Back in the deep dark depths of 1996, back before Titanic was destroying the box office and well before the death of Chris Farley would make sure the world would never be the same again, Pennzoil came out with a big ad campaign that had this for a tagline:

“Pennzoil is the only leading brand of motor oil to meet the 1996 SAE requirements two years early.”

How many of you know what that even MEANS?

And if you know, how many of you care?

Pennzoil shelled out millions of 1996 dollars–more by today’s standards–to tell us all something we neither understood nor cared about.  And as a result, Pennzoil lost a whole lot of money on an ad campaign that did absolutely nothing to sell its own product.

This all relates back to the main headline, who cares, or why no one reads your blog.  Are you telling people something they don’t care about, like Pennzoil did?  If you’re wondering why no one reads your stuff, ask yourself if they have any reason to.  And if you find that they don’t, start thinking about what you can do to MAKE them care.  If you do that you’ll find yourself greatly ahead of the game.

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First off, I’d like to thank reader Consolidation School Loan for giving me this idea, because it really is rather timely.

We’ve talked at length here about capturing attention, and Consolidated School Loan finally broke down and basically asked which one is the most important?

The simple answer is neither.  But when in doubt, err on the side of your readers.

See, the whole reason to appeal to search engines is to GET you readers.  If, in the beginning, the search engines aren’t happy with you you’re not likely to get very far.  But once the search engines start bringing in readers, that come back regularly, well, then there’s not much point to the search engines any more, is there?

Search engines don’t buy your merch.  Search engines don’t click ads or leave comments. All a search engine does is BRING READERS, that in turn, do all those things.

Search engines take territory, to misquote the military parlance, but readers hold it.

So if you MUST decide between the two, choose readers.  Do what you can to keep the search engines happy, because they bring more readers.  But don’t sacrifice your readers’ happiness for the search engines. What does it profit me if I have the highest-ranked blog on Google, but spend all my time screaming keywords and racial epithets?  Who’ll stick around and read THAT?

Don’t ignore the search engines.  That’s a move you make at your own peril.  But neglecting the search engines a bit in favor of your readers, a sixty-forty split, say, will not go unrewarded.

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It’s not exactly the kind of thing you might want to think about.  Especially when you hear about ethics in blogging.  But today, I’m going to give you an idea you may not have considered before, and as far as I know, this is an original, too.

Today I’m going to tell you how to lie in your blog, and have people thank you for it.

Sounds preposterous, doesn’t it?  On the surface, yes, yes it does.  But once you drill down a bit, you’ll find out that the idea has a lot more merit than you imagined.

See, I got a comment yesterday from a guy named Gomez The Windshield Monkey.  He runs a blog about auto glass, and he was commenting on the post I did about keeping your topics well mixed up.  And he wondered how he could shake up HIS posts, since his blog was a niche blog about auto glass.  Well, he gave me a great idea, even though he doesn’t know he did.

What you’re going to want to do is create a character, and use that character to post.  In this case, we’re talking about a series of blog posts that could be titled “The Adventures of Gomez The Windshield Monkey”.  In these posts, Gomez could have a series of adventures revolving around auto glass–maybe a story about a crack that grows bigger, or the dangers of a surprise rock out of nowhere.  The key things here being, make the stories relate to your blog.  Telling a story entertains your readers, and entertained readers like to come back.

If you can make a character fit with your blog, it should pay off in the long run.

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We do a lot of talking about credibility around here.  Sometimes we expound on it, but we always strive to DEMONSTRATE it.  When we screw up, and we do, we apologize publicly and do what we can to make it right.   I know you all have stories about that, and if you want to put them in on the comments section, it’s always welcome.

But today I’m talking about a counterexample.

There once was a luxury train line.  A businessman who’d booked passage on a business trip, weary from a long day, went to his sleeping car and pulled back the sheets, ready for a good night’s sleep, until he discovered that the sheets were literally crawling with bedbugs.

He reached his destination–probably exhausted now–and sent a letter detailing his fury to the president of the railroad.

He got a VERY nice apology letter in the mail.  The president himself wrote, apologizing abjectly, saying the car in question had been taken out of service and fumigated thoroughly.  Such things had never happened before!  Personnel were discipllined!  New procedures were instituted!  Heads were ACTIVELY rolling as they SPOKE!

Sounds great, doesn’t it?  Until you catch the rest of the story.  The president’s secretary had accidentally included the businessman’s original complaint letter in the same envelope.  Written across the top in the president’s handwriting?

