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!

Advertisements

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 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 )

Flame, Set, Match – Trounce Those Internet Flamers

by Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.

Join in their volley of insults, they’ll continue to play as long as they can . Ignore them completely, readers could take them to heart. In the Flame Game, a quick victory – fueled by wit – works best.

Most people don’t visit websites, blogs, or group discussion boards intent on making trouble.

Most people respect the opinions of others and debate them, if they must, in the spirit of fairness and camaraderie.

Most people don’t embark on lifelong vendettas based on a few words posted on the Internet.

But then, most people aren’t Flamers.

I sometimes think of Internet Flamers as Locusts. They descend upon a target website quickly. Under suitable conditions, they breed rapidly and form a swarm. Their noise is so overwhelming, they can drown out everything else in the vicinity. And if left unchecked, they can do great harm, sometimes devastating damage.

Like Locusts, too, Internet Flamers seem to pop up spontaneously more or less anywhere. If you write or publish anything whatsoever on the Internet, even the most harmless-sounding, out-and-out innocent site or blog – on kitchen countertops, say, or miniature poodles – chances are that somehow, someday, when you least expect it, Flamers will swarm.

In Internet terms, Flaming is defined as a hostile or insulting interaction between or among users of a discussion board, chatroom, or increasingly, the Comments section of a website or blog.

But the expression of hostility or anger per se isn’t necessarily Flaming. It’s when such expressions are aimed at others – including authors or website owners – and are neither constructive nor clarifying to the progress of a discussion that true Flaming occurs. Often, these attacks go off on a tangent so extreme, they have only the most tenuous connection to the original material that supposedly inspired them.

I wrote about a classic Flamer – I called him “Herbie” – in my story about extreme malice on the Internet. (“I Don’t Like What You Wrote. You Should Be Poisoned, Garrotted, Stabbed With Stiletto Heels, Thrown Off A Tall Building, and Have Vultures Eat Your Liver” http://wp.me/pycK6-5 )

Herbie, supposedly a genteel gentleman in his 70s, somehow found the Comments section of a reprinted version of my quite-popular story, “Summer Camp for Seniors,” which talks about unqualified activities directors at assisted-living sites and their disrespect for elderly residents. (See http://wp.me/pycK6-t )

On his first appearance there, Herbie made a statement along the lines of “There is so much that is horrible about this article, I don’t know where to start.” Already suspecting something – having worked for both the tabloids and women’s mags, I know a potential crazy person by instinct – I asked the site’s publisher to take down the comment and ban this fellow from his site. He didn’t.

So Herbie came back. And as I suspected he would, he quickly proceeded to make comments that were totally unrelated to the story itself, but nevertheless – without any citations from the text – called it untrue and unsupported and elitist and . . . I dunno, possibly seditious and definitely fattening. After which he went on to lambaste me – someone he knew nothing whatsoever about – as an unfit writer, scholar, dancer, chef, electrician, Olympic athlete, and Mayoral candidate. (All except the first two are, of course, accurate.)

Even Without an Audience, Determined Flamers Flame Away

With the unfortunate lack of civility in our public discourse these days, silly – but often hurtful – attacks of this kind are an everyday occurrence. Until recently, though, Flamers’ targets tended to be celebrities of some kind – actors, politicians, sports figures, or Jay Leno.

Now, if you breathe – particularly if you both breathe and write – you’re potential prey. My friend Elizabeth contacted me just the other day, horrified that her simple act of posting a news story from a UK publication on a message board attracted a vicious Flaming attack. She didn’t even write the story – for Goddess’s sake! – but her Flamer ripped into her with a “People like you don’t know what you’re talking about” diatribe that had scant threads linking it to the story in question and no threads whatsoever linking it to Elizabeth.

“People Like You” is a common kind of Flamer opener, by the way, mostly because it’s so versatile. “People Like You – (Baby Boomers, Lawyers, Moroccans, Bowlers, Meat-Eaters, Satanists) – should be condemned because you – (Own Two Cars, Don’t Recycle, Have Freckles, Talk Too Fast, Remind Me of My Cousin Jimmy, Have Bodies Buried in Your Backyard) – and therefore need to be (Censored, Quarantined, Tithed, Sent to an Optometrist, Drawn-and-Quartered, Forced to Read Marketing Copy).

In nearly every instance, Flamers like to jump quickly from attacks on things – articles, movies, music, games – to attacks on people responsible for those things – authors, directors, composers, athletes. That’s because things don’t have feelings and can’t get hurt. People tend to get hurt pretty easily.

