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!

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Thank You For Clicking! Part Four: New Reality Show To Feature Laid-Off Bankers, Lawyers

by Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.

How have you attracted viewers to your on-line blogs and articles? Please add your solo to our cacophony of voices.

Don’t be shy! Sing out how you feel about the topics broached in our “Thank You For Clicking!” series and the Faux Tabloid Headlines experiment which preceded it.

For instance, 1) Compared to strategies used in traditional “print,” do you have to be especially aggressive or clever or cagey to attract viewers to your on-line blogs, articles, and other sites? Why or why not?

2) Has a shocking, surprising, or tabloid-like headline ever gotten good results for you on-line? Tell us about it.

3) What other techniques have you used to attract more “clickers” to your blogs, articles, and other Internet sites? Which have been most and least successful?

4) Why do some disparage the real skills – and real talent and creativity – of tabloid journalists? Shouldn’t good journalists – whatever niche they favor – strive to learn from one another and be supportive of the choices other journalists have made?

5) Is there truly a divide between “serious” journalism and tabloid journalism, or are both just parts of the full spectrum of journalistic endeavors?

6) For that matter, shouldn’t all writers strive to participate in as many different genres as possible, working to reach and provoke as many different audiences as possible? In this Brave New World of media transition and flux, isn’t this kind of versatility not only valuable, but possibly essential?

Fellow Writers, fellow Thinkers, fellow Theorists: Don’t seethe. Don’t carp. And please, don’t attack blindly.

Discuss! Debate! Talk to us!

To return to Part One of the “Thank You For Clicking!” series, Corpse Found in Internet Guru’s Gym Locker, click on: http://wp.me/pycK6-2i

To see a selection of reader Comments from the original sites, see: http://wp.me/pycK6-2q

To return to “Corpses, Mollusks, and Kinky Sex – How I Won the Blog-Off,” go to: http://wp.me/pycK6-2s

Thank You For Clicking! Part Three: Thailand Swallowed By Giant Clam

by Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.

In these troubled times, readers seem to appreciate humor, the more off-the-wall the better. But they also like stories about villains, corporate and otherwise. And bad times or good, chocolate and babies sell.

While our results with the Faux Tabloid Ten experiment are based on a fairly small sampling of readers, they don’t surprise me at all. And I believe a larger sampling would yield results that were very similar.

Let’s start with the least successful headlines in the group and why they might not have attracted as many clicks as the front-runners did.

At the bottom of the pack were “Pet Hamsters May Spread Swine Flu” and “Transvestite Running For Mayor” – and readers were quick to tell us why. Both headlines, they said, were too much like what you might see in any ole newspaper, any ole day.

That’s despite the fact that the two titles fit into different categories of tabloid headlines. “Pet Hamsters” is what I call a Plausible-But-Somehow-Off headline. It seems reasonable on first glance, but is based on a glaring logical flaw, in this case, the sound-association of “hamsters” and “ham.”

“Pet Hamster” was rejected, though, not because it was “off,” but because readers have been inundated with swine flu stories lately, to the extent that they will only click on a title that is way more shocking – or perhaps humorous – than this one is. In the county where I live, for instance, some high schools have been temporarily closed because of suspected swine flu cases, which means this topic is the hardest of hard news, immediate and local.

But Rene suggests a way the topic could be made sufficiently humorous to persuade her to click: “I’d rather see . . . College Son’s Laundry Source of Swine Flu,” says the New Jersey mom and editor.

Readers thought “Transvestite Running For Mayor” was just too ho-hum, too. It falls into the Big Statement category of tabloid headlines, those based on news that might be true but is shocking to a portion of the population.

In this case, maybe not all that shocking anymore. One reader, an insurance broker from California, wrote me privately that in the Golden State, there are possibly dozens of transvestite politicians. Although he may be exaggerating, there are probably at least a few. On the other hand, a revelation about an existing Mayor or Congressperson discovered to be something the voters didn’t think he/she was would probably be not only clickable, but the lead story at every media outlet in town! I could come up with examples – “Michael Is Michelle!” – but I don’t wish to be sued until the Blog-Off is over.

Scoring slightly better in our reader poll – with results somewhere in the middle range – were “Are You a Cheetah Or a Crocodile?,” “Swimming Pool Features Underwater Computer,” “Women Want Men Who Smell Like Fresh Peaches,” and “7 Out of 10 Blog In the Nude.”

