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Writing for the Social Media Everyman

Tags: copyblogger, story sharing, pandering, social media on 2008-07-29 -All Annotations (5) -About

in list: Blogging

more fromwww.copyblogger.com

Does social media make us dumb?

You may have read the study from the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the general reaction to it (the consensus was that social media sites make you stupid and uninformed). While the conclusions are incorrect, the study is incredibly telling about the social media audience and how to write for it.
Add Sticky Note
- It’s funny, the inclusion of blogs and other credibility lacking sources is one the reasons they demean social media, but it’s the primary reason I use it.
  
  Social media isn’t making people dumber, it’s showing us how dumb people actually are.
  posted by moshler on 2008-07-29 03:53:55
- I’m fairly new to Digg and social news, but I have to say that I now know a lot more about what’s going on in the world. Especially in news topics that I would not have gone looking for - because friends have dugg them and so I got to hear about them that way.
  posted by moshler on 2008-07-29 03:54:25
- Remember when you parents got on your case for hanging out with the “wrong” kids? Maybe they were onto something. Just maybe.
  
  Social media can only make you dumb if you hang out with a dumb crowd. A lemming is a lemming.
  
  Hang out with a smart crowd and gain from the collective wisdom.
  
  It’s up to the individual to build their own smart crowd.
  posted by moshler on 2008-07-29 03:54:43
- For people to blanket cover mainstream media as “credible and professional” is as equally ignorant to blanket blogs as the opposite. There are good and bad reports coming from both camps… Mainstream media is incredibly biased, and anyone who says Fox News doesn’t have a conservative slant has been watching on mute with their eyes closed. I’ve been part of a few news stories ranging from my local paper to national magazines and papers… every single story I’ve been close enough to know the details I’ve seen glaring errors and misguided “facts.” A biased blogger is trying to increase his feed readership by a few hundred or land an extra $20 in adsense income this month… the biased mainstream media outlets are trying to increase their billion dollar bankrolls… either way you look at it, “News is dead” but I trust the guy trying to make an extra $20 over the billion dollar clubs.
  posted by moshler on 2008-07-29 03:55:28
For example, according to the study, social media users care less about mainstream news and hard-hitting journalism (even though both are present) and prefer content from disparate, sometimes unverified, and sometimes extreme (even conspiracy-theorist) sources that generally appeal to their baser instincts or guilty pleasures (i.e. Paris Hilton).
What does this mean for my writing?

This doesn’t mean that you start writing about Paris Hilton, but this does help you understand what your audience is looking to get from an information outlet and model your content for the social media everyman. The social media everyman is looking for an entertaining diversion, while being receptive to learning something new if presented in an “edutainment” format that ties the lesson into popular culture.
What do I mean by this? Have a look at the following CopyBlogger articles:
I know many of you thought that Brian was just watching too much E! (and he probably does) but there’s much more to it than that. The hooks used in these articles are celebrities that your average person (however educated or uneducated) knows of or has heard something about and can on some level relate to.
how do I appeal to the social media everyman?
Start with the familiar: Introduce your article by drawing from a source that you think the social media audience will relate to and is interested in. Pop culture will often provide the perfect hook.
Introduce the unfamiliar: Once you’ve established a relationship with the reader by finding common ground, you can introduce your topic (i.e. the analysis or educational aspect of your article).
Connect the two: Once you have established common ground and introduced your insight, you need to connect the two. This makes your content easy to understand and digest for the readers, but also easy to remember, comment on and apply to their own lives.
While I don’t suggest you dumb down your content for social media, I do recommend that if you’re writing specifically with the social media audience in mind, understand the mentality and what they’re looking to get from Digg, Netscape, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc, and appeal to that desire.
Yes, having the names of celebrities or anyone in the top 10 searches at technorati in any given day will definitely bring in traffic to your blog.

You can see most skillful marketers and even some spammers using this strategy to hook readers in. The most important element is still quality content, because getting them in isn’t that hard. Retaining them is… now that takes some creativity and good writing.
Well this post has some truths in it, but it does not tell most of them. To succeed on the anti-social mob sites like Digg you need to write like a nazi propaganda minister.

