out downtown, or even as in an inanimate object like a courthouse, the story still had a focus on the story of people.

When changing the direction two weeks ago to a focus on a place, the readers departed. The revolt was felt loud and clear in the lack of data collected through polls and surveys.

Although there were 97 page views on the survey, only three people completed it and the Facebook poll. Image: Monique Gaudin
Although there were 97 page views on the survey, only three people completed it and the Facebook poll. Image: Monique Gaudin

The crowd-sourced input, or lack there of, screams not of nuclear explosions, but of social demise, and begs the question, why change directions when the path you are on shows promise?

Traffic and overall engagement is down on the site. Image: Monique Gaudin
Traffic and overall engagement is down on the site. Image: Monique Gaudin

In evaluation of the trends and feedback the answers can be found in the masses of Facebook, and twitter followers, but if you are starting out, your success lies with the few who spread the word and “like” you.  If you have a passion, a vision, or a quest, as in all things in life, “to thy own self be true” and the “twitterers” will come.