To be sure, if you’ve been the target of Flamethrowers often enough, you develop a sort of immunity. Personally, I’m not prepared to run for president yet. How candidates – or even Britney and Lindsay – take it is beyond me. But in the case of my Baby Boomers-The Angriest Generation series, which has been the constant target of a group of Crazed Millennials who think I’m out to incite a rebellion of We-Won’t-Be-Bullied-Into-Retirement middle-class businesspeople – (Yes, of course, they’re right) – I now fully expect the attacks and have begun to find them rather funny.

The funniest was clearly an attack I endured when I posted one of my Angriest Generation articles – I believe it was “No Gold Watch When You Work For Pariah Corporation” (http://wp.me/pxD3J-N ) on one of the News feeds at a film-related group at Linked In.

Minutes after the story was posted, a tag team of Flamers – let’s call them Manny and Moe – bit into the Comments stream with relish. Not that they even mentioned the article itself. They first began with the standard “Boomers Are To Blame For the Ills of the World” harangue, which has been permeating the Internet the past few months and which I talked about in my story on Anti-Boomer propaganda. (See “You Have Cooties – Go Play Golf” at: http://wp.me/pxD3J-8 )

According to this so-predictable-it-has-to-be-scripted spiel, Boomers are to blame for not only our current economic malaise, but also for the Biblical Flood, the Black Plague, the Wars of the Roses, and Cholesterol. Moreover, both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are Boomers, which proves . . . absolutely nothing, but they think it does.

I responded to the first barrage of Flamelets – (for my Fight-Flamers Game Plan, see below) – with a link to my Anti-Boomer propaganda story and several of my own canned answers for dealing with criticism aimed at Boomers.

Predictably, Moe and Manny went on to attack me – my integrity, my scholarship, my ancestry, my hairdo, and my taste in breakfast cereal. Actually, their main attack centered on the fact that one of these two gentlemen – I believe it was Moe – had attempted to post a couple of Flaming Anti-Boomer comments on my blogsite, and I zapped him, which is my right as a website owner.

I made one additional post specifically aimed at this Fireball, stating that not only do I moderate my own blogs, I strongly suggest that others do the same. And I pointed out that M&M’s hero, President Obama – also a Baby Boomer, by the way – now moderates all of his websites at the White House. So call me Obama-like in my decision.

Manny and Moe disregarded the analogy and went on Flaming – but I decided not to participate further, nor did any other poster. So for the next two weeks, Moe and Manny continued their Flame-throwing dialogue, talking to each other, possibly without a single outside observer, and turned their Flamefest into a hundred-comment extravaganza. Alas, it’s been removed from the site now, or I would gladly link you to it, as a sort of relic.

Bring in the Clones

An even funnier Flamefest is in motion right now, at the date of publication of this story. I don’t think I’ll tell you where – think of it as a Treasure Hunt – but the venue is a political discussion board at a social media site. The topic which started this particular Comments thread is by now lost in prehistory, but the thread has now reached the 80-plus posts point. What makes it so hilarious is that there are – as in the Manny and Moe scenario – now only two posters left in the stream, trading virulent insults with positive glee. The twist is that these two “opposing” Flamers are almost certainly the exact same real person. A Man and his Clone, together at last.

The “Man” in question – I’ve confirmed he does exist – is quite intelligent, a Harvard grad in his early 30’s. The “Clone” is his Avatar, in the three-dimensional, rather than graphic, sense: a distinct Internet personality created by its user to represent him/her/it in Web interactions. Avatars like this are the essence of Virtual World-type communities, like Second Life, and various multiplayer games, like World of Warcraft.

I’m sure that the Man and the Clone are one in the same, because He/They have made multiple verbal slips in their Flame-Party-A-Deux. Sometimes, the Man (let’s call him Ralph) claims credit for remarks the Clone (let’s call him Rafe) has made and vice versa. Or Rafe insults Ralph insults Rafe for characteristics of “background” or “opinion” formerly attributed to the other.

Possibly, this is all preparation for a Hollywood blockbuster – or a political coup. One can’t be sure.

The moderator of this discussion board may have declined to intercede in this split-personality Flame thread because (s)he found it entertaining and/or mind-boggling. The moderator of the Manny-Moe Flamerama inspired by my article probably should have intervened and doused – i.e. deleted – the conflagration as soon as it included malicious insults.

As I have said elsewhere, most discussion board and other group moderators don’t take this facet of their responsibilities seriously enough. They don’t consider the emotional distress Internet bullying, sometimes escalating to character assassination, can cause, even among we sane and stable adults who make up the majority of Internet participants.