Interestingly enough, three of these titles have a behavioral – some would call it psycho-babble – slant, popular not only in the tabloids, but in many other kinds of consumer publications. So these are familiar kinds of headlines, with which most readers are comfortable.

“Are You a Cheetah or a Crocodile?” falls into the well-liked Idiotic Quiz subcategory, part of the greater What-the-Heck-Is-That-All-About? category. If you’re human, you probably love such quizzes and are happy to take them – and some of our readers did, imagining their own quiz to correspond to the headline. Michigan writer Rowena, for instance, told us that “It pains me to say so, but I think I’m a crocodile. I lurk . . . patient, tenacious . . . I might even be a bottom dweller.”

But Art, a healthcare executive from Tennessee, wondered if this one might be more than a mere quiz. “I think this is an adjunct to the reality show for bankers and lawyers,” he told us.

“Women Like Men Who Smell Like Fresh Peaches” and “7 Out of 10 Blog in the Nude” are not only both Big Statement titles, they both fit into the very popular Strange Research subcategory. Like Idiotic Quizzes, titles like these are familiar to anyone who has ever read a newspaper or magazine, not to mention the average scholarly journal, and our readers jumped right in.

Re the fruit: Scott, an architect from northern California, confessed, “If I had some fresh peaches and wanted a romantic night, I would definitely read this one.” Ann, a business coach from Missouri, said, “I like peaches, and I like men, but maybe not together.” While Jamie, a designer from Florida, remarked, perhaps too revealingly, that “I love that my husband smells like cinnamon after a shower!”

Re the naked people: One anonymous respondent said he’d “like to blog in the nude, but it might upset my co-workers.” Cheryl, a Texas entrepreneur, thinks someone should form a new Linked In or Twitter group called the Buff Bloggers, which might be well-received, particularly among fitness-oriented writers.

“Swimming Pool Features Underwater Computer,” which falls into the Plausible-But-Somehow-Off category, may have gotten only about 1/5 as many page views as the top-clicked title, but it got the second-highest number of comments of any of the ten headlines, about 1-in-10, a terrific ratio of interactive responses for an Internet-based page.

This is the classic “double-take” headline, which sounds fabulous until you think about it. One Californian said, tongue-in-cheek but bathing suit-clad, “I’m very interested in not only working from home but working from my pool, so an underwater computer is exactly what I’m looking for.” Lawyer Michael from Florida mused, “What’s so funny about that? Sometimes I’m in the Jacuzzi, connected to my office by two different computers, with an I-phone on one side, non-alcoholic beer on the other, HD-exterior TV mounted in front and a music system giving me good sounds.” Sounds like my kind of guy! But New York marketing guru Cindy, again meshing two of the titles, asked, “Will there also be crocodiles in the swimming pool? That could make focusing on the computer challenging.”

Murder, Sex, Sushi, and Bankers: The Top Four

Neck and neck for third and fourth place in our Clickability poll were the headlines “Thailand Swallowed By Giant Clam” and “New Reality Show to Feature Laid-Off Bankers, Lawyers.” While only about half as popular as the Number Two headline, “Kinky Sex, Chocolate Truffles, Adorable Puppies,” these two had quite a few adherents, especially, for some reason, among Southerners and Ivy Leaguers, not to mention Southern Ivy Leaguers.

“Thailand Swallowed By Giant Clam” is the kind of Purely Ridiculous headline one of my former clients, the Weekly World News, used to specialize in, and commentators on both the blog and at the Linked In Groups got into the spirit of things. Alabamian Butch quipped that “I thought it was a lobster.” Several others had the same idea, saying they heard it wasn’t Thailand, but Laos or Malaysia or maybe Indonesia. But one of my sorority sisters believed it was Thailand, commented on her happy days working in that country, and commiserated with former friends and colleagues who had to relocate because of the Evil Mollusk.

Talk about Evil – or at least currently unloved – various readers said they can’t wait to see an actual contest between Wall Street Bankers and Wall Street Lawyers, which would move our “New Reality Show” headline from the Plausible-But-Off to the Big Statement category. Mr. Burnett, are you listening?

