1 Good Reason – Social Marketing

BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) Seth raised the ire of the blog-o-sphere last week with his post about clicking on ads as a way to pay the blogger for a good post.  Here is a round-up of the reactions.

But first a nerdy side note on the story; some funny things happened when I started my research on this post.  I first turned to Google (naturally) to discover the links to Seth’s blog post.  I used the following search:

Google: link:http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/08/ads-are-the-new.html -site:typepad.com Which returned 0 results, surprising for Google.  MSN had the same problem, link:http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/08/a returning 0 results.

Yahoo however found what I was looking for: link:http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/08/ads-are-the-new.html -site:typepad.com = 100+ items

Next I looked at Nielsen’s Buzzmetrics tool BlogPulse which shows a nice quantity (25+) of links to the blog post. The problem being they missed the most important one- mine!  Now I’m not a Top 100 blogger by any means, but I do have a decent following and readership.  I’ve a got a fairly good Technorati score (220+) and Alexa Rank (322,000), so why doesn’t 1 Good Reason make it with BlogPulse?

This then led me to look at Seth’s blog post again and wonder about the Trackbacks.  It seemed that the only Trackbacks Seth was showing were for complimentary blog posts.  So I wrote to him and asked him about it; Seth answered that he approves “EVERY SINGLE trackback that comes through typepad”.  Which made me wonder why my trackback wasn’t coming through Seth’s Typepad blog.

There I discovered a difference in the way that WordPress handles trackbacks form other WordPress blogs, compared to the way they handle them with other bloging platforms.  Let’s skip the tech stuff and just say you should be sure to include trackbacks for blogs in your posting, it’s a pain but worth it.

And finally a last point about Seth’s blog.  In my correspondence with Seth I suggested to him that revisit his commenting system.  Several years ago, Joseph Jaffe over at Jaffe Juice commented that Seth’s blog didn’t take comments.  That’s my first recollection of this, perhaps you have others?  But since then I’ve been not alone in the impression that Seth holds himself to be above the fray, and doesn’t accept comments on his blog.  Well I found that is wrong.  Seth does accept comments, it’s just very hard to find them in the 8 point small print at the footer of each blog post.  So I would suggest to Seth that unless he doesn’t want people to comment, he should make it a bit easier and more apparent.

CORRECTION: Seth, doesn’t take comments on his blog.  I was confused by the comments link on the Diggs for the post, where there are a number of comments.  Seth explains his reasoning for not taking comments here.  After reading that post I have to say that I don’t agree with Seth.  Thinking about the reactions of others to your writing, or speaking, is called being “SOCIAL.”  And that’s what Social Media is all about.

Here are the main articles I’ve found surrounding this issue:  (this list is stolen, in part from BlogPulse, and I’m not sorry because you didn’t list my blog.)

• 08/22/2008 The stupidest thing Seth Godin ever said. (from: THIS VERY BLOG!)
• 08/22/2008 Seth Godin Wants to Cheat Advertisers with Fake Clicks (from: This Feed Powered by FeedBurner.com)
  • 08/25/2008 Seth Godin May Be Costing You Money (from: More Than Scratch The Surface)
  • 08/26/2008 Bloggers deserve real tips not stolen goods! (from: Joe Hall)
  • 08/26/2008 Do NOT Click Here (from: Apogee Weblog)
• 08/22/2008 Please leave your €1 at the sidebar (from: Carl-Johan Hunefalk » Internet Marketing Strategy by Carl-Johan Hunefalk)
• 08/22/2008 The Thank You Click (from: SortiPreneur)
• 08/22/2008 Is Seth Godin encouraging click fraud? (from: BlogStorm)
  • 08/22/2008 Controversy: Seth Godin Asks Blog Readers to Treat Ads as the New Online Tip Jar and Click (from: Gauravonomics)
  • 08/22/2008 Not Seth Godin’s Best Advice (from: Ask Shane.org)
  • 08/23/2008 Seth Godin Mis-Speaks on Click Thru (from: Blog To Great)
• 08/22/2008 Ads the New Online Tip Jar? Maybe in Small Quantities (from: The Daily Igniter Customer Analytics Blog)
• 08/22/2008 Online tip jars (from: My Digital Life)
• 08/22/2008 Click Fraud? (from: Mining the Store)
• 08/22/2008 Do You Know How To Thank A Blogger? (from: YourHRGuy.com)
• 08/22/2008 Online Ads Aren’t Quite the New Tip Jar (from: Bootstrap It!)
• 08/22/2008 In the economy of ideas (from: Perspective 2.0)
• 08/22/2008 Friday Stupid (from: Tech Soapbox)
  • 08/24/2008 Should You Click an Ad to “Support” a Blog? (from: Portland’s Finest Advertising Blog)
• 08/22/2008 Seth Godin vs Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (from: karchesky)
• 08/22/2008 Seth Godin wiffs one. (from: The Disciplined Marketer)
• 08/22/2008 The Seth Godin Tip Jar (from: Some Rights Reserved)
• 08/22/2008 Seth Godin: Help Publishers; Screw Advertisers (from: freddie.dot.see.eh? two.point.oh)
• 08/23/2008 links for 2008-08-23 (from: contentious.com)
• 08/25/2008 Web Ads 2.0 (from: Buzz, Balls & Hype )

However this list is not nearly complete because it missed among others, this post by Joseph Jaffe.

So what do you think?

OH yea!  Be sure to look for next weeks BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!!!

Tanks for reading,

Chris

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