Why You Should Always Remember That Most People Have No Taste

by anna on February 21, 2011

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Everybody wonders why some popular blogs are popular, when there are smaller blogs that are more interesting that stay unsuccessful. Though this is not always the case, it’s often very difficult to discern why one blog makes it and another blog doesn’t, particularly if you are prone to forgetting the reality that most people have no ability to sort quality from crap on their own. Most people do not have a highly developed sense of taste, and they rely on other people to tell them what is good and what isn’t.

There are a bunch of factors that lead to a blog being successful. Only one of these things is quality and talent — there is also longevity, the connections of the blogger to other popular bloggers, the phenomenon of the EVENT View definition in a new window, the ability of the blogger to market themselves, and the blog’s story all feed into how popular a blog is. It might seem intuitive that the best blogs seem like the best when you visit them — and sometimes this is absolutely the case — but often this is not true. Something is considered good, much of the time, because somebody influential said that it was good — people who visit the blog are operating on a recommendation from somebody else.

Here’s the thing: back in the day when there weren’t that many blogs to choose from, maybe you checked out each one carefully and decided whether you liked the blog before moving on. There were like ten blogs back then so, you know, why not?

But today, I’m not in the market for any more blogs. I already have too many to read. So when I see your blog, you need to grab me right away and tell me why I need to read you. You simply cannot rely on me to go through and figure out what makes you interesting, because I’m probably not going to do it. And if I’m not going to do it, then you can bet even fewer of the Justin Bieber adoring public is going to bother with it.

If you want to be successful as a blogger, give me a story that I cannot get anywhere else, and make it really easy to find. You have to tell me what it is, don’t count on me figuring it out. There are tons of LOLCats I could be spending my time chuckling over, after all.

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Promotional Method: Sponsored Posts That Aren’t Technically Sponsored Posts

by anna on February 18, 2011

There’s a tactic for promotion in blogs that has been gaining popularity about which I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, it annoys the crap out of me that bloggers who do this assume nobody can connect the dots. But on the other hand I’m kind of impressed with their ingenuity, too, so I’m not above saying that maybe this is a good idea to do, given you have certain goals and certain priorities, particularly since so many brand/blogger campaigns seem to gain success from it. At this point, it’s tough to predict what the ultimate effect on trust capital View definition in a new window will be, if there is any.

Here’s how it works: say you’re a blogger who has some kind of gathering coming up — a party, or a conference, for which you are soliciting sponsors. Or, maybe you already had the event View definition in a new window, and you have a list of sponsors who were promoted at that event that you’d like to keep happy. So what you do is, you mention that brand in your blog (or blogs, if you write in multiple places). And the mention is sort of organic, right? Because maybe you actually use the product and actually want to evangelize about it.

Except . . . then the product shows up a few months later in a gift bag at a party you are throwing. Or, the company that makes the product ends up as a sponsor of your event. You can’t really say these things happened because you evangelicized about them, and you definitely cannot call them sponsored posts because it’s most likely no money changed hands for that particular interaction. But . . . still. It’s not exactly disinterested promotion.

Example No. 1: Tieks

For example . . . Tieks. If you’re not familiar with Tieks, they are a brand of ballet slippers that were given away to the attendees of the Mighty Summit View definition in a new window last year. Except just a few months before that, in an ostensibly unrelated move, Tieks were mentioned on Mighty Girl, the blog written by Maggie Mason View definition in a new window, one of the founders of the Mighty Summit. And just recently, Tieks were mentioned on the blog Laura Mayes (another Mighty Summit co-founder) writes for Babble, along with a coupon to get 15% off.

In both of these cases, there is no disclosure of a relationship between the blogger and the brand. And I don’t think there should be, at least according to the way the FCC rules work. But on the other hand, I don’t see this shit flying in the New York Times.

