DIY Clickbait scaffolding

Bloggers! Not enough visitors? Tired of casting pearls of bitter wisdom before apathetic swine? Facebook can help! Here is a starterpack of teaser headlines garnered from today's FB offerings:

X Tells Y That Z. Y's Reply Is Priceless.

The Best X Ever. This Is Gold.

If You Think X, You Need To Read This.

What NOT To Say To X [in a Y situation). This Z Absolutely Nails It.

This X has the most amazing Y we've ever seen.

What Kind Of X Are You? [Metamorphic self-assessment questionnaire]

- Go get 'em, Floyd!


READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Blogging is not dead, but evolving

AK Haart regrets what seems to be the decline of the blog - but what are we regretting?

Are we after numbers of readers (millions would be nice) or quality? Popularity, or influence? Number of visits, or average length of visit? Number of comments, or content of comments?

In the battle between the MSM and the Internet, Goliath is still pulverising David: Martin Langeveld estimates that, even though readership has declined in recent years, 96 per cent of newspaper reading is done in relation to print editions, with only some 3 per cent online.

Similarly, Paul Grabowicz says, "A visitor spends an average of a little over 1 minute per day on a newspaper website. Compare that with the 27 minutes per day that newspaper readers say they spent perusing the print product on a weekday, and 57 minutes on Sundays, according to a 2008 survey by Northwestern University's Research Institute."

But, as Grabowicz observes,  you can offer more online: "More in-depth stories and richer content can be published on a website than in the relatively short snippets of information distributed to people via mobile devices, on YouTube and Flickr, or through blogs and micro-blog postings. Providing deeper content fulfills the public service function of journalism and can help form online communities at news websites where people can gather to discuss issues of importance to their communities, both geographic and topical."

This reminds us that people read in different ways, and for different purposes. In 2006, Holsanova, Rahm and Holmqvist studied eye-movements of a group of readers to test assumptions about types of readership and concluded, "there are three main categories of readers: editorial readers, overview readers and focused readers."

Which leads us to ask, how much of what we write is actually read? In 2008, Jacob Nielsen found that "on the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely." Grabowicz's article (linked above) also observed an increasing tendency to skim and hop about: "while the total number of unique visitors and pageviews at the newspaper websites has been increasing from 2004 - 2009, the average time spent by each person on a site declined." This jackrabbit reading was turned into a very funny Radio 4 series in 1999, called "The Sunday Format."

Writing can take into account readership tendencies, so WikiHow shows us the art of composing adverts (for example, don't use punctuation in headlines, as this encourages the reader to stop).

But unless you're doing it for money, is the reader you whore after the one you should be concerned to attract? Perhaps we need to worry more about why and what we write, and less about who and how many are reading. Posterity and the estimation of one's peers outweigh meretricious éclat.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

A defence of blogging

In early times, learning was only to be had by digging and mining; it is now the circulating medium. Men may become learned in many ways besides the means of erudite courses of instruction: that is learning which enables a writer to inform his readers of matters applicable to the purposes of either profit or pleasure, of which they were not previously aware. In this sense, many are learned who do not suspect themselves in possession of this envied distinction. A prejudice lingers, however, in favour of that description of learning gained by hard study over tall books, and under the dim light of the lamp. But this is only the theory: in practice, men appreciate the living learning only which cheers the evening of leisure, or guides the daily labour - enlightens the professions, or instructs the statesman.

From "The Spectator" magazine, inaugural issue, July 5, 1828.

Yet how swiftly do some other publications forget their humble origins, which have subsequently attained eminent status. "Private Eye" lampoons the "online community" in its column "From The Message Boards"; but in 1961, there were its founders Christopher Booker and Willie Rushton, using typewriter, Letraset, hand-drawn cartoons, scissors and glue (in Willie's mother's flat, I seem to remember) to compose their witty and scurrilous magazine; and the new technology of photo-litho offset to print it. How is this different from the homeworkers of the blogosphere, and the use of the new capabilities of the Internet? Was not Private Eye the original blogpaper?

Is that charitable trust trustworthy?

I have received another charity mailing, this time from the World Children's Fund. There's so many that I feel guilt at not being able to give to all. And aren't they well-presented these days?

But there's something about the name of this one - similar to other charities somehow. So I google it. Page after page on Google, each leading you directly to their site.

But now for blogpower! I look to see what my fellow bloggers say. Here's one, and it's most interesting. I say no more, since I have no money to fight in court.

I shall now add Elmer to my links, and the US charity evaluation site, Charity Navigator.

Another case where bloggers have proved to be useful, I would say.