Brad Pitt is not a freelance writer
Short and sweet – I’ll show you how to hoodwink readers into thinking you’re writing about a famous celebrity. Then I’ll show you how not to use Brad Pitt (and other famous names) in your blog or your writing if you have any integrity at all. Obviously, my integrity is shakey today.
My headline is nonsense and geared only to lure readers to my Ontext blog. If someone searches Brad Pitt in the next couple of days, they may find Ontext in their search engine hits. Why? Because this site is a recognized blog. Because our traffic is pretty good. Because I promote the site and because Pitt’s name is in the title and scattered through out the article.
The same technique, if you will, was used by Movies at MSN in a recent post where their headline read “Will Brad Pitt Run for Mayor of New Orleans?”
He gives the answer clearly in the article that follows the headline. But the teaser headline will bring people to read. It made me read it! My headline will bring people to read but I won’t benefit. The movie site likely did. So what’s the difference?
The MSN movie site is about movies. Even though their headline is intentionally alluring, it draws readers interested in movies and celebrities.
Ontext is about writers, freelancing, selling your writing, and running your writing business effectively. Writers may be interested in celebrities, but my target audience is interested in writing. The traffic blip I got from my tricky headline will probably not stick around to benefit from Ontext resources.
The moral of this story – it’s good to keep your topics and headlines current, hot. But only when the subjects relate strongly to your theme. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but don’t waste time with gimmicks when straight-forward gets you to your goals.
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