You’re an online dating site. You’re going up against much bigger competitors, like Match.com, PlentyOfFish and eHarmony. You could spend big bucks on advertising and marketing. But what you’ve tried in those areas didn’t really work.
But what if you start promoting by teaching? You’ve got a treasure trove of data. What if you take a Freakonomics-esque approach to all that info and use it to answer questions and reveal surprising twists?
That’s exactly what dating site OkCupid has done at its blog with posts like The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures, How Your Race Affects The Messages You Get, and Exactly What To Say In A First Message.
By turning its by-product (all that data) into something useful, OkCupid is getting on more and more radars. That post debunking the conventional wisdom about profile pictures brought more than 750,000 visitors to the site and garnered 10,000 new member sign-ups, according to the company.
The blog, which OkCupid started in October, has helped get the company’s name out on other blogs and social networks…Since OkCupid started its blog, the number of active site members has grown by roughly 10 percent, to 1.1 million, according to the company.
“We’ve been up for six years,” Mr. Yagan said. “We’ve only had the blog for six months. It’s a big deal for us.”
Great lesson there. What has your business taught you that’s interesting, noteworthy, or surprising? Share it with the world and get people talking.
David Andersen
on 15 Feb 10That’s interesting. I wonder how many people will harvest the info but still say “yeah, but the other sites have a much bigger selection pool, I’ll still go there.”
Josh Walsh
on 17 Feb 10Those who teach are the experts. Those who learn from the expert will always be followers. So, the way to be an expert and pave the way is to innovate and teach others.
You guys are the masters of this, and I think you are dead on.
Dempsey
on 18 Feb 10Nice to hear that in the post-Web 2.0 world, the “join the conversation” strategy is still working.
Artur spychalski
on 18 Feb 10That sounds like very interesting idea. I’m going to use this concept in my service:)
This discussion is closed.