Especially if you refer to Digg and Reddit.

If you write for Digg: Most importantly choose one of these topics:

Apple (not the fruit)

Ipod

Iphone

Linux

WII

Playstation

Xbox

If you want attract Reddit users:

[Pic]

For both of them include some hate, and/or take something spectalular:

SEOs? Hang ‘em High!

Flash sucks!

Bush Plans To Nuke Iran

Make sure to mention some well known brand names or names. Celebrity names with “naked” combinations work best.

“[Pics]Paris Hilton Cought Naked With Britney Spears” would work best on both Digg and Reddit.

“Woman Runs Over Own Legs at McDonald’s Drive-thru” is also great. Btw. I’m not that crazy to make it up, it’s really the 2nd most popular post on Digg today…

Well, I could go on for a while like that. Probably I will write a post on that topic, hehe.
Leveraging the knowledge and reputation of a renowned thinker or writer is a great way to get some social media exposure.

George Orwell helped my site make Digg. Just make sure you have good content to back it up.
Muhammad nailed this one! While Tad Chef offers some good comments above, Muhammad provides a nice template that can prove successful for ‘any’ market.

Add a ‘tickler file’ technique to know what’s upcoming, and use Muhammad Saleem’s article as a guide, and you are on the path to greater traffic.
It’s much, much more difficult than I thought to gain traffic, you need good design, good writing a bit of gossiping, unless you want to focus on a very specific niche. And I find even more difficult to attract a women audience (at least in Italy). Internet audience is represented by men, that’s why techno and naked women work so well in the blogoshere.
Isn’t there are trick con artists use that’s similar to this?

Introduce a series of givens and then drop in the implausible.

But seriously, I’d also add that keeping articles short (within 700 words) usually does the trick, too…
Wayne, I think there needs to be a logical connection between the hook and the point.
You’re right, it is basic marketing.

If you’re trying to attract the Joe Blow surfer, you have to writing about what they are looking for to get found.

Then you have to present the information in a way that they “get it.”

I think bloggers who live on the web forget that many, many internet users don’t go much beyond Google.

If your target is in the 30+ age range, don’t assume that they know how to use all the web gadgets that you do.
ugh, we’re already sick of hearing enough about these celebrities, they already get too much coverage if you ask me. So now, in order to entice people to view your blog or articles you need to give these celebrities MORE exposure??!! I guess anything “Hollywood” sells these days…
But on a more serious note, the study raises an interesting point. I think content online, to a certain extent, must be “dumbed down.” NOt because of the nature of the readers, but the nature of reading online. People tend to skim and read quickly rather than take their time which is why the headlines need to be catchy and the content needs to be simplified (ie lists and bullets).
Nice post. The easy three step process to write for the social market…two additional tips:

1) Visit http://www.google.com/trends to find out what “familiar” topics are most popular.

2) Keywords in those topics should be in your title post. Then, connect the two (familiar and unfamiliar) as stated in this post.
So I guess the audience that frequents social media sites tend to be the same audience that read the tabloids. They may even be the far left fanatics that are causing all of the trouble in this country.

When deciding to promote your business in the social media, it comes down to knowing your target audience. If your customers are consertive, chances are they may not be frequenting the social media sites. On the other hand, if your customers are more liberal than the general population, they will be monopilizing sites such as MySpace, Digg, StumbleUpon, Yelp, etc.

5Expand

Are You Writing Headlines That Sell? Stop!

Tags: headlines, story sharing, blogging, copyblogger on 2008-07-29 -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: Pedagogy, Fundamentals, Blogging

more fromwww.copyblogger.com

What are headlines for?
- Grabbing attention?
- Filtering the target audience?
- Generating curiosity?
- Promising benefits?
You guessed it, all of the above!

What they are NOT for is selling. A headline alone cannot convince anyone to do anything other than one thing (and I’ll share that one thing below). Yes, a headline can have a deep impact on conversion rates by putting the reader in the proper frame of mind, but they do not lead to the sale, subscription, download or other action all alone
Headlines Are Stop Signs Not Buy Signs
OK, there might be marketing geniuses out there who can accomplish attraction and conversion all in one sentence. For the rest of us a headline has just one real job to do.

