Let me start by stating I think Tom Wark is one of the best wine bloggers and his writing always gets me thinking. But yesterday I bristled a bit over his thoughts about promoting a blog. It’s not that his list is a bad one — and I do get his tongue-in-cheek shtick about naked pictures — it just ends on a point most new bloggers will take-away as his entire message.
You have to be provocative in order to attract readers.
While this strategy can work, as it sometimes does for Tom, I would advise anyone new to blogging to not look for controversial subjects or spend time spicing up your headlines. Just be real and write about what you are passionate and hopefully know a lot about. And do it everyday.
Good content builds readership. For more, check out this post from Chris Brogan.
And Tom is not really full of crap; I was just curious to see what would happen if I followed his advice.
Photo lifted from El Bloggo Torcido, hoping to inspire El Jefe to post a Creative Commons license.
Comments 8
LOL! Well it worked for me…..here I am at 6:30a commenting- it was the rubber chicken that drew me in! Chickens-provocative, though it is a naked chicken…..
Posted 10 Jul 2008 at 8:33 am ¶Yea, I especially selected that naked chicken to prove a point… thanks for commenting so early, Penny.
Posted 10 Jul 2008 at 8:51 am ¶Not only is your headline PROVOCATIVE…but largely true in my experience.
Posted 10 Jul 2008 at 5:59 pm ¶What’s interesting is I haven’t seen any new traffic and from the comments this post seems less engaging than others with less provocative headlines.
Maybe we are both correct?
Posted 11 Jul 2008 at 8:21 am ¶Tim,
It most likely is a matter of the name of the person in the post. Now, if you put “Naked, Naked, Naked!” in the headline, you might get better results.
Posted 11 Jul 2008 at 7:28 pm ¶I’ve been pondering the proper response. I even looked into Creative Commons, but I fell asleep trying to figure it out. Apparently I am supposed to write my own license or something. Whatever happened to asking to play with someone else’s toys?
As someone who has written four books (really!) I tend to take copyrights a little more seriously I guess. For my photos, all I want is to be asked and to be given credit - unless of course you have large piles of money. Or diamonds. OK, really any precious gem or metal will do.
Posted 20 Jul 2008 at 7:27 pm ¶Sorry I didn’t ask Jeff; lesson learned. But I did give you credit. Forget about the crack about Creative Commons
Posted 20 Jul 2008 at 8:26 pm ¶No worries! I was hoping to goad you into writing it for me
Cheers!
Posted 20 Jul 2008 at 8:42 pm ¶Post a Comment