I want to talk a bit more about a phenomenon in the blogsphere I discussed a while ago. To start off, I’m going to mention a few names like Darren Rowse, and maybe Shoemoney. If your name is here and you are reading this, please help a guy prove a point and post a quick comment. Let’s see, need a few more names…Rand Fishkin sounds good and maybe one person: Aaron Wall.
So what was the point of that? Basically whether they post a comment or not, I’m willing to bet all of those names will read this post at one point or another. Like I said before, people are obsessed with their image online (this is a good thing for many reasons), plus everyone likes to see what other people are saying about them. It’s basic human nature. Using Google alerts, blog search or other systems, many people plug themselves in to be updated anytime something about them pops up on the web. Now that we understand what’s going on, there are a few rules you really need to consider when it comes to name-dropping and blogging:
1. Don’t write anything about someone you wouldn’t email to them.
This is kind of a no brainier, but better to learn the lesson now rather than through a mistake. The web is becoming more connected and open, and it’s only going to increase. When you pen words on your blog, you are not in a bubble. If you have something nasty to say about someone, they are probably going to read it at some point. When I made this post yesterday, I was pretty sure that Adam would read it at some point…(though he does win the award for the fastest publish to comment time… about 10 minutes or less) and if I had misrepresented the facts or called him a big doodie head, I would be in a pretty embarrassing situation right about now.
2. You can use this to get attention, but don’t abuse it.
In this post, on the SEOMoz blog, Rebecca discusses how a new SEO site made a YouTube video specifically for them and emailed it over. They took notice and actually made a blog post about it. You can use this name drop technique to get someone’s attention… but don’t do it too often, and always make sure you have some genuinely interesting and compelling content. If you’re just going to stuff names, you’ll probably have more success tracking down their email addresses and sending Viagra spam. If you just drop names with no reason, those people will start to ignore your domain when it pops up in the results and you’ll lose your audience, which is the worst thing that can happen online.
Post something relevant, compelling and geniuinely unique and you’ll get noticed, or maybe even manage to get yourself a link out of the deal, you never know. Name dropping aside, this is the most important thing for a blog. Before you do anything else, you need to have the content. Regularly posted, compelling content. If you haven’t got that yet, you’re performing surgery with a butter knife and a rusty spork. It’s going to get ugly.
Good profits.
