Serious Question About Other Black LGBT Blogs: Where Are Their Readers?

I took a look at Durtey, and yeah, that's odd. Their most popular post in the past few months is the story about the 14-yr old boy who was killed by his father for being gay, with 95 likes/reactions, 115 shares, and 25 comments. Still, that's nothing compared to the amount of people following the page. The website itself is even worse.

The best guesses I can come up with are: 1.) The readers don't care much for some of the lesser known stories. 2.) Some of the more popular stories are discussed over at The Shade Room, which is far more popular. 3) Bots.

As for Queerty, they have the benefit of a majority white audience, which trumps black audiences in numbers. VerySmartBrothas (this reason might be a reach) has a majority straight audience, so no fear of being outed if seen commenting, liking, and sharing. What both sites have over Aazah as websites, is that they're much simpler and easier to navigate. Queerty and VSB have 5 and 6 tabs, one of them being the latest/home tab. Aazah has 11. I think that's casting too wide a net. If I wanted a new game, I could go to Walmart, but I'd rather go to GameStop.

That's all I can say for them specifically, though. I don't know about any other Black Gay sites.

 

Well, that is the rub. Social media seemingly permeates resoundingly so in the culture like dropping a pebble in the lake and watching the ripples pulse out like sound waves and fade out into nothing. I catch coworkers randomly and several times a day going onto Facebook and IG via their phones during work hours. It's like mindless eating. You have to be disciplined on your digital diet and actually is a huge pet peeve of mine. If I began writing staff up I wouldn't have a team within 9 months. However, back to your question, this isn't a clever SEO strategy this is about tactics they use to drive traffic to comment to the post with some sensationalized title. The squeaky wheel gets the oil. Stay and continue to be authentic. This is what differentiates Cypher Avenue from other sites and similar sites for you guys have your own lane. This isn't too niche' for it too be unrealistic in the culture. There are many natural, masculine leaning men who is supportive of our out LGBTQIA brothers and sisters though doesn't necessarily are active or out identified in the culture. The work you and your business partner put in and implement isn't for naught. Continue to stay true to this.

 

Where would you consider BGC within this discussion? I haven't done any research but I feel I can assume they're the largest Black LGBTQIA dating site / forums out there with tons of interactions.

 

Well that's probably because they do Facebook Ads, well the ones on Facebook and Instagram.

You can set up an Facebook Ads account to target specific posts to a certain demographic. However, you also have people in poorer countries (India and Phillipines. i.e. which are both English speaking places) that are a part of the pay to click deal. So they get paid to click, like, or heart posts and pages, no matter the topic but they can click what interests them as well I assume. You can accumlate hundreds or up to thousands of clickers on posts and page likes in a couple of days.

As far as the blogs are concerned I do believe you can have it on FB ads to drive folks to your blog etc. Some of those likes may be genuine which explains the comments from the genuine folks but often more than not, quite a few of them are "paid for". That's why you don't see that many comments, cause folks are getting paid to like and heart stuff in other countries, not comment on them.

 

There is probably a lot of reasons but i think a lot of it has to do with the quality. These days most blogs/websites are very big on click bait, its very annoying because once you grab the attention there isn't any substance to keep it. At the same time we are in a era of instant satisfaction so they have to find creative ways to grab the attention of readers, most time people click the comments to find out the summary of what the article is about. Another reason could be the lack of social media presence. If you want a following you have to be posting on IG/FB/Twitter/Snapchat and posting often. To comment on the difference of black and white, I think both comment on things that are trending but black people seem to only speak when its the popular thing to do.

 

Some of these sites have simply mastered the promotion that is required to sustain an ad-driven social media platform or blog. I think you have to also recognize that sex sells. People click Like or Subscribe to these sites because they are promoting sex, sexy bodies, etc. over quality content.

With that being said, I think consistency matters too. A lot of these sites produce lots of content on a consistent basis, no matter how trivial. This can be done a lot easier for gossip and pop culture blogs because they are tons of gutter-level shit out there. I think finding the right target market and producing consistent and high-quality content is a much better driver towards success. I had a friend who created the Well Fellow Blog which is a health and lifestyle blog for gay men but it is gear towards the white men so I don't come back to the site as much because the content is not written for me and my tribe.

 

I sometimes read blogs. I just noticed something.

Who reads blogs anymore? I'm not really trying to be like that. Everyone either has their own virtues already, or they will go to youtube and maybe find a comedic or entertaining spin to a blog, with a vlog.

It's sad really.