One said, “This is a reality show I might actually watch. Winner gets their job back, but has to pay 50% of salary and overpaid bonus to losers.” But Art said, “One group will be made up of timid souls laid-off because they were too conservative . . . They will never get out of the starting gate. The other team will be the group that was so aggressive, they either burst the bubble or got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Good luck getting this group to form a team!”

Neither clams nor laid-off executives can compete with decadence and baby animals, of course. Such has it ever been, and such shall it ever be. “Kinky Sex, Chocolate Truffles, Adorable Puppies,” our number two-clicked headline, also succeeds because it falls into the What-the-Heck-is-That-All-About? category, which lures you in, because it could fit a wide range of possible topics. Dashing Breeder of Siberian Huskies absconds to Belgium with Ingenue Judge he met at the Westminster Kennel Club Show. Well – could be.

Kim, a physician from Florida, liked the headline trio, but thinks we should have added in a good champagne. Sherry, a publicist from Massachusetts, was OK on the kinky sex and candy, but Adorable Puppies “took the imagination, for me, down a slippery slope to a dark place.” Wow, Sherry! You should get in touch with Jeff, a sports producer from New York, who joked that he “prefer(s) barnyard animals, a midget, and a taser.”

Personally, I am a sucker for baby animals and am prone to click on any story that features them. When the German magazine Der Spiegel was running their never-ending daily series about Knut, the mega-adorable baby polar bear, I visited their on-line site nearly every day to Ooh and Ah over baby pics of the white, furry cutie-pie.

But even babies and chocolates couldn’t compete with Dire Foul Play – at least in our little survey. The number one Faux Headline by far was “Corpse Found in Internet Guru’s Gym Locker,” which received over ten times as many eager clicks as the lowest-ranking headline.

This is clearly an example of a Big Statement tabloid headline, based on material that is actual news, but shocking or intriguing to many viewers. Just as I understand the impulse to seek out stories about baby animals, I empathize totally with the impulse to click on stories about Love Triangles Turned Tragic, Postal Workers Going Berserk, Cowboys Fighting Indians, and Corpses Found in Gym Lockers. In other words, Blood, Gore, Fury, and Passion appeal to me – and to many, many other readers.

Jan, an executive trainer from Arizona, thinks “a corpse in a gym locker would get a click from just about anyone.” But the fact that an Internet Guru was a principal in this (faux) saga seemed to attract people even more – although some seemed to hope the Guru might be the Corpse, instead of a possible Murderer. As a viewer from one of the Linked In groups said, “Those Internet guys are so full of themselves, he probably got what he deserved.”

Others were intrigued by the locker side of the equation. “How does one get a locker big enough to hold a body?” asked Ann Lia, a healthcare executive from Washington, D.C., whose fitness club must be stingy with their space. But Bob, a marketing manager from Florida, took it one step further, into the realm of political favoritism. “Who in the Administration,” he complained, “did the Guru know to get a gym locker that big?”

As these responses show, the vast majority of readers found our Faux Tabloid Headline project both useful and amusing, encouraging them not only to click, but to get creative themselves with some delightful – or downright hilarious – comments.

There were a handful of dissenters – none on the site itself, but some who posted at Linked In groups. A couple of them were the garden-variety crazies you seem to find all over the Internet today, and whom I intend to write about in a future blog.

Others were thoughtful – although to my mind, dead wrong – dissenters. Their essential argument is that there’s Serious Journalism way over heeeeeeeeeeeeeeere and Tabloid Journalism way over theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere, and Never the Twain Shall Meet – a conclusion which the famous Twain – Mark – would have disagreed with vehemently. (Probably Shania, too.)

If this opinion were ever true – and I doubt it – it is certainly not true in the creative flux and cacophony of voices which mark the Brave New World of Internet Journalism right now.

The best-written, most thoroughly-researched and intelligently-reasoned article or blog may not get the audience it deserves just because it’s there. That audience often has to be brought to it, to find out it exists.

By Fair Means or Foul Play – like a Corpse in an Internet Guru’s Gym Locker – it is a legitimate exercise to seek out readers and bring them into your authorial fold.

Part Four of this series will suggest some topics for further discussion. Please comment. Your cacophonous voice is important, too!

