Corpses, Mollusks, and Kinky Sex – How I Won the Blog-Off

by Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.

Many of those in my now-loyal audience first became acquainted with my work by supporting me in the Community Marketing site’s Great Blog-Off contest a few months ago. A number of people have asked me to write a little case study about my (overwhelming) win in that test, which illustrates some basic principles everyone who writes for the Internet should keep in mind: Hook ‘Em With Headlines. Keep ‘Em There With Links. And Remember You’re Only As Strong As Your Fan Base.

I’ve been a heavy-volume print journalist most of my working life. But after a several-year sabbatical from the field, I returned to find the world of magazines in disarray, Big Media under fire from Little Media, and the Internet emerging as the place where a busy and educated audience of professionals tended to go for both news and features.

I was also dismayed to find that the current dominance of a few major search engines tends to exclude from Internet visibility anything written prior to 18 months ago or so. Magazines are particularly poorly represented. So the more than 3,000 print magazine articles I’d published over a 30-year period were virtually inaccessible, in Internet terms. I was suddenly a journalistic ghost, while Buffy the Siamese Cat, with 14,000 Twitter “publications,” was now a media superstar.

What to do? Well, with the help of my cousin the Internet guru, I first scanned in a selection of about 50 of my magazine articles and placed them in a little virtual portfolio on the Web. Then I wrote a couple of articles for Internet “aggregators,” but soon decided they were pretty much pimps, and I was a lady, not a Lady of the Night.

So I decided to create a Web presence of my own by publishing and administering my own blogsites and developing an audience in the Brave New Blogosphere. While this idea was germinating, I heard about the Great Blog-Off contest at a website called Community Marketing.

Marketing is not my area of expertise, although I’ve done a few stories on it over the years. (I’ve probably done a few stories on everything over the years.) But this contest was not designed for marketing writers only. It welcomed all bloggers who professed to be “thought leaders” on any kind of subject matter. I had been contemplating starting my Baby Boomers-The Angriest Generation series, which most of you now know about. (See the latest Index at http://wp.me/pxD3J-2a )

I signed up for the contest, describing myself as a “thought leader” on the subject of Baby Boomers. The owner of the site asked contestants – there were a couple of dozen originally, although some turned out to be not very active – to come up with punchy little descriptions of themselves, a few words that would make us memorable. I offered the following:

Dr. Ellen Brandt – “Sophisticated Rabble-Rouser”

About my professional background: I’m an Ivy League-educated Ph.D. cultural historian and the author of over 3,000 magazine articles. I’m now a professional in the senior services industry – the fastest-growing sector of this economy for the next 100 years or so – while also resuming my career as a heavy-volume journalist.

When I’m not working: I’m a mezzo soprano trained at Juilliard Prep when it was at 123rd and Claremont. I like lighthouses, carousels, and botanical gardens. And my Dog-Nephew Garcia, named after Jerry Garcia, was – honestly! – the inspiration for the Obamas getting a Portuguese water dog.

My Pre-Blog-Off Blogsite

Said punchy blurb was accompanied by a photo and the notation that I would be the contestant representing Boomers among a field of mostly Gen-Xers and Millennials.

The punchy blurbs were posted about ten days before the contest proper was to begin, at which time I contemplated what kind of strategy might set me apart from the field, help win me a loyal audience, and address the essential differences between a static print environment and this dynamic sphere which calls itself the Internet.

I decided to establish a “pre-Blog-Off blog” at WordPress, where I now house the blogs I publish. The site was called “Preparing for the Blog-Off” with the subhead “Seeing What Works.”

It basically consisted of the same page repeated ten times with different headlines. More about the headlines in a second. The main purpose of the page was to introduce readers to the Blog-Off, with an easy link to the contest embedded in the text.

I also said a little bit about my background and stated that I would be the contestant representing Content and Experience, as befitted a Baby Boomer. On the blogsite’s About page, I offered further links to my Linked In profile, about 50 examples of my print magazine articles, and a wide-ranging interview about my career. (See Why This Blog at http://wp.me/sycK6-about )

This adds up to a whole lot of links! Which illustrates one of those three principles successful website owners should keep in mind: Don’t keep your Readers on one static page, in which case they might as well be sitting at their kitchen table reading a newspaper. Keep your audience moving swiftly from link to link, offering them choices of what to read about next. Make your site a textual Treasure Hunt, with riches galore opening before their eyes.