And by not choosing to Just Say No to Nastiness, they may be encouraging Flamers to continue in their dubious careers of Cyber-Sadism.

But We Who Have Felt the Burn can certainly do our part to douse the flames.

The Little Man Behind the Screen

Remember the denouement of the Wizard of Oz? Toto kicks over a screen to reveal the Wizard as a shriveled up, rather pathetic-looking little man, whose manifestations of power are nothing more than magic tricks.

Flamers are just junior Wizards, whose power is illusory, based as it is on a certain facility to string hurtful words together, reinforced by what are clearly sociopathic tendencies.

Your concern as a writer or website owner isn’t with the Flamer or Flamers, anyway. It’s with your audience of readers, potential readers, or website visitors. You don’t want to have them shun you because of lies and character assassination coming from your attackers. But you don’t want to participate in a “volley” of exchanges with your Flamers, either – because if you do, it may go on for years!

On your website or blogsite itself, there’s the simplest of solutions: Insist on moderating your own Comments streams. Allow in comments which disagree with your text or ideas, if they are made honestly in the spirit of discussion and debate. But simply zap comments which are irrelevant to your text, insult entire groups of people, or insult you.

“I find a logical flaw in your argument about aardvarks with leprosy,” is OK. “Dentists are aardvarks with leprosy,” “Romanians are aardvarks with leprosy” or “You are an aardvark with leprosy” are not.

In a social media discussion thread or the Comments section of a News feed, the situation is more difficult, because you don’t moderate the site. You can try appealing to whomever does moderate it to delete posts from Flamers. Good Luck! I have found that most site moderators either don’t care, are too busy, or – quite often – believe that a Flame Exchange brings new readers to their group and is therefore positive.

Your real concern is that Flamers might be taken seriously enough by the rest of the group that they’re persuaded not to read your article or visit your website.

So I suggest you post once – sometimes twice – politely but firmly stating why you believe whatever the heck they’re saying is all wet. If you can deflate them with wit or humor, that is a definite plus:

“No, our site was not designed by a ten-year-old. Stanislaus is 43, lives in Cleveland, and won the Website of the Century award last year.”

“There are 80 million Baby Boomers in the US. Surely, you’re not suggesting all of us are cannibals?”

“My parents are not a gangster and a chorus girl. Dad is a veterinarian, and Mom owns a dress shop.”

Then, painful as it is, just walk away.

Possibly, they’ll say more cruel, nasty things about you. Possibly they’ll continue saying them for weeks, like Manny and Moe, or Ralph and His Clone.

But you won’t be there to hear them.

What Do You Think?

Have you been the victim of Internet Flamers? OK – Of course, you have! But tell us about the most interesting, horrible, or funny incidents.

Should moderators of social media groups and message boards be compelled by top site management to delete posts that insult or damage the reputations of group members?

Should web security organizations or law enforcement agencies step in and stop the activities of perpetual Flamers?

What do you think motivates the typical Flamer? Does their existence indicate greater problems on the Internet or within our society?

Should Ralph and his Clone be given a Hollywood contract?

For the Introduction to the Media Revolution series: http://wp.me/pycK6-1Y

For our story about False Spam Accusations as Political Weapons: http://wp.me/pycK6-21

For Ellen’s popular article, “Will Boomers and the GOP Save Twitter? http://wp.me/pxD3J-K

Accused of Spam? It May Well Have Been a Political Attack

by Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.

Misuse and misinterpretation of the term “spam” is now so blatant, one has to wonder if Big Media might not be behind it. But we in “Little Media” are aware of the abuse, and it can’t last much longer.

If you publish a blog, own a website, or participate in various social media sites, chances are you’ve been accused of “spamming” at one time or another. You’re probably seriously angry about it. Well, so am I.

Besides the (ongoing) campaign of pure annoyance coming from my darling Twitter Stalker Agatha-Anne and her buddies (see “Slaughtering Your Pet Hamster” http://wp.me/pycK6-L ), I’ve been subjected to two accusations of “spamming” this past summer, one truly silly and inconsequential, one more serious in its implications.

First, the purely silly one. Several weeks ago, a young woman I’ll call Janette sent me an invitation to connect on Linked In, where I have a fabulous high-quality network of over 1400. Because she was a member of an organization I belong to and trust, I said Yes.

But the first time I sent one of my standard To-My-Network mailings with links to a couple of my stories, Janette wrote me what can only be called a hateful, malicious note, along the lines of “How dare you pollute my mailbox with your vile publications, You Evil Spammer You?”

