Your Title Was Boring - And I'm Busy

Most blog readers these days are perusing their RSS readers, quickly glancing through their subscriptions for something worthy of their precious time. It is helpful if your post title is engaging. If you're in advertising particularly, and you're blogging about advertising, why not practice your craft in your blog? Try to create headlines that grab your readers. Think of the RSS reader as a very crowded field where you are competing for attention - because it is and you are. If you're writing, "Jaguar's New Commercial," you've lost me right away. If you write, "Jag's New Spot Sucks Balls," or "Jag Smacks Me in The Face with Awesome Ad," I might venture further.

One blog that never fails to grab my attention through titles alone is Public School Intelligentsia, formerly known as "Hey Be Us." Here's a random sampling of recent PSI post titles:

• If regret had a face, it would be that tribal sun tattoo wrapped around a belly button.
• Lessons In Congeniality: “I don’t want to kill everyone…Just my enemies.”- Micheal Corleone
• Elements of Good Advertising: Simple. Pink. Sticky.
• On Nailing People’s Asses To The Wall: The 5 Staffers McCain Should Fire
• Take That, You Button-Nosed Shiksas! First Ever Jewish Girls Swimsuit Calendar

Sort of intriguing.

And here's another note on RSS readers that might help your blog: Give your readers the whole post in your feed. Don't shorten it as some tease that I'm supposed to chase to improve your blog stats. If your post is interesting enough, people will click the "show original item" link and comment on your blog. Cases in point: I subscribe to a couple of political blogs. One is "The Caucus" at The New York Times. the other is "The Daily Dish" at The Atlantic. "Caucus" gives me a one line tease that I very rarely click on. "Dish" gives me the whole post, and I appreciate that. "Caucus" may end up off my subscription list very soon.

How To Be an Internet Ass

I love to include photos in my posts, and I will often simply do a Google image search for what I'm looking for. If the image is really nice and clearly came from a photographer who is attempting to make a living from his or her photography, I will include a link to the photographer's site at the bottom of the post. This is the standard practice in blogging. If you steal it, at least give credit. It is the expected reciprocal kindness that creates traffic for the site where the picture was found. I frequently find some of my own creations on other sites, and I appreciate the traffic as the other sites include a link to where they found the image.

In this day of Flickr and images readily available to everyone, to expect that you can keep others from looking at or copying your images is to be living in the past, in the era of someone like, I don't know, John McCain, who can't get online without the assistance of his aides.

On a recent post, I searched for "rain" and found a black and white image that really struck me as beautiful. I included the words "picture stolen from" at the bottom of the post, with "from" linked to the photographer's site.

He quickly sent me this note:

Mr. Jetpack,

I noticed your photo on your 7/17/08 of [location deleted to prevent anyone from visiting this guy's site] in the rain looks a little familiar. It came from my website, [URL removed to keep anyone from visiting this guy's site].

I noticed you DID NOT give me any photo credits, failed to contact me for permission and basically hijacked my photo for use without any legal consent.

Please remove it immediately.

"Looks a little familiar." Nice snarky start. And I wonder how Mr. Photographer even knew I had posted his image. Could it be that someone actually visited his site from my site and his analytics told him so? And he went to this blog, saw his image, freaked out and failed to read the post to the bottom where I gave him credit? Hijacked? Legal consent? Give me a break, dude.

I alerted him to the link at the bottom of the post thusly:

[Name removed to keep anyone from visiting this guy's site],

You are mistaken. If you'll notice at the bottom of the original post I included a link to your site, as I generally do when I appreciate a good photo.

If you still don't want people going to your site from my site, I will take down the image and the link.

Let me know.

Thanks

I'm tired of waiting for his reply.

Dude, you've tested my patience. I could understand your incalcitrance intransigence had I been SELLING your photograph for profit, or if I even made money from this blog through advertising. As it was, I was simply providing you free traffic for your nice picture.

Your picture is gone along with the link to your site. I've replaced it with the photo above, shot in the backyard about five minutes ago. Your comments to my blog and their associated links have also been removed.

You have a lot to learn about the Internet.

What Can Copyranter Do For You?

Give your blog stats an obscene bulge. Haven't seen this kind of flash in the pan since BoingBoing got a hold of the Land O' Lakes post. Seems the Ranter found the wrestlers sans nipples a funny thing, which got the attention of Gawker, YesButNoButYes and some other sites. So my two greatest hits have been breast related. I'm sure there is a lesson here about content and how to attract visitors.

Thanks, Mark, but my second fifteen minutes among the bloggerati are now over. Bounce rate back to a hideously high percentage. Daily traffic back to a hideously low number. This blogging stuff is hard work.

I will tag this post with "Brazilian nude beach cam" for some artificial stat inflation just so the final settling into the low hundreds isn't such a jolt to my blog's ego. And the blogging maxim I recommend to anyone but rarely practice is always true, "Tag it with suggestive labels and they will come."

Check Your Bounce Rate, Washington Post

It's almost 2008, and we still have major news publications insisting we fill out these forms if we want to read their news. Get over yourselves.

I’ll read the same story at one of 50,000 other news sites that aren’t requiring I agree with your “user agreement” and “privacy policy” (8 pages, 3,327 words long. Really.) Buried in that massive pile of legalese, naturally, is your acquiescence to receive “offers” by email from the Washington Post’s “affiliates.”

I prefer my information without strings attached.

A Random Sampling of Random Visitors

Here's a snapshot of yesterday's drop-ins at Where's My Jetpack?

Average visitor is likely a male, in need of transportation, be it a jetpack or a motorcycle (not a Harley). He is also in the market for porn of the Indian or Xena variety. And he could use a burrito.









I'm sure all of these searchers were quite disappointed in my offerings. Search is not an exact science. It's obviously very much a hit and miss exercise in many cases, even when you've got giants like Google and Technorati working for you.

Analytics: Revealing a Sickness

On one of my other sites, there's a page that references "sex, drugs and rock and roll." This same page also contains the word "children" buried among 4,000 other words. I guess I shouldn't be surprised when people arrive at that page after searching "sex with children." Bunch of disturbed SOBs out there sitting at computers.

Here's yesterday's top five search terms that landed people at "Where's My Jetpack?" Saturdays are low traffic days, but people still need to find their jetpacks and crack cookies over the weekend. Also still popular: direct linking to the Land O' Lakes post via Mac forums and porn sites.