Now For Those Headlines . . .

All I needed now was an interesting topic for the site, broad enough to warrant several blog entries over the two-week period of the contest, and compelling enough to attract a brand-new audience previously unfamiliar with my work.

The Blog-Off winner would be the contestant who attracted both the most comments and the most clicks – or page views – on the Community Marketing site. So I conceived the idea of a series of stories about attracting both page views and comments via the strength of one’s article headlines.

The series would be called “Thank You For Clicking!” and would be based on the experience early in my career within the world of those Headline Hotshots, the tabloid newspapers. (See “In An Economy and World Gone Haywire” http://wp.me/pycK6-v )

No one does headlines better than the tabloids. Their titles may amuse you, intrigue you, infuriate you, or have you scratching your head – but they are superb at drawing you in and getting you to read the accompanying stories.

Looking at this exercise as informative, as well as fun, I decided to use ten Faux Tabloid Headlines representing different kinds of typical tabloid stories, which I categorized as The Big Story, Plausible-But-Off, Purely Ridiculous, and What-the-Heck-Is-That-About? You can read about these tabloid story categories – and I certainly hope you will – in the four-part series of blogs which made up my composite entry in the Blog-Off.

Here are the ten Faux Tabloid Headlines:

Corpse Found in Internet Guru’s Gym Locker

Kinky Sex, Chocolate Truffles, Adorable Puppies

Thailand Swallowed By Giant Clam

New Reality Show To Feature Laid-Off Bankers, Lawyers

Women Want Men Who Smell Like Fresh Peaches

7 Out of 10 Blog In the Nude

Swimming Pool Features Underwater Computer

Are You a Cheetah or a Crocodile?

Transvestite Running for Mayor

Pet Hamsters May Spread Swine Flu

Each of these headlines was placed on a separate page at the “Preparing For the Blog-Off” site at Word Press, with the exact same text accompanying each one. In other words, the only element that differed page-to-page was the headline itself. A reader’s clicking on any particular page instead of another would demonstrate that the headline on that page attracted that reader in some way. I also encouraged readers to comment on why they clicked on that particular headline.

Please click on this link to see what the “Preparing For the Blog-Off” page looked like: http://wp.me/pycK6-2h I have used “7 Out of 10 Blog in the Nude” as an example.

Finding Your Fan Base

At this point I needed an audience to read my Blog-Off entries. Several of the younger entrants in the contest publically stated they’d be concentrating on their Twitter networks as potential bases of fans. But I wasn’t on Twitter yet, nor was I active on Face Book.

So I decided to focus my efforts on my Linked In network – considerably smaller then than it is now – and my 50 Linked In Groups.

Starting about two weeks before the Blog-Off’s official commencement, I began to post each of the ten Faux Tabloid Headlines in turn, with a link to the appropriate “Preparing” site page, first in the News sections, then in the Discussion sections, of my various Linked In Groups. I made sure each of the ten Faux Headlines appeared in News and Discussion threads an equal number of times, meaning that an approximately equal number of site visitors would have the opportunity to click – or not click – on each distinctive headline.

Readers who did choose to click were encouraged to make comments about why they chose the headline they did. Many got into the spirit of this exercise and made comments which were sophisticated, insightful, and often quite funny.

It was also soon very clear who my own “fan base” tended to be: over-35; equally divided between female and male; well-educated; and with professional, managerial, or creative careers.

I’m quite happy with that audience. And, in fact, many of those who first “found” me and my work via the Blog-Off are now friends and members of my network.

A quick note about my Baby Boomers series: I intended to introduce the first of my Baby Boomers-The Angriest Generation articles towards the end of the Blog-Off contest. But I collected so much material from the Faux Tabloid Headlines exercise – most of which turned out to be genuinely interesting, as well as humorous – I decided to stick with that “mini-series,” consisting of four separate “Thank You For Clicking!” results stories, as my composite Blog-Off entry.