Huh? You’re in my Network. You asked to be in my Network. I’m a publisher and writer. Do you expect me to send my Network pictures of bunnies or needlework instructions? Moreover, if one does not wish to click on a link in a letter, the obvious solution is not to click on a link in a letter.

And Linked In has a handy little feature called “Remove This Person from Your Network.” This handy little feature allows you to “Remove (Any) Person from Your Network,” for any reason whatsoever, quietly and efficiently, without having to write them letters and insult them.

I immediately took Janette out of my Network, after replying to her charming missive by telling her about the handy Remove-This-Person feature, thinking perhaps she honestly did not know about it.

As the teens say, As If . . . Over the next few days, I got five or six additional charming little notes from Janette, escalating in venom, going on about “You sent me Spam. Your stories are Spam. I hate your stories. My father hates your stories. My third cousin hates your stories. My goldfish hates your stories. My goldfish will not eat Spam. Spam, spam, spam, spam, and spam.”

OK, Janette. You’re just another Flamer, playing Kiddie games and trying to make people unhappy, because making people unhappy is “fun.” We’ll treat the general subject of Flaming in the next article in the series. But in the context of this story, you are silly and inconsequential, and I am now going to ignore you.

Except to say that as someone with a large Linked In network and a growing one on Twitter, every day I receive maybe a hundred mailings of various kinds from people with whom I’m connected. I like some of these mailings. I don’t like some others. Several fall into the category of articles and other publications. Some are newsletters. Others are new product or service announcements or out-and-out advertisements.

I click on the ones I want to read. I archive the ones I don’t want to read. I send a return message of Thanks, if it looks like I am expected to do so. I am never annoyed or upset receiving these mailings, because I allowed these connections to come into my Network, meaning they are cordial on-line acquaintances, and I want to hear about what they’re up to.

If at some point I find a connection annoying or upsetting, not to mention downright rude – remember Palance? – I remove him/her/it from my connections list, and that is that. This is what nice people do. This is what sane people do.

You’re Not Foie Gras, But You Sure Squawk Like Geese

Which brings us to the second incident this summer, a far more serious one, which goes to the very heart of the misuse of the term “spam” and demonstrates why we should all be concerned about it.

I honestly don’t know – nor particularly care – what Mz. Janette’s political leanings are. But I do know, from several people who are acquainted with him, that a young man I’ll call Chaz is a committed Leftist Democrat. He’s also the appointed manager of a large group for computer professionals at Linked In. I joined this Group because I’m an Internet publisher, but also because I’ve been seeking some interesting Boomer IT people as interviewees for my Baby Boomers-The Angriest Generation series. (See http://wp.me/pxD3J-3 )

As you undoubtedly know by now, Angriest Generation is already popular among Boomers, Centrists, and Republicans, but decidedly unpopular among a vocal cadre of mostly young people on the Far Left. Primarily, they dislike this series because I’m among the few to have called them out for spewing anti-Boomer propaganda.

Chaz refused to allow stories from Angriest Generation to make it into his Group’s News feed, even though this particular Group’s feed is generally a dozen pages long and includes many utterly hideous stories from the likes of shady SEO purveyors in Bangladesh and Taiwan.

The first time he deleted one of my stories from his feed, I complained to the Group’s owner and Customer Service. It was reinstated. The second time he did it, I complained again. Reinstated again.

But the third time he did it, Chaz decided to escalate the quarrel and reported me for “spamming” his News feed. I cannot tell you how shocked I was that he would stoop so low. I could have escalated this little tiff in turn and transformed it into a first-class vendetta. But I decided I was tired of Chaz’s shenanigans and simply left the Group.

I want you to ponder this incident for a couple of reasons. First of all, as in the case of a Network of connections above, a bona fide member of a social networking Group should always – that is always – have the right to post blogs or other publications of which he/she is the author or publisher without any restrictions whatsoever – except, perhaps, if they’re pornographic or in some other way universally offensive.

If you don’t want someone in your Group in the first place, by all means, you have the right to refuse them membership. But once they’re in the Group, a manager can’t arbitrarily refuse their right to post articles they’ve written, just because he doesn’t happen to like their subject matter or agree with their political bent.

Chaz’s behavior is offensive to other Group members, too. Is his Membership a gaggle of geese, who have to be protected from being force-fed material they might not like to read, turning their livers into a certain French delicacy? Most adults are capable of deciding for themselves what they want to read and clicking on it. Or deciding they don’t want to read it and not clicking on it. Personally, I have no interest in reading anything from the shady Bengali and Taiwanese SEO purveyors. Or for that matter the New York Times.