For Part Four, New Reality Show to Feature Laid-Off Bankers, Lawyers, please click on: http://wp.me/pycK6-2o

To return to “Corpses, Mollusks, and Kinky Sex-How I Won the Blog-Off,” go to: http://wp.me/pycK6-2s

Thank You For Clicking! Part Two: Kinky Sex, Chocolate Truffles, Adorable Puppies

by Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.

Under certain circumstances, a headline can be Purely Ridiculous and accomplish its goal. Otherwise, go for The Big Statement, Plausible-But-Somehow-Off, or What-the-Heck-Is-That-All-About?

Examples of all these kinds of click-attracting headlines were used in the Faux Tabloid Ten.

Before I discuss individual headlines, let me establish my tabloid credentials for those who don’t know me. In fact, if you have a moment, you might want to read the very recent interview with and about me that was published at Name of Site. (I subsequently moved this story from a blog aggregator’s site to EllenInteractive. Here’s a quick link: http://wp.me/pycK6-v )

In this interview, I talk about the period, early in my career, when I wrote for all the major supermarket tabloids on a heavy-volume basis. I got my first assignment in this specialized media niche via a women’s page column – remember the days when every newspaper had a women’s page? – which ran weekly in 40-plus California newspapers.

One of my stories featured a Sierra Nevada hotelier, Sue Clark, whose gold rush-era hotel boasted a resident ghost named George. One of the tabloids sought me out and asked if I could do a story for them on just the ghost! I did; they loved it; and I became a tabloid writer, with a rather strange specialty virtually nobody else shared – turning serious business articles into fodder for a tabloid audience.

So I learned to write the attention-grabbing headlines you’ll see at the checkout counter, spurring you on to put down that milk carton and learn why “Veterinarians Date Supermodels,” “Ferret Owners Have High I.Q.s,” or “Peanut Butter Plus Anchovies Burn Fat Quickly.”

As you can see, none of the above headlines is particularly funny, but they are all typically tabloid, which brings me to a certain kind of comment I got from a few of those who perused the pre-Blog-Off blog. These few – typically people in creative jobs – helpfully made suggestions about how a certain headline in the Faux Ten could be made more “riotously funny.” A novelist, for instance, outlined a few other possible male scents I could use in the “Peaches” headline that might provoke more chuckles, while an adman thought other kinds of candy would be funnier than truffles in the “Kinky Sex” title.

But unless a headline is patently absurd, the tabloids don’t want it to be too comedic. Slightly silly actually draws in more readers than stand-up-comedy hilarious. Do I know why this is so? Not really. But it probably has something to do with the typical reader of the National Enquirer or the Globe being different from the average reader of Mad Magazine. The latter wants to laugh out loud. The former wants to hear some gossip, read some service pieces, all the while being pleasurably titillated.

So let me first tell you which of my Faux Tabloid Headlines falls into the four categories of attention-grabbers I mentioned above, then move on in Part Three to reader comments which help explain why some titles got more page views than others.

An example of a Purely Ridiculous headline is easy to spot on the list: “Thailand Swallowed By Giant Clam.” Why ever use this kind of headline? Frankly, one should do so only sparingly and certainly not without a purpose. But I thought this headline was a perfect one to introduce this particular Faux Tabloid experiment. Besides, it’s so ME, reflecting my own personality and sense of humor, which is what a Purely Ridiculous title should do.

But make sure the humor is in some way related to the topic of your story. “Elephant Chosen Prom King” might be a ridiculous, catchy headline for a story about high school students who are avid Republicans. “Nonagenarian Gives Birth to Triplets” could head a piece on excesses in the field of in-vitro fertilization.

A Big Statement tabloid headline may be based on a perfectly true bit of news that is nonetheless shocking or intriguing to many people. “Transvestite Running For Mayor” is just this sort of headline, and I can imagine it appearing in virtually any issue of virtually any tabloid. Surely sometime, somewhere, somehow, Transvestites have run for the office of Mayor, and many people will be happy to read about it.

Another sort of Big Statement headline may precede an article detailing the results of a strange piece of research. “Women Want Men Who Smell Like Fresh Peaches” is a good example. I’ve been told that Dr. Hildegarde M. Von Smitzen of the University of Alpen-Wassen published exactly this kind of research finding last year. Or maybe not. But she could have. If she existed.

Articles based on real – and often extremely weird – research projects are a staple of tabloid reporting. If you ever run out of things to write about, go straight to the scientific journals!