Send this jerk the bedbug letter.

What do you think happened to that company’s credibility?  These days, credibility is money, folks.  I got that one out of the book by the same name by John Bear, Ph.D, but how many companies are sending “bedbug letters” this very minute?

Is your blog sending bedbug letters?

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Once again, apologies to the veterans, because chances are you already know what I’m about to say.  But this is a tip for the new folks, a group we never want to ignore here at Slyvisions.  Again, though, please do share your experiences down in the comments.  It’d be very helpful.

That having been said, new guys and gals alike, listen good, because the veterans are being nice and forbearing right now so I can get you this tip.

The one thing you should absolutely do before you even SIGN UP on Blogger or Wordpress or wherever is BUILD A BACKLOG OF POSTS.

No matter what kind of update frequency you’re looking at, you should have your first month or more already written before you even start posting.  Let’s face it, folks–life has a way of getting in the way.  And you’re not going to want to have to tell your burgeoning readership (maybe all five of them when you first start) why you can’t update because Gramma Rose just took ill or the car broke down or anything like that.  You need your posts ready to go, so the worst thing anyone can say is that you were a little late one day.

And really, that just looks petty.  A schedule should be adhered to, as strictly as you can, but if anyone’s expecting your posts to show up the same hour of every day they’re expecting WAY too much.

This goes to establishing your credibility, AND your reliability, as a blogger.  That’s something you don’t want to miss.

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You may or may not have know this, but there are awards out there that your blog can win.

No, seriously–your blog could be an award winner.  That’s actually kind of cool when you think about it, but by like token, it’s also kind of creepy.  I mean, this isn’t like the Oscars; who could even name a blog award that could be won in the first place?

But one thing that winning a blog award would do for you, however, is get you some credibility.  It’s one thing to be a blogger–anybody with a computer and ten spare minutes to sign up on Blogger.com could handle it.  But it’s entirely another to be an AWARD-WINNING BLOGGER.

Yeah, you can just about hear the caps in “award winning blogger”.  I’d give you a list of the blog awards you could compete for, but searching for “blog awards” on Google turned in over seventy three million results.  This means there’s likely a lot of room to play in.

Or, even better, you could nominate OTHER blogs for awards and tell them you did it.  You might even get a link out of the deal, and that’s never a bad thing.

So if you’re looking for a way to get you a quick knock of credibility, a fast link, or even just a little ego gratification, try being an award winning blogger.

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I don’t know if you’ve ever been here, but Yahoo Answers represents the strangest concept I’ve seen lately–try the human powered search engine.  How it works is, essentially, you pose a question to the Yahoo Answers community and wait a few days.  Come back and check it, and it’s entirely possible that people have answered your questions.  Some answers are excellent, well-reasoned and clearly well thought out, while others are utter garbage.

But where this comes in for you is that, if you become one of those people, and one of those excellent, well-reasoned, and well thought out responses, you get to establish yourself, if only for a short while, as someone who knows what they’re talking about.  And if you include a link back to your blog, you can continue to show the Yahoo Answers folks that you really know your stuff.

And convincing a community the size of Yahoo Answers that you are indeed an expert in your field of choice can’t help but light a fire under your readership counts.

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I got more than a few great ideas lately from Seth Godin, who has a whole series of traffic building advice bits on his website, which you can find here.  There’s two good reasons why I did what I just did, and I’ll explain them now.

1. Citing those who give you ideas gives you credibility.  Back to that big-C word again, but it’s no less important now than it was then.  By talking about the people who tell you what to say, you prove that you have sufficient integrity to give credit where credit is due.  No one’s checking up on you.  No one can even really prove you “stole” an idea–the best they can do is say that “Simpsons did it first”, or something to that effect.  But when you take away the ability in the first place, declare that you got an idea from somewhere, you remove all the doubt.  This isn’t your idea, you’re saying, you’re just expounding on it.  You’re making a valuable contribution to discourse, even if you’re just standing on the shoulders of giants.

2. You might get some link love back.  Seth further goes on to say, and I agree with him, that when you give links, you should expect links back.  I’m calling you out on this one, Seth–I gave the link love, and now I’m counting on it back.  Remember, links help improve your picture in the blogging realm.  The more links you get, the higher value your blog becomes.

So never be afraid to link to someone else–what you say on your blog is just as valid, even if it isn’t all yours, and when you give link love, you have every right to expect it back.

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