And that job is?

To get people to keep reading.
Focus all your headline-writing efforts on getting the readers attention and holding it. The remainder of your copy should do the rest and get the reader to take the desired action, but only if they actually read!
Don’t overburden your headline, just let it get on with the job it was meant to do.

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Not Hired » Interview Insanity. . .

Tags: mixx on 2008-07-27 -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromnothired.com

Said he was so well qualified [that] if he didn’t get the job, it would prove that the company’s management was incompetent.
Stretched out on the floor to fill out the job application.
She wore a Walkman and said she could listen to the music and me at the same time.
Balding candidate abruptly excused himself. Returned to office a few minutes later wearing a hairpiece.
Applicant challenged interviewer to arm wrestle.
Asked to see interviewer’s resume to see if the personnel executive was qualified to judge the candidate.
Announced she hadn’t had lunch and proceeded to eat a hamburger and French fries in the interviewer’s office.
Without saying a word, candidate stood up and walked out during the middle of the interview.
Man wore jogging suit to interview for position as financial vice president.
Said if he were hired, he would demonstrate his loyalty by having the corporate logo tattooed on his forearm.
Interrupted to phone his therapist for advice on answering specific interview questions.
Wouldn’t get out of the chair until I would hire him. I had to call the police.
When I asked him about his hobbies, he stood up and started tap dancing around my office.
Had a little pinball game and challenged me to play with him.
Bounced up and down on my carpet and told me I must be highly thought of by the company because I was given such a thick carpet.
Took a brush out of my purse, brushed his hair and left.
Pulled out a Polaroid camera and snapped a flash picture of me. Said he collected photos of everyone who interviewed him.
Candidate asked me if I would put on a suit jacket to insure that the offer was formal.
Said he wasn’t interested because the position paid too much.
During the interview, an alarm clock went off from the candidate’s briefcase. He took it out, shut it off, apologized and said he had to leave for another interview.
An applicant came in wearing only one shoe. She explained that the other shoe was stolen off her foot in the bus.
His attache [case] opened when he picked it up and the contents spilled, revealing ladies’ undergarments and assorted makeup and perfume.
He came to the interview with a moped and left it in the reception area. He didn’t want it to get stolen, and stated that he would require indoor parking for the moped.
He took off his right shoe and sock, opened a medicated foot powder and dusted it on the foot and in the shoe. While he was putting back the shoe and sock, he mentioned that he had to use the powder four times a day, and this was the time.
Candidate said he really didn’t want to get a job, but the unemployment office needed proof that he was looking for one.
He whistled when the interviewer was talking.
Asked who the lovely babe was, pointing to the picture on my desk. When I said it was my wife, he asked if she was home now and wanted my phone number. I called security.
She threw up on my desk, and immediately started asking questions about the job, like nothing had happened.
Pointing to a black case he carried into my office, he said that if he was not hired, the bomb would go off. Disbelieving, I began to state why he would never be hired and that I was going to call the police. He then reached down to the case, flipped a switch and ran. No one was injured, but I did need to get a new desk.
Asked if I wanted some cocaine before starting the interview.

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You know you've played too much Shogun when...

Tags: mixx, shogun: total war, you know you've played too much when... series on 2008-07-08 -All Annotations (32) -About

more fromshoguntotalwar.yuku.com

I forgot the original list, so I'm starting to make
up some new ones.
1. You plant
shinobis in all of your neighbor's yards and
homes.
2. If you go to visit for
tea, you plant shinobis in the yards of your neighbor's
neighbors as well, so they won't reinforce and surprise
you.
3. You try to sneak up on
someone wearing a lampshade.
4.
Whenever you see a bunch of trees, you send someone else
ahead to investigate them.
Tags : None

I forgot the original list, so I'm starting to make
up some new ones.

1. You plant
shinobis in all of your neighbor's yards and
homes.

2. If you go to visit for
tea, you plant shinobis in the yards of your neighbor's
neighbors as well, so they won't reinforce and surprise
you.