Example No. 2: OPI nail polish

Did you notice that Number 25 on Allison Czarnecki’s life list View definition in a new window is to “Name an Opi Nail polish color“? I’ve always found OPI polish’s names kind of interesting — not sure I’d put it on my life list, necessarily, but who am I to judge? Except . . . the Social Luxe party (organized by Czarnecki) gave out OPI nail polishes in their swag View definition in a new window bag last year, which is fine because maybe Allison is a huge fan of OPI — many people are. But what about the fact that OPI also appears in a gift guide (along with some Aveda products, which I also received in a gift bag last year from the Social Luxe party), and a mention of a new Fall line of OPI polishes also warranted a whole post. , and . .? Are the two things unrelated? And the fact that OPI was a sponsor of the EVO Conference last year (a conference that Allison Czarnecki is in some way connected to, though I’m not clear on the precise terms) . . . is that unrelated? You tell me.

By the way, there are tons of other examples of this — I am singling these out because they are the easiest for me to document, but I’ve seen this happen again and again in blogs recently, spread among a wide population of bloggers. And in nearly every case, this method of promotion is wildy successful — I’d venture to guess that it’s far more successful (and cheaper) than a traditional sponsored post campaign, in fact. There’s part of me that thinks that this is just how things are done. But then, I also wonder if it will have an effect on a blogger’s credibility long term if they lean too much on this kind of officially unsponsored sponsored post to promote their other projects.

What do you think? Am I being stodgy again? Is this just how things are done, and I should go back to my ivory tower? Does it bother you when you see this stuff cropping up again and again? Do you even notice it?

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Unpaid Writers, Both Literal And Hypothetical

by anna on February 15, 2011

Kids, if you haven’t yet noticed, I’m just going to come right out and say it: I’m not functioning at full capacity lately. As such I’ve found it very difficult to write good content for this section of the website in particular. It kills me to put this whole section out to pasture for part of or the duration of my morning sickness, though, so I’m currently entertaining the possibility of hosting a few guest posts here. If you’re interested, please pitch me (anna at abdpbt View definition in a new window dot com) your idea and I’ll mull it over. Basically, if the topic is the business of blogging, and it sounds like something readers here will like, I want to hear about it.

I do have some mixed feelings about guest posting — for one thing, I’ve always felt that this blog is kind of inextricably tied to my voice, and for another, we all know how ambivalent I am toward the concept of unpaid (or low-paid) writing labor in general. That said, writing one guest post is a little different from signing up to be an unpaid “citizen journalist” indefinitely. So here are my rules, if anybody cares (and it’s very probably that nobody does, except me, but just to make things clear):

  1. All guest posts will have an author’s bio plus a link back to the author’s blog or business or whatever they want within the text of the post;
  2. I will only accept one guest post from any one blogger;
  3. There will be a (pathetic) payment of $15 for each post I use;
  4. The topic has to be amenable to the general zeitgeist of ABDPBT Personal Finance in general, i.e. no copy-and-pasted PR releases about Disney Cruises or the latest bullshit brand ambassador program (unless, of course, you have some kind of inside dirt that you want to share that will ensure it’s worth all of us reading); and
  5. I reserve the right to be rigorous in determining what is acceptable guest post material, and am guessing most of it will not be acceptable because I’m super crabby and difficult to please.

I’m not going to blow smoke up your ass about “exposure” here because, you know, whatever — everybody knows it’s kind of a crapshoot whether or not a guest post will really lead to a bunch of clickthroughs or new readers. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn’t. But maybe there’s something you’ve been wanting to say about this topic you can’t say on your own blog, I don’t know. Give it some thought.

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Now, just to be totally hypocritical, I’m going to link to some of the interesting articles I’ve been reading about AOL’s recent purchase of the Huffington Post for $315 million. It seems that, now that there’s an actual, verifiable dollar amount attached to the value of the Huffington Post, some people are up in arms about the fact that they use unpaid writers! What do you know? Of course the deal is far more complex than many of these articles suggest (e.g. some of the Huffington Post’s staff is paid, and its tough to say how much of their traffic is actually produced by unpaid writers, etc.), but the discussion is still intriguing. As I said to Carla (who sent me the links to most of these, btw), I wonder if the New York Times will be called an angry jealous and bitter troll View definition in a new window for raising some of these questions? (My guess is no).

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