I've had blog posts make it to the top page of HN before, and likewise haven't really gotten much in the way of "conversions" from it. But that's OK... our blog[1] is a default Blogger template and there isn't much in the way of a "call to action" associated with most of our blog posts. In fact, now that I think about it, I don't think there's even a link on the entire blog, to sign up for our mailing list.<p>And while I should probably correct both of those deficiencies, I'm not <i>too</i> worried about it. Why? Because the goal of our blog posts isn't necessarily to get people signed up for a mailing list or anything. It's mainly just about having people see the name "Fogbeam". It's all towards trying to establish what marketers call TOMA - Top Of Mind Awareness[2]. We just want people to keep hearing our name over and over and over and over, until eventually it sinks in. One day, I want to be at a place where if somebody asks a friend "Hey, do you know anybody who makes a cool Enterprise Social Network product we could use?", that friend will go "Hey, there's this company named Fogbeam Labs..."<p>That said, it wouldn't <i>hurt</i> to try and get more engagement out of the blog posts. We do end a lot of them with a call to follow us on Twitter at least, but it really wouldn't hurt to push the mailing list more. It goes to the whole "permission marketing"[3] idea.<p>[1]: <a href="http://fogbeam.blogspot.com" rel="nofollow">http://fogbeam.blogspot.com</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-of-mind_awareness" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-of-mind_awareness</a><p>[3]: <a href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/01/permission-mark.html" rel="nofollow">http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/01/permission-m...</a>
I think that many of the comments in HN highlight the economical problems of vertical farming. So a typical HN reader will be more skeptical than a reader from a site with less technical discussion.<p>Discussion: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10092184" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10092184</a> (78 points, 1 day ago, 121 comments)<p>Partial transcript of the first two comments:<p>> <i>Vertical farming is an energy nightmare. It requires at least 1000x more energy than conventional agriculture because you have to provide supplemental light for the plants to grow indoors. [...]</i><p>> <i>What's making this transition difficult is the economic viability. It only makes sense in densely populated areas but those areas also have ridiculous property values and higher utility costs. That makes it increasingly difficult for these farms because the margins in farming aren't that great. [...]</i>
First, reading an article doesn't mean I'm super interested in the topic. It could just be that I was curious about the title and didn't need to know more than what was in the article.<p>Second, email is broken (thank you spammers). I don't subscribe to mailing lists because I'm not sure you're not going to give (voluntarily or not) my email address to third parties and most of the time it just clutters my inbox. I probably go on my spam account twice a year.
One year later I will be wondering why I receive these emails about vertical farming and why aren't they trying to sell me viagra instead ;-)<p>So yeah page views just means you managed to get some people to click on a link, that's it.