Hookers and Con Artists – Good! Bloggers – Evil!

But far worse than Chaz’s battle to shelter his Membership from exposure to us dread Republicans and others he considers politically incorrect is his daring to label our articles as “spam.”

This takes us to the heart of the matter: Publications are not “spam.” Never ever, ever, and ever.

In fact, nobody really thought of labeling any publication as “spam” up to a few months ago, as it became more and more apparent that Big Media was being forced to relinquish its absolute domination of the Internet to hordes of upstart bloggers and websites keen on garnering their own “eyeballs” and audiences, taking them away from the Official – in their own minds – Gatekeepers of the US Media.

The term “spam” was originally – and quite clearly – meant to apply to annoying, repetitive, and unsolicited Internet-based advertising – solicitations that want to persuade you to part with your money. “Here’s a Hot Stock Tip” is usually spam, as are “Buy Foreclosed Houses,” “Get 10,000 Twitter Followers,” and even “Eat at Joe’s Diner,” although I have nothing in particular against Joe.

But someone posting a link to their article, blog, free newsletter, or website, without desiring that you pay them any money to do so, is in no way “spamming.” They are offering information and attempting to build an audience, the same way the Wall Street Journal or CNN or Oprah.com is, when they post and disseminate their latest articles.

Oh, but those are “professionals,” you argue, while bloggers are in a different category. If you think that, I suggest you are reading the wrong blogs. There are many thousands of former or current high-volume print journalists who have their own blogs now. If you’re unfamiliar with my background, I have over 3,000 print articles to my credit over the past 30-odd years. Now I’m in the so-called Blogosphere, working to develop and increase an audience of my own. I like it, and so do many others.

But I also strongly defend the right of newer and less experienced writers and website owners to try to build a readership of their own through the exact same means more established media outlets, including a handful of now-institutionalized Big Blogs, do.

If the New York Times can aggressively post its stories on numerous Linked In Group News feeds, so can Carolyn’s style blog or Arthur’s blog on economics. If the Huffington Post can get staffers and friends to retweet pieces repeatedly on Twitter, so can Charlie’s senior care publication or Nancy’s small business-oriented website.

And if Mashable can strive for blogroll and pingback links from other blogs, John the orthopedist, Patty the homeschooling expert, and Lou who writes about horses can use these tactics, too.

Without fear of being called “spammers.”

Proof positive that the abuse and misuse of the term “spam” applied to Little Media has been calculated is the fact that the mostly young, mostly Far Left-leaning Twitterers and others who’ve been doing the complaining have completely neglected to make complaints about all the real no-doubt-about-it spammers in our midst.

There’s nary a mention of the various get-rich-quick marketing schemes touted constantly by the Trump Network and others. No complaints about barkers for tooth whiteners, gourmet coffee, organic pet food, or Cars Seized from Drug Dealers. Nor even the offensive-to-many pleas to buy male enhancement products or patronize Ladies of the Night.

But Jim or Jane may be harried and harassed by a battalion of “concerned youth,” if they dare to try to publicize their Right-of-Center political articles. “Spam, spam, spam,” some Kiddies now wail – but I don’t think they can get away with it much longer.

For one thing, the social media sites are becoming very wary of Kiddies with chips on their shoulders, since they’ve now been implicated in the Twitter and Facebook Denial-of-Service attacks and the Word Press worm scare in Europe and Asia.

For another, if social sites were persuaded to adopt the “Spam-means-non-Left-Little-Media” theories of MoveOn.Org and their ilk, it’s only a (short) matter of time before they’d start getting hit with some serious and costly lawsuits.

More intriguing, though, is whether any part of Big Media – maybe rogue PR outfits who believe they’re working on media clients’ behalf – are encouraging these youthful legions of “You’re Spamming” accusers or otherwise conspiring to get Little Media’s audience-building efforts unjustly labeled as “spam.”

Surely, we hope not. But one wonders.

What Do You Think?

Have you ever been accused of “spamming” while trying to publicize your blog or website?

If so, what was the outcome? How did you rebuff this accusation?

Do you believe there are sometimes political motivations and biases behind accusations of spam?

Is Big Media using the S-word in its efforts to hold onto Web dominance against the onslaught of Little Media sites?

How should the social networking sites, like Linked In and Twitter, change their spam policies to protect and promote their Little Media members?

For the Introduction to the Media Revolution series, see: http://wp.me/pycK6-1Y

For “Flame, Set Match-Trounce Those Internet Flamers” http://wp.me/pycK6-25