Our Faux Tabloid Ten also included some prime examples from the Plausible-But-Somehow-Off category of headlines. These are titles that seem straightforward and true at first glance, but which have a glaring logical flaw when one looks a bit closer. “Swimming Pool Features Underwater Computer” is an obvious example. Your first take might be,”Wow! I’d like one of those.” Your second take: “But I guess I’d need scuba gear to use it.” And your third take: “Wouldn’t the mouse keep shorting out?”

Similarly, “Pet Hamsters May Spread Swine Flu” looks sensible when you read it quickly, as the faux-association “hamster-ham-swine” echoes through your brain. In truth, hamsters are probably no more likely to spread swine flu than pet cats or pet parakeets – unless they escape from their cute little wheels and run away to Latin American pig-breeding sites. Which I guess is possible.

Two of our Faux Tabloid Ten fit nicely into the What-the-Heck-Is-That-All-About? category. “Are You a Cheetah or a Crocodile?” is an exemplar of a subgroup of this category that’s a staple not only of the tabloids, but also of women’s, men’s, and many general interest magazines: the Idiotic Quiz. I do not use that term pejoratively, because I’m convinced the vast majority of human beings adore Idiotic Quizzes of all kinds . They are quite simply fun to participate in, and you don’t have to take the results seriously, as opposed to, say, bar exams or mammograms.

And one of the most popular of our Faux Ten Headlines, “Kinky Sex, Chocolate Truffles, Adorable Puppies,” might make the front page of any respectable tabloid, mostly because it could be about nearly anything at all: A scandal involving a Hollywood director? Goings-on at the ASPCA? Next week’s topics roster at the Tyra Banks Show? You’d have to read further to find out.

We’ll discuss which of our Faux Tabloid Headlines readers liked most – and least – in Part Three.

Click here for Part Three of the series, Thailand Swallowed by Giant Clam: http://wp.me/pycK6-2m

To return to “Corpses, Mollusks, and Kinky Sex-How I Won the Blog-Off,” go to: http://wp.me/pycK6-2s

Thank You For Clicking! Part One: Corpse Found In Internet Guru’s Gym Locker

by Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.

Whether you’re an experienced journalist, a novice blogger – or a print publication moving to the Web – don’t overestimate your audience’s tolerance for boring ho-hum titles, nor underestimate your need to rope them in with phrases that attract, entice – and possibly titillate.

This four-part story is my official entry in The Community Marketing site’s Great Blog-Off competition. It details the results – so far – of a little experiment begun about ten days ago.

I wanted to prepare my diverse and enthusiastic network of connections on Linked-In – and their networks of friends and followers on social networks around the Internet and around the world – for the coming Blog-Off, telling them what was about to occur and why they should be tuning in.

At the same time, I hoped to see what sorts of eye-catching, funny, or downright titillating article titles Internet viewers might find most appealing, statistically recording numbers of views and numbers of interactive comments for ten different Faux Tabloid Headlines, all fairly typical of what you might actually see on your newsstand or at your supermarket checkout counter.

I set up a Word Press blog called “Preparing For the Blog-Off,” consisting of ten reiterations of the exact same one-page post, with the ten different Faux Tabloid Headlines attached as titles. The post outlined the experiment’s parameters, talked about the more serious – or at least more somber – blogs I expect to write later in the competition, and urged viewers to leave comments and suggestions about the “test” titles in particular and the Blog-Off in general.

The reiterated post linked in its body to the Community Marketing Blog and the Blog-Off site, while under About, I placed links to some information about me: my Linked-In Profile; 50 examples of my magazine articles; and a wide-ranging interview with and about me.

I will maintain this temporary “Preparing for the Blog-Off” site throughout the Blog-Off competition and probably a bit beyond its end. If you haven’t seen it yet and would like to, please click on: (Link to original site, now disabled.)

Ten Little Titles And How They Drew

I posted the ten different Faux Tabloid Headlines used in this experiment, plus links to the “Preparing For the Blog-Off” blog, in the News sections – and a few times in the Discussions sections – of the 50 Linked-In Groups to which I currently belong, as well as at the top of my Linked-In Profile page. Because of my background and interests, my Linked-In Groups represent an interesting mix of members from my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania; the rest of the Ivy League; my sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma; senior services; finance; media; Internet research and E-marketing; Baby Boomers; and politics.

