At this point, half of the Argo-bloggers have already sent me the latest Denton memo, and I imagine the other half have drafts ready to go. For now, I present it mostly without comment. A few selected nuggets are below the fold. Continue reading
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A good point about Gawker and porn
From NY Mag’s profile of Nick Denton:
These days, Gawker Media’s blogs net up to 17.5 million U.S. visitors per month, making the company America’s 45th most popular online property, well ahead of nytimes.com (55) or TMZ.com (59). Gawker Media grew through the annus terribilis of 2009. It grew in 2010. The U.S. readership figures of Gawker (gossip), Jezebel (women’s issues), Gizmodo (gadgets), Jalopnik(cars), Lifehacker (geek advice), and even Kotaku, Denton’s relatively low-key gaming site, are each up by 30 to 60 percent so far this year. The audience of the sci-fi blog i09 has more than doubled. It should tell you something that the straggler of the group is the company’s sole porn blog, Fleshbot.
Quote of the day
“In the Gawker world, every item is potentially part of a longer drama, a narrative to unfold in time (with links to old Gawker posts).” – “The Optimist’s Blogger,” NYTimes.com
I’m telling you, this art of the quest stuff isn’t just all in my head.
Piping fresh Nick Denton memo
Get it while it’s hot. You know I can’t resist Denton’s monthly memo to his Gawker staff bloggers. A highlight:
Kevin Purdy’s highly informative story about the effects of caffeine on the brain in Lifehacker was the breakout story of July. And the reader interest in the piece highlights — do we really need a reminder? — the draw of the explanation. There’s too much news on the web; and way too little explanation. Fully a quarter of the top stories are straight how-tos or otherwise helpful or informative.
Man. I would never have thought Nick Denton would be one of the loudest voices making my beloved Future of Context argument.
Dark secret of blogging #3: Headlines are hooks
(Flickr photo courtesy of user minifig.)
Just admit you read the title of this post and thought, “Duh.” Of course headlines are hooks. That’s News 101.
OK, fine, but headline-writing for the Web is enough of a distinct art that it must be re-emphasized: Great bloggers write great headlines. And that should be qualified: great bloggers write great Web headlines.
What distinguishes a good Web headline? Here’s an insight from Gawker mogul Nick Denton: “Imagine you’re writing a headline for a magazine (one with tight deadlines) rather than a newspaper.”
What does that mean? I think that the most successful Web headlines emphasize implications rather than events. Not what happened, but what it means. Take this headline from Wired.com: “Group posts e-mail hacked from Palin account.” Compare it to the headline from Gawker: “Sarah Palin’s personal e-mails.” The former headline focuses on the event – Sarah Palin’s e-mails got hacked. Gawker underscores the consequence – you get to read Sarah Palin’s e-mail!
Another example. Here’s a NYTimes headline: “Population study finds change in the suburbs.” Did your eyes just glaze over? Sweet, mine too. Someone studied the suburbs and found they’d changed, news at 11. The AP headline’s better: “White flight? Suburbs lose young whites to cities.” I expect the tinge of racial conflict in that title might draw a few clicks, although I wouldn’t recommend setting up a discussion that way. But once again, Gawker demonstrates mastery – “Suburbs: the new slums.” The rough trajectory of these headlines goes: What happened (NYTimes), what’s happening (AP), what it could mean (Gawker). That last version is what grabs our attention best online.
I once saw a marketing guru highlight what he thought were the top 12 most profit-producing words in marketing. I think you could do a similar exercise for great headline words. Here’s a quick take on it:
- Top
- Why
- How
- Will
- Guide
- Best
- Secret
- Ultimate
- Your
- Worst
- New
- Future
If you can frame your post with one (or more) of these words, you might just have a winner. Of course, you can write a terrific, viral headline with none of these words. Read Denton’s memo for some more thoughts on the matter.