How to Upstage a Celebrity and Get on TMZ

Posted by junger - 10/29/08 at 10:10:20 pm

How does the average person manage to upstage a celebrity and make themselves the story on TMZ?

Do something extraordinary … or at least extraordinarily weird.

Brilliant.

SEO Failure in Action: Sarah Palin, the Washington Post and a $150,000 Wardrobe

Posted by junger - 10/28/08 at 10:10:42 pm

Can you find this story for me?

It's called "After a $150,000 Makeover, Sarah Palin Has an Image Problem" and it's from the Washington Post.

What? You can't find it? That's weird.

What You Just Did (And Your Readers Will, Too)

If you're anything like the normal Web surfer, you grabbed that headline, pasted it into Google, and looked for the top result.

But the Washington Post is nowhere to be found.

In fact, the direct link to the story is nowhere to be found in the four pages of search results. (When you search with quotes around the title.)

If you're the Washington Post, you've got to be worried. Something is preventing your story — when searched for using the all-important headline — from showing up in Google results.

That's scary for a Web publisher.

What Happened Here?

Why isn't the direct link to the story coming up in Google?

Honestly, I have no idea. But I'm more inclined to blame the Washington Post for doing something funky than to say Google screwed it up. They don't mess up too much when it comes to search.

Whatever the case is, there's a problem. And you, as the person who makes your site run, needs to ensure that you're not being left out of search results when you own the content.

What good is a blog post or a research paper online if it can't easily be found using search?

What Does 'Blog' Mean to You?

Posted by junger - 10/27/08 at 10:10:30 pm

The world 'blog' is filled with expectations … but they're totally different, depending on who you are.

At work, we've been discussing the merit of adding a 'blog' to the cepro.com and what exactly it entails.

The editors have been asking for one, but it always leads back to these questions:

  • does that mean a place to express opinions?
  • is it just a rollup of one author's posts?
  • are they short quips and thoughts about a particular topic?

What exactly is a 'blog'?

The 'Official' Definition

Here's what Wikipedia says about blogs:

A blog (a contraction of the term "Web log") is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic.

Honestly, this definition means nothing to me. If a blog functions as everything, then it is absolutely nothing.

We already post stories in reverse chronological. Many of our stories express opinions. Some of them are based on reports in other publications.

So do we already have a blog?

Does it Really Matter?

In the old media world, the word 'blog' matters. If all of these bloggers are getting tons of traffic to their sites while you're cutting staff, it must be because you don't have a blog.

WRONG.

A blog is not going to save your business. Embracing the culture and connectedness of the Internet will.

But back to the actual word. If blog doesn't mean anything, why use it?

Totally legitimate question. But the response should be: if the word blog doesn't mean anything, why not use it?

The Moral of the Story

The takeaway here?

It's not the word that matters. It's what you do with it.

The Onion: Taking the Media to Task Since 1783

Posted by junger - 10/08/08 at 10:10:36 am

The Onion, easily the funniest outlet this side of CollegeHumor, certainly has a history of challenging the status quo.

They've recently been running stories from their "historical archives," including their first issue from 1783.

In late 1783, change was sweeping the Western world. The Revolutionary War had drawn to a close, the Treaty of Paris had been signed, Mozart's Great Mass was performed for the first time, and, with the Montgolfier brothers' balloon, mankind was poised on the threshold of flight. And only one newspaper, H. Ulysses Zweibel's The Onion, had the courage to stand against it all. Here, for the first time ever, is a reprint edition of The Onion's October 6, 1783 issue.

It's brilliant.

But while political satire is all the rage these days with Tina Fey's Sarah Palin and Jon Stewart's Daily Show, The Onion has some of the sharpest — and least ideological — comedy.

Gunman Kills 15 Potential Voters In Crucial Swing State

In an era of 24/7 cable news coverage and non-stop election reporting, The Onion is slamming the media for — surprise — not focusing on what really matters.

While members of the media likes to paint themselves as an easy target, there's a legitimate gripe to be made here.

I'm just surprised they didn't pull out the Microsoft Surface table for Chuck Todd.

Here's Visual Proof Your Headlines Matter

Posted by junger - 10/07/08 at 12:10:22 pm

We've talked a lot about how much your headlines matter online and that when you produce a bad headline, your competition gets a leg up.

But if you still don't believe me, take a look at this listing of headlines:

(from the pfblogs.org RSS feed)

Without clicking through, can you tell me what these stories are about?

  • Still Risky
  • The Worst Decade Since the Thirties
  • Long tin hats and canned food?
  • Important Level
  • Biweekly Mortgage Spam

While you can get a general idea from these titles ("Biweekly Mortgage Spam" is probably about emails or letters about a mortgage that come every other week), these headlines fail to tell the reader what the story is actually about.

There's a reason you should write your headline first — without it, you're not going to tell readers why they need to check out your content.

How to Write a Great Headline

The easiest way to write a great headline is to distill your story down to its root. Ask yourself these questions:

  • What's the point of the story?
  • How does it benefit the reader?
  • If I was looking for this, what would I Google?

Once you've established the point of the story (hopefully something you've thought of beforehand), back up and look at it from your reader's point of view.

Is your reader going to get anything out of this story? What are they going to take away with them?

You can easily write a story for yourself, but if your reader doesn't benefit, you're not going to keep them around.

The third question — "what would I Google?" — is arguably the toughest question to answer. You need to step out of the silo that is your Web site and user base and think like a newbie.

If you want to teach someone to balance their checkbook, consider what they would look for — "how to balance my checkbook," "how do i balance my checkbook," or "how to balance your checkbook" all seem like logical searches.

3 Great Headlines In Action

Penelope Trunk, whose blog Brazen Careerist attracts a dedicated and vocal community, uses great headlines.

They give you the point right away. You don't need to dig deep to find what they're really about. And to top it off, they're provocative (Disclaimer: Brazen Careerist is a client of Junger Media).

How to Easily Practice Great Headline Writing

There's an easy way to practice your headline writing without having to write any stories: Twitter.

With its 140 character limit, you're required to get straight to the point and tell your followers exactly what they need to know. It's not a great medium for in-depth writing, but it's an easy way to analyze what you want to say and the best way to say it.

While you're at it, follow me on Twitter and I'll check out your status.

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