SEO, Social Networking and Other Crap I Don’t Have Time to Worry About

Posted on | May 10, 2012 | 11 Comments

If I had wanted to be a geek, I would have gone to Geek School and by now would probably be living in a mansion paid for with patent royalties and stock options. Instead, I became a journalist and — despite having nearly 12,000 Twitter followers — it never occurred to me to develop a comprehensive “digital strategy.” Maybe I can assign Smitty and Wombat to try to understand this stuff and put it to use for us:

The number of online news consumers has grown consistently over the past half-decade, yet not every publication has gotten the same lift as The Atlantic, whose web audience has catapulted from approximately 500,000 to 13.4 million monthly visitors since taking down its paywall in early 2008. . . .
Bob Cohn, who was recently promoted to editor of The Atlantic Digital, rejoices the change. “Before, it seemed Demand Media was going to own the Internet by assigning stories based on search returns. It was a cynical approach to journalism,” Cohn recalled. “We’re no longer writing to get the attention of Google algorithms. We’re writing to get you to share it, to digg it.”

Digg it. We’ve got those “share this” buttons at the bottom of every post, so if you wanted to Digg this, you could. Also, you could Tweet it, or link it at your Facebook page, or send it by e-mail to your friends. Especially if your friends are influential bloggers who might throw some more traffic our way, like Aleister at American Glob, for example.

See, that’s what we professional journalist types call a “transition,” whereby we change topics so seamlessly that the reader doesn’t even realize that all that stuff about “digital strategy” was just bait on the hook to get them to go over and hit Aleister’s tip jar.

It’s important to learn little tricks like that, and never publicly explain these tricks except in humorous “jokes,” because otherwise people might figure out that you’ve actually got a “digital strategy.” Next thing you know, some of your blogger friends might figure out that they can use MediaGazer to get ahead of media stories that could eventually bleed over into regular political news. And we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we? Because there might actually be some news value in these headlines I found at MediaGazer:

Tom Friedman elected co-chair of Pulitzer Prize
— Capital New York

Time breastfeeding cover sparks controversy
— Yahoo News

Why Doesn’t AOL Just Sell The Huffington Post?
— Forbes

Any of those stories might profitably be turned into a blog post. You could be the first conservative blogger to notice stories like that, if you made it a habit to check MediaGazer every once in a while. You might also remember to go hit Aleister’s tip jar, and I’ll count that as a favor.

When teaching, it is always better to show than to tell. If what you are trying to teach is the importance of generosity to success in blogging, then you might occasionally want to do somebody an unsolicited favor, the way Conservative Pup did today. Which I appreciated, just as I would appreciate anyone who hits Aleister’s tip jar, because I figure if he gets some extra bucks, maybe Aleister can go hit Joe’s tip jar at The Valley of the Shadow.

But why wait? Go hit Joe’s tip jar yourself, and then, once both Joe and Aleiister have filled up their tip jars, maybe I won’t feel guilty about asking you to hit my tip jar. There is infinite need, and my ability to assist others is finite, which is why I sometimes devote time to assisting others by the stratagem of . . .

SARAH PALIN AND GAY MARRIAGE? OMG!

Honestly, Jerry, I’d never read that before. Good work.

Category: Blogging

Comments

11 Responses to “SEO, Social Networking and Other Crap I Don’t Have Time to Worry About”

smitty
May 10th, 2012 @ 3:41 pm

Aw, c’mon @rsmccain:disqus : you get incontinent a the thought of TweetDeck. How’re we supposed to drag you kicking and screaming into the Social Networking realm without a whole pallet of adult nappies?
Besides, you’ve got twice the Twitter followers I do, so WTF do I know?
Finrod Felagund
May 10th, 2012 @ 3:53 pm

Enh, I did go to geek school (aka Computer Science grad school) and I don’t have a mansion, or stock options, or patent royalties. Grass, greener, fence, etc.
robertstacymccain
May 10th, 2012 @ 4:02 pm

Wait: Are you trying to tell me that “social networking” has something to do with Twitter?
Adjoran
May 10th, 2012 @ 4:09 pm

Don’t listen to him – I’m pretty sure it’s just a movie about some geek who ripped off his pals. A nerded-up version of the “Ocean’s” series without Clooney.
smitty
May 10th, 2012 @ 4:21 pm

Orange County? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0273923/
Felipe Rodriguez
May 10th, 2012 @ 4:26 pm

Too many tip jars, not enough tips! That was fun…. :o)
Conservative Pup
May 10th, 2012 @ 7:08 pm

Thank you for the mention, Stacy. Much appreciated. And another great post!
Wombat_socho
May 10th, 2012 @ 9:53 pm

I am but a simple, unevolved burrowing marsupial without a single clue as to what this Search Engine Optimization bafflegab might be.
William_Teach
May 10th, 2012 @ 10:43 pm

I know SEO must be important, because I get spam comments every day about it.
Charles
May 10th, 2012 @ 11:54 pm

Once again you’ve ruined a perfectly good second career for yourself, a speaking slot at BlogCon, and a Romney campaign consulting gig, by disavowing any expertise in SEO.

The marketing person at my company is always talking about SEO. It’s pretty clear all she knows about the internet is how to send emails to her assistant. When she’s not doing anything, she just tells her boss she’s working on SEO.

It took her 4 months to add a tab to our homepage for a blog, and another 6 months to add the blog. The best part was when she announced, with 6 posts already up, that she needed another 30 up before going live. I was able to talk her out of that.
White Noise | Goldfish and Clowns
May 18th, 2012 @ 12:39 am

[…] and struggling with not only crippling disease but how to pay for their medical coverage; when people doing their best to do investigative, accurate journalistic work on behalf of conservatives s… (yes, there is more than one); when people are looking for work and trying to keep their finances […]