3. You try to sneak up on
someone wearing a lampshade.

4.
Whenever you see a bunch of trees, you send someone else
ahead to investigate them.

5. You
will not go to work unless the weather is
favorable.

6. But you're not always
sure what would constitute favorable weather, unless you
know what you and all your coworkers are wearing that
day.
7. You run screaming from any
pretty ladies with lots of makeup.
8. If they have a hairpin, you faint from sheer
terror.
9. You can't go anywhere
without assessing the terrain for strategic
benefit.
10. You become
disappointed, or indifferent at best when your wife bears
you a daughter.
11. When your boss yells at you, you commit
seppuku.
12. You go to investigate
whenever you see birds.
13. Same for
dust clouds.
14. You won't visit
anyone unless you outnumber them, or at least have
technological superiority.
17. If
someone comes to visit you, you have everybody wait in a
long line with bows and arrows to shoot them as they
advance.

18. And you tell the people
who don't have bows to keep the guests away from the
bowmen, by poking them with long pointy sticks.
19. If someone comes to visit you and they
outnumber you, you don't worry because you know you only
need to keep them occupied half an hour before they
leave.

20. If they outnumber you and
you're alone, you just run all around your property in
circles for half an hour.
You take a shower, get out onlly to be distracted
by the campaign still running on your comp. Two hours
later, you leap to your feet, shouting triumphantly, only
to hurt your package because you're still
Naked
You refuse too get
too close to that girl, because it could man your
downfall.
You judge your job
harvesting by Improved/Advanced/Superior/Legendary
Farmland. (I explained all this to my boss one day, in
detail while we cut harvest)
You
give serious thought to changing your name to something
random and off the wall because, hell, the samurai did it
all the time.
You dream about a
Geisha attempt on your life and lash out at her, only to
awake and find you'd destroyed everything on the
nightstand in your thrashing. *Dirty bitch, who sent
you?!?*
26.
You ask to be paid your salary in rice.
27. When taxes come in, sometimes you'll
gather a bunch of buddies and revolt.
28. You plot out battle plans on napkins,
notebooks, the backs of envelopes, the company whiteboard
(during a meeting!) and bald peoples' heads.
30. Late in the
game, you end your turn and look out the window only to
realize that a season really HAS passed since you were
last outside.
31. You know you have to go to the bathroom badly,
but you decide to put it off for one more turn.