Here are links to the four stories in the series:

Thank You For Clicking! Part One: Corpse Found In Internet Guru’s Gym Locker http://wp.me/pycK6-2i

Thank You For Clicking! Part Two: Kinky Sex, Chocolate Truffles, Adorable Puppies http://wp.me/pycK6-2l

Thank You For Clicking! Part Three: Thailand Swallowed By Giant Clam http://wp.me/pycK6-2m

Thank You For Clicking! Part Four: New Reality Show To Feature Laid-Off Bankers, Lawyers http://wp.me/pycK6-2o

I urge you to read these stories in sequence, after looking at the Introductory page from the “Preparing For the Blog-Off” site, linked above.

This sequence of four Thank You For Clicking! results articles made up my Blog-Off entry. They were posted on the Community Marketing site at about three-day intervals over the two-week course of the contest. Other active competitors also posted about four stories on average, with three to five blogs being the typical range per contestant.

When the results were tallied, my articles garnered about twice as many page views on the Community Marketing site as my nearest competitor. But the number of page views on the “Preparing for the Blog-Off” site itself was over double that amount, meaning my total views overall, counting both sites, was between six and seven times as great as the next-nearest contestant.

Tell Me What You Think

The series of Thank You For Clicking! stories also did extremely well in terms of reader commentary, which I believe is one of the essential components of successful Internet-based publishing.

Internet gurus tell us that a comment-to-click ratio of 1-2 percent is the average among publishers across the Web. Adding together the approximately 200 comments the Thank You! series received at the Community Marketing site, my Linked In Groups, and the “Preparing For the Blog-Off” site, these articles had a comment-to-click ratio of almost 4 percent, considered an excellent showing.

The comment-to-page view ratio on the “Preparing” site alone, where I – and not other managers – had complete control of the blog and its content was similar, with close to 100 comments from readers, out of 2700 page views in a three-week period.

I am including a selection of original Reader comments from the Community Marketing site and the “Preparing” blogsite as an appendix to this case study. To see them, please click here: http://wp.me/pycK6-2q and http://wp.me/pycK6-2r

The superb reader response demonstrates how enthusiastic – and witty – an audience I was fortunate enough to make an acquaintance with during the course of the Blog-Off contest.

There were a few detractors. If you’ve read my serious humor piece about Malice on the Web, you’ll remember a small cadre of loonies at a couple of Linked In media groups – including a PR man! – who thought anything whatsoever to do with tabloids was just too undignified for Internet discourse. (See “Vultures and Stiletto Heels” http://wp.me/pycK6-5 )

But most readers loved the premise of the Faux Tabloid Headline experiment and understood that it was not only entertaining, but also told us some interesting things about which kinds of headlines readers respond to viscerally and why.

Even coming from a heavy-volume print background, it was essential for me – as it is for every writer and publisher – to discover just who my Internet “fan base” might be and how I could best appeal to them in future Web publications.

My gratifying win in the Blog-Off contest allowed me to do that.

Soon afterwards, I launched my Baby Boomers-The Angriest Generation series. (See http://wp.me/pxD3J-2V ) And “Tell Me What You Think,” a catch phrase I used throughout the Blog-Off, became the subtitle of my EllenInteractive site, a cornucopia of diverse stories designed to elicit above-average reader response. (For instance, see “The World is Divided,” a key question story which received well over 100 comments: http://wp.me/pycK6-n )

I’m now moving on to additional Internet publishing projects:

Media Revolution, a subseries of EllenInteractive, talks about how the entire media sector is undergoing a sea change of enormous proportions and how we must prepare for it. (See “Is Big Brother Here-And Is He An Algorithm?” http://wp.me/pycK6-1Y )

Romance After Fifty is a series on dating and relationships I’m developing with a Baby Boomer matchmaker. (See “A Chance for Romance” http://wp.me/pxD3J-R )

A Little Knowledge will look at Internet security and cloud computing from the perspective of an audience which is well-educated and has used computers for years, but which lacks information on some of the serious recent developments that are changing the Web as we speak.

And The Rest of US – pun intended – is a new blogsite I’m launching about and for political Centrists.

So there have been many interesting developments built upon the foundation of my Blog-Off win.

I invite my brilliant, sophisticated, and in-every-way-perfect audience to join with me in these new projects and others to come.

Any success I have is due to you!