11.02.2006

3 ways to get bloggers to hate your website

Ok, so let's say you're not interested in bloggers talking about your organization. In fact, you're more than not interested...you don't care if they like you or not so you really don't want to make their lives any easier. If you think bloggers are annoying little wannabe writers with nothing better to do than sit in front of their laptops while sipping double chocolate mocha latte frappuccinos this is the post for you. Here are three ways to get bloggers to hate your website (but what do you care?):

No permanent links: Bloggers love to post a link to the exact part of a website or story they're talking about. If you don't have a way for a blogger to reference it as a permanent link there's no way they can be guaranteed their reference link will still be there a day later...they'll hate that about your site and may purposefully avoid talking about you.

Bad image files: Bloggers love to spruce up their posts with pictures or logos of the people or organizations they're talking about. Most of the time they'll grab the image from the site to post to their blog. You won't want to do that for them...that would make their lives too easy. In fact, if you can prevent them from copying the images at all that would really get them to hate your site.

Don't give personal email addresses: Bloggers are natural connectors and will occasionally want to ask questions or make a one-on-one connection to the people/organizations they're talking about. If they can't find a personal email address on your site (or at the very least something like info@yourwebsite.com...which will annoy them a bit but not get them to hate your site) they'll never be able to connect with you. Undoubtedly bloggers talk about their connections which can only perpetuate the discussion about you and your organization. Since you're not interested in that just give them a generic form to fill out or an 800 number with an automated voice that answers the phone.

If you are interested in bloggers talking about you (and maybe even loving you) do the opposite of everything above.

1 comment:

Nathan Moore said...

I will definitely be taking some of those points into consideration...