How to get SmartBrief to ignore your post
Bloggers are always asking us how to get featured in one of our 100+ SmartBrief newsletters. Without going too deep into our proprietary search technology, editorial know how and super-secret selection algorithm, here are five factors that stop us (and every newsletter service worth its salt) from including your latest and greatest post.
- You didn’t use your full name: What, is it 1995 again? I loved your last post, JazzDawg43, but we’ve got our credibility to maintain. When someone links to your post, they’re endorsing you, saying your voice is worthy of attention. How can you expect strangers to support your work if you don’t even stand behind it with your full name?
- You didn’t put a date on your post: Everyone’s had this happen at least once: You send your buddies that super-funny video of the tap-dancing octopus and then the replies come back. “Yawn. I saw that in February. Where have you been?” Don’t humiliate your visitors like that. Date your posts, I urge you.
- You posted someone else’s content without disclosure: As all you social media mavens know, sharing links is about trust. If you got your information from another Web site or from a press release, please say so and disclose that link. Maybe I won’t link to you this time, but I’ll remember that you’re a good source of information and I’ll come back in future, because I can trust you to be honest. Burn me even once and I’ll never visit again.
- You did something R-rated: We’re all adults here (at least until SmartBrief on Miley Cyrus launches…) but that doesn’t mean it’s OK to leave our manners at home. Say whatever you want to say in your post, but if you really want people to share your content, then you should cater to a range of sensibilities. Not everyone thinks certain four-letter words are automatically hilarious. Not everyone appreciates the bikini model picture you’ve got posted in your sidebar. And that goes for your advertisements too. If you’re running super-explicit ads for Viagra, we’re just not going to link to you.
- You got needlessly political: Unlike the other items on this list, politics aren’t necessarily link poison. I used to work at Congressional Quarterly. I love politics … but not everywhere and not all the time. Good: Intelligent analysis of the debate on health care. Bad: Post about animal behaviors that draws an unflattering comparison between a crazed orangutan and the political figure you like least. If you want your content to travel widely, don’t get overly partisan, don’t go out of your way to be offensive (see #4) and resist the temptation to let your views color everything. Sometimes that orangutan is just an orangutan.
If your blog is for yourself or for a select audience you know well, feel free to break every one of these rules. The Internet is wide open for a reason. But if you’d like to reach a larger audience, that means building trust with people who share a lot of content — whether that’s SmartBrief, an influential blogger or even just that one friend everybody has who spends all their time forwarding awesome links. Make a few good-faith efforts, and you’ll get plenty of traffic back in return.
Image credit, elkor, via iStock
Posted by King Sidharth on August 28th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Mind you, I am not an adult, just 17… and have been a regular visitor to your site since past few months. Very informative article, btw
Posted by Dean Peters on August 28th, 2009 at 11:10 am
If I may offer 1 more to the list:
Forgot to paint a vivid word picture of the problem, issue or solution.
Too much “bulk” out there that is about as fun as translating ancient Greek to Hebrew.
Posted by Susan on August 28th, 2009 at 11:21 am
How not to get comments on Social Media articles read: Simply include item after item of RTs! Perhaps a pat-on-the-back list of RTs separate from comments might be useful in its own section (although a tad vainglorious), but having substantive comments that don’t require having to open new links to read them would seem a more effective way to keep reader interest and to model good social media practices.
Posted by PVirk on August 28th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
What’s going with the comments sections here? What a waste of space. re-Tweeting something is not a comment.
I enjoy reading the comments on news/articles more than I do the articles most of the time. Here’s a tip to add to this article:
6. Do not make your ‘Comments’ section be a re-Tweet factory. People enjoy intelligent conversation and may not necessarily want to read continuous rebroadcasts. Twitter is popular because people want to be popular with little or no effort (e.g. RT somebody else’s interesting article) but don’t forget about people who want to have their brains worked out a bit when they visit your blog.
Shame on you SmartBrief. Only 5% of Americans are using Twitter (http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/HarrisPollByDate2009.asp) but I guess the whole world revolves around it?
Posted by Alicia [3GreenAngels] on August 28th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Useful and very common sense tips for bloggers. Thank you for laying it out there so plainly!
Posted by Link Love for Lunch « Young Women Misbehavin’ on August 31st, 2009 at 9:31 am
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Posted by 5 mistakes that keep readers from forwarding « FCEdge Powerful Marketing Communications on September 2nd, 2009 at 3:59 am
[...] 5 mistakes that keep readers from forwarding If you want your blog to enjoy a wide audience, avoid committing these five all-too-common mistakes, SmartBrief’s Jesse Stanchak writes. Among them are failing to provide your full name or posting date, using other people’s content without attribution, and putting politics where they don’t belong. “Make a few good-faith efforts, and you’ll get plenty of traffic back in return,” he noted. More: SmartBrief/SmartBlog on Social Media [...]