32. The pain of putting off going to the bathroom is
becoming quite acute 3 turns later, but you decide to put
it off until you've fought off all the enemy
reinforcements in the driving rainstorm.
33.
The pain of putting off going to the bathroom is so
severe it feels like you should be hospitalized, but you
decide to put it off to the next turn.
34.
Suddenly you leap to your feet and realize it is time
that YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST GO TO THE BATHROOM. You don't
make it.
41. I called my boss a lousy advisor regarding
weather conditions. I got this look in
return....
32b, Sub 1.2. I started to dump
many pieces of equipment here to create a more 'japanese
experience"....our company will miss such items
as, cars...copy machines...and telephones.
995. Our company prez asked how we can improve
morale..I suggested a palace, followed by,
"wait..lemme get the list of geisha we'll
need."
352. As it tends to
get cooler during winter, our Billing dept girls tend to
move slower and fatigue faster cause they're our
corporate Heavy Calv. Vending machines get routed at the
sight of them.
49c. I wave a small
buddhist shrine in front of our VP's prior to asking for
a raise so their morale drops.
My secretary came
My secretary came in to discuss our
expansion into the the Pac Rim area, I told her we area a
chemical manufacturing plant and that she was in the
wrong Forum and to "go
away.""
Add Sticky Note
- Took me awhile to get this. It's actually more a poke on the mentality of this forum than it is related to the game and since I just stumbled into this thread, I didn't understand when I first read it.
  posted by moshler on 2008-07-08 04:58:50
when going to sleep I instead lie awake
- planning what I am going to do tomorrow when I continue
my game...
Your friend who's visiting
gets annoyed when you keep clickling at him, expecting to
hear snippets of Sun-Tzu.
You start thinking
about assasinating a rival CEO because then his company
will go ronin and you can take it over piece by
piece.
Your wife asks you about new
siding on the house and you say that upgrading the armory
is a better investment.
You start
calling the cat 'sninobi' and send him around the
neighborhood to see what folks are up to.
When she cheerfully says
you should turn off the computer and come to bed, you
start eyeing her warily for hairpins.
You send your kid to the neighbor's to borrow
a cup of sugar, worried that only some of him will come
back from his mission.
When your
workmates ask you opinion about who was better: Kobe
Bryant or Charles Barkley, and you say Takeda
Shingen.
The company owner builds a
palace and you wonder why your morale isn't
improving.
I must stop dressing my girlfriend up
as a Geisha...
I
must remember to send to ROSES and not cherry blossoms.
thinking about sending
ninjas to competitor firms
When I beat my kids in a game, I
will refrain from saying
"The enemy
taisho is running from defeat...
When I beat my kids in a
game I definitely won't try to
"take
the head of the enemy taisho".
I must treat my 'heirs' like kids NOT
generals.
I will
not send the postman's head back on a plate to the post
office when my bills come through.
I will knock on my friends' doors
instead of besieging them until they starve
My tea ceremony will
involve a kettle, a teabag and a mug AND NO
geisha.
I will go places without sending out
several shinobi first.
I will be nice to Portugese visitors.
I will stop playing this
game when.....the citizens of Japan build a statue of me
looking REALLY fierce.
I will not ring my parents long distance and ask
them to search the spare room for the Shogun CD-Key which
I accidently left behind on my holidays
I
will not panic about commissioning a horse troop of 60
and installing them in the nearest castle when my
daughter and heir turns 18.
I will not turn pale and wide eyed and expect a
fearful onslaught when I next see a monk going about his
daily business.
I
will not assume I have to die when I'm next in Chinatown
and see a lady with make-up on.
I will not commit sepuku when i
loose in an argument
I will not constantly reach for the high ground when
feeling beseiged in life.
I will not assume all Portuguese men wander round
with an amazing bow-legged walk.
I will not grow my lawn six foot
high, to hide my armys in and launch suprise attacks on
unexpected guests.
I will not kill my father inlaw and scream you have
killed the enemy general his armies are without
direction!
Stop
double clicking everything if I need it done fast.
I will respect
my family's wishes and NOT have
"1
Legendary Kensai, MontySan, Quite Dead" engraved
on my tombstone. (MontySan)
In Star Wars, they are Jedi, not
Jidai.
I will not
have a banner.
I WILL NOT RUN IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION SCREAMING AMBUSH
WHEN I SEE FUNNY LOOKING BIRDS FLY OUT OF A HEDGE OR
TREES
I
will stop pretending to be a Thunder Bomber whenever I
get fireworks.
Using fireworks on my son's
plastic army men is also unacceptable.
I will stop being
paranoid everytime I walk by bed sheets hanging on the
clothes line to dry.
When someone confronts you, you feel the urge to
flank that person.
After you accomplish
something, you yell,
"ho-hoi!"
When you see a
hill, you feel the urge to get up there.
You avoid a frontal approach on
someone.
When
you walk a long way, you think that you can hear,
"Yah-weh! Yah-weh!"
When
eating at a Japanese Restaurant, I will stop telling
everyone to run for their lives when the waitress enters
the room.
I will stop referring to
my Son as My Heir.
I
will not walk uphill when someone is walking
downhill.
I will not break and
enter into my neighbor's home with intent to destroy all
the contents merely because I suspect he has constructed
a geisha house.
Subconciously don't you....
-say "oh $hit...." when you see a
geisha house in an enemy province?
-Hesitate to hit the last turn when the game is done and
there is a slight disappointment and sadness to it
knowing you've conquered all of japan and there is no
more to conquer? (*sigh* now I know how Alexander
felt).
laughing ashigaru said:
Subconciously
don't you....
-say "oh
$hit...." when you see a geisha house in an
enemy province?

Actually, I said
"oh @#%$!" out loud when I merely saw a
legendary tea house, knowing the Geisha house was soon to<

Call Me What You Want's Bookmarks

Writing for the Social Media Everyman

What does this mean for my writing?

Are You Writing Headlines That Sell? Stop!

What are headlines for?

Not Hired » Interview Insanity. . .

You know you've played too much Shogun when...