I also sent a note about the Blog-Off to the 1000-plus members of my Linked-In connections network, urging them to look at the “Preparing For the Blog-Off” blogsite and to leave comments and suggestions, if they were so inclined. I divided these notes to my network into ten groups corresponding to the ten different Headlines, so I could vary the Headline links fairly and without bias.

Here, in order of popularity, measured by the absolute number of page views they drew, are the ten Faux Tabloid Headlines designed to bring readers to the site:

(Out of 2,134 views as of 3 PM Eastern time 05/24/09, representing 7 days of viewing)

Corpse Found in Internet Guru’s Gym Locker 515 or 24.1 percent
Kinky Sex, Chocolate Truffles, Adorable Puppies 409 or 19.2 percent
Thailand Swallowed By Giant Clam 199 or 9.3 percent
New Reality Show To Feature Laid-Off Bankers, Lawyers 181 or 8.5 percent
Women Want Men Who Smell Like Fresh Peaches 114 or 5.3 percent
7 Out of 10 Blog In the Nude 105 or 4.9 percent
Swimming Pool Features Underwater Computer 94 or 4.4 percent
Are You a Cheetah or a Crocodile? 79 or 3.7 percent
Transvestite Running for Mayor 65 or 3.1 percent
Pet Hamsters May Spread Swine Flu 48 or 2.3 percent

The “Preparing for the Blog-Off” blog attracted nearly 90 comments at the site itself, a superb comment-per-view ratio of 1 in 24, as opposed to the normal 1 in 100 – 1 in 50 range.

I monitored and deleted about 1/3 of these comments, however, not because they were negative – I received no negative comments on the site itself – but because they were badly worded or potentially embarrassing to the posters themselves. I didn’t want anyone among my acquaintance to look at his/her comment later, say “Oh, No! Did I actually say that?” and be humiliated for decades to come!

That left the site with 60 posted comments, most on the comparative “click-inspiring” value of the alternating ten Faux Tabloid Headlines. That’s a view-to-comment ratio of 1 in 36, still considerably above the normal Internet site ratio.

The next part of this series will discuss why I – and viewers – believed certain types of Headlines might have gotten more viewer clicks than others.

For Part Two, Kinky Sex, Chocolate Truffles, Adorable Puppies, go to: http://wp.me/pycK6-2l

To return to “Corpses, Mollusks, and Kinky Sex-How I Won the Blog-Off,” go to: http://wp.me/pycK6-2s

7 Out of 10 Blog In the Nude

Hello, fellow Group Members!

This will either infuriate you or amuse you – one hopes the latter.

It’s a frivolous little experiment with ten faux headlines to see which kind of outrageous title readers might be most likely to click on.

I need every advantage I can get.

Because starting Monday, I’m the Baby Boomer entrant, versus a couple of dozen SEO-savvy young ‘uns, in the Great Blog-Off contest at Community Marketing.

Here’s the link, if you haven’t read about it yet. (Link now disabled.)

Not only am I the Veteran – or Evil Cougar, depending on your viewpoint – in this bunch, I will probably be the contestant representing CONTENT, as opposed to quantitative formulae for blog optimization, or whatever the latest incomprehensible jargon is.

In fact, the blogs I will post will be very serious ones, indeed, elaborating upon the political and economic theme of Baby Boomers as modern history’s Angriest Generation, a phrase I’ve coined and hope will become a buzz-phrase on the Internet from this day forward.

But I will mix up my serious blogs with some frivolous ones harking back to my days as a heavy-volume tabloid writer – an era in my life I look back upon with much fondness and nostalgia.

Want to help me by making suggestions about my campaign for top-of-the-heap status in the Blog-Off?

I truly welcome your advice and any assistance you can give me.

If I’m elected, you may have a Cabinet post or any Ambassadorship of your choosing.

Leave a comment here, or write to me at (E-mail address given).

Warmest regards – or to you Kappas, Loyally,

Ellen Brandt

FOR MORE ABOUT ME, PLEASE GO TO ABOUT, at http://wp.me/sycK6-about

(To return to “Corpses, Mollusks, and Kinky Sex-How I Won the Blog-Off,” go to: http://wp.me/pycK6-2s )