Blogging Tips: Make Your Readers Feel Like Crap By Reminding Them How Much Richer and Cleverer and Betterer Than Them You Are

Stop with the negative blogging!

Blogging used to be a nice, friendly backwater where a load of lonely people told each other about their cats, children and gardens. Then, one rainy day, some Smart Alec came along and realised that they could make money by blogging. The blogosphere has been going downhill ever since. 


Instead of well meaning, albeit damn boring, posts and personal musings, now we are inundated by pro-blogger mailouts full of barely concealed affiliate links, ridiculous PDF eBooks, and insufferable, badly-filmed video tutorials. Worst of all, they are almost all as boring as the original blogs about cats!


There is one specific element of the pro-blogger industry that has got me in enough of a tizzy to get off the sofa and write a post of my own.


First, here is a spoof link to my own non-existent affiliate link. Click here, and don't get a completely stale and utterly useless PDF eBook!


Because most pro-bloggers and on-line marketers don't have any original ideas whatsoever, they tend to rely on dreadful content to attract suckers traffic. This tends to be in the form of articles with depressingly unoriginal titles containing such monuments to banality as "top ten ways to", "five reason why", and "are you making this mistake". 


Open one of these totems of triviality and you get reams of re-hashed old ideas, ridiculous suggestions, and patronising, bad advice. The future of in-bound marketing is in the hands of people who advise you "tidy up your desk to boost productivity", "blog regularly to increase traffic", "stop looking like an idiot by learning some grammar", and "avoid Elephantiasis by not having sex with pachyderms". That last one may not be a real quote, the first three come from my inbox today!


More insidious, and more damaging to the blogosphere in the long term, is the rising tide of negative in-bound marketing designed to prey on people's insecurities. 


Today's examples of this include the "stop looking like an idiot" quote mentioned above, and other gems such as "why most freelancers suck", and "the main reason why you are not earning as much as me".


There is, of course, a place for this sort of weasely negative content. 


THE BIN!! 


Negative inbound marketing may get you reads in the short term, as you stick hot knives into people's insecurities, and remind them of their inadequacies. However, any negativity has to be tempered with genuinely useful, highly original content. I don't mind being told that I am a lazy, messy, barely literate loser by a semi-anonymous blogger, provided that I get something worthwhile in return. In my book at least, being told to tidy my desk and learn how to use the semicolon doesn't really cut the mustard.


Constant negative blog posts and mailshots is in serious danger of ruining blogging for everyone. Wannabee pro bloggers seem to spend so much time leaving insincere comments on each other's posts that they forget that blogging only works if you have readers. Not everyone who reads a b log is a pro-blogger with an affiliate deal, or a PDF eBook-peddling weasel. 


It is time to move away from negative titles, preachy content, and the unrelenting drive towards conversions and profit. Stop telling me why I am inadequate! That is what my wife is for!!


If you agree with me, click here for a super-secret page. If you don't, click here for a super-secret page full of free PDF eBooks. 


Finally, click here if you knew that writing "click here" gets you 13% more conversions than writing "don't click here, it is poisonous".