How to Ruin an Excellent Piece of Linkbait, and Why Someone Should be Fired
November 29th, 2007 by Michael Gray in Social MediaIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
Here’s a prime example of how to ruin an otherwise amazing piece of linkbait. It’s hot, it’s fresh, it’s easy to get, but where are the damn pictures! A huge component of social media is the eye candy! You need it especially if you are playing the celebrity space. If someone produced this for me they’d be fired … twice … for not putting in the pictures … idiots … I swear idiots …
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Sphere It
November 29th, 2007 at 11:46 am
So, you want to see pictures of mostly hot men under 45?
hm…. =P
Nice find though. Way too much text to read without pictures, people are lazy, they need pics.
November 29th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
It’s a print publication so I wonder if it’s a classic case of the “offliners” thinking they need to entice people to buy their rag by withholding some of the online content. You know, kinda how most newspaper sites never drop a link even when the article is about a website, or will talk all about some video footage that they don’t provide along with the article.
Problem is, just as with partial RSS feeds, if I can’t digest your content in the manner I want, I’m going elsewhere. There just are too many options to play that game with audiences anymore.
November 29th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
Not only that, but what’s up with the pop-up that follows you around? Put that up AFTER the links come in. Diggers hate pop ups. And so do I.
November 30th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Let’s say that I worked at a major TV network years ago. And for the same of argument, let’s also say that this network was putting on a show about the 50 hottest women.
Maybe (and this is all hypothetical of course) a certain big-lipped Cambodian-adopting actress was going to be #1, but a certain female R&B singer’s publicist wouldn’t give permission to use photos of her client unless she was bumped from #2 to #1. Maybe. And maybe the network did it, because this singer was so hot at the time that not having her on the list would have been silly.
Believe me when I tell you that, were this all true, securing permission to use those photos was the single most difficult and time-consuming part of putting it together because everyones’ publicists tries to leverage the rights for a higher spot on the list.
November 30th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
@handsome Logic umm have you been to a celebrity gossip website? You think any of them is going out securing permission from anyone’s agent before they use the pictures?
December 1st, 2007 at 9:53 pm
You are so right. What a waste. I like running experiments to see what works and what doesn’t. Perfect example is today. I wrote an article on Digg vs Mixx, and all of the hype involved. Without photos and graphics the article did nothing. Hours later I added photos and graphics/logos, and just today alone already over 500 visitors from Stumbleupon, but only a few dozen or so from Digg so far. About 100 more just from Mybloglog and only a hundred from my own site that the blog is on.
To Rhea: People need to look at something other than text. Text on a screen bothers the eyes after a while, even within just one article. A little eye candy is just what is needed for people to focus on more. They can then read more of the article.
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:08 am
The giant Cartier advertisement that blocks half the content and then freezes up so you can’t click out of it doesn’t help, either.
I’m sure the content is excellent, but I’m not inclined to read it. The blurbs about each entry are too long, contain no paragraphs, and look like they have too many brackets, hyphens and numbers.
Linkbait like this should be short, sweet, stylish and easily scanned by impatient visitors. When it comes to a bait-y list of powerful men under the age of 45, I want to know what the guy does, the primary reason he’s successful, how old he is and what he looks like. If I want to know “…Zuckerberg holds a 20 percent share of that. The site posted 34 billion page views in September to MySpace’s 50 billion, and rumors are circulating about an IPO in 2009…” I can look it up elsewhere. But I’m fickle and click-happy, and I won’t read it here.
December 3rd, 2007 at 6:34 pm
@Michael
This isn’t Jossip, this is Conde Nast. The piece was created for the print pub, not the web. It’s right on the cover of the magazine. And now I want to see whether or not they put photos in the magazine… of course that would mean I might have to be seen holding an issue of Details.