Things have been quiet around here lately, but not for lack of trying. Frankly, for someone who hasn’t earned an honest paycheck since June, I’ve been remarkably busy. First, I’ve been doing a good bit of freelancing work, so much so that I had to take a good joke and try and turn it into an honest business. If you remember The Pandemic Group – the fake new media marketing company I started when the Swine Flu first became big news – you might be shocked (shocked!*) to see that the fake website has since been replaced with a brochure landing page.
Yes, that does mean I am starting my own company. And I already have some really cool clients. Instead of operating a strict SEO company, I’m leveraging what I call “conversational marketing” – that is combining smart SEO practices with helping companies take advantage of social media to find current and new customers and turn them into friends.
And speaking of social media, I presented on that very topic – of honing in your passion and finding others who share it – at this month’s Social Media Club here in Richmond. I had a blast and will post the videos of said presentation when they become available. I use the plural because not only was my presentation recorded, but I was also interviewed by Jolie O’Dell who came up what I believe she called “Robb’s Theorem on Furries in Niche Marketing.”
The basic premise of that theory is that furries, people dressed up like animals pretending to be people, is perhaps as far removed from normal life as any particular niche or vertical can be. And yet, when you take that passion and expand it onto a global scale, furries measure in the millions. If such a finite passion can measure in that quantity, other niches can reasonably duplicate that kind of community.
The video interview wasn’t the only bit of press that night. Grid Magazine was in attendance and snagged not only the photo of my above, but also a fairly good recap of the night in general. I do believe that this article officially marks the first time I’ve been on the other side of a printed byline. Yes, I’ve been on the local NBC affiliate a few times, but there is a special place in my heart for printed journalism.
And finally, in fiction writing news, I am now a full chapter into the second act of Project Kingdom. In the traditional Three Act Structure, this one is always my favorite. Why? Because the first act is really a setup, establishing the characters, pushing the hero on their call to action, setting the characters on their chosen paths and providing small victories which seem huge at the time. The first act, in other words, is driving by the characters. In the second act, everything is taken away from them.
Mark my words, the second act of Project Kingdom is where things get real. Across the board, characters find their best laid plans going to waste, and even those pulling the strings find themselves losing control. People die. Things go wrong. Powers shift and roles are revered on a regular basis. And I’m exceptionally excited about writing it.
But I’m going to pound out a short story first. Why? Well, I watched the documentary “Postcards from the Future” on Friday night, and Chuck Palahniuk got me all inspired. I started thinking about technology, darkness, and the digital artifacts we leave behind. Throw in a castoff line from a Washington Social Scene Song…(“If any rock’s going to save my soul then what the fuck is it waiting for?”) and a story started to brew.
I banged out an outline in a few minutes, and I liked what I saw. I still don’t know the characters, but I’ve got 4,000 words left on my goal for WriteClubRVA, and I figure it’s about time I knock out something I can show.
I guess that means people are going to get a free story from me. If you’re wondering what my short stories typically look like, I’ve got a couple online in my portfolio.
*Bonus points if you got that movie reference. Hint – it’s my all time favorite film.
I think my general distaste for spammers is one of the better known items on the internet. From email, to comments, to social networks, I have little tolerance for those types of poisonous marketing. I typically even go as to sniff out and publish the personal information of repeat offenders. It’s not that I dislike marketing or even advertising, I just dislike people who do it poorly.
That being said, right here on my little ol’ website, I’ve noticed something that’s happened not once, but twice. It’s a new type of comment spam, and I have to say, I hesitantly approve. Here’s a link to the comments in question.
At first glance they appear to be genuine, human written comments. They relate to the material in question even though the material in question is old. The comments even come from verified Disqus (the software I use for my comment system) accounts. The only way you can tell that they’re quasi-spam is that the username is what SEO-types call keyword anchor text.
The idea behind commenting with anchor text is that with enough comments, Google will associate the terms in the link to the webpage that it’s pointing to. Back in the day, we called that Googlebombing and it is how one unfortunate writer was the #1 result for “talentless hack” and a certain President was ranked #1 for incompetent.
But wait, there’s a catch. As this was popular as an automated technique years ago, most blog comment programs add a small “nofollow” tag to comment links. The effect of this tag is that the link has no value to Google.
Click for visual aide
Beyond that, these commenters are leaving comments on posts that are months old, which essentially negates the chances of a human stumbling upon them and blindly clicking through.
The really strange thing is this – I’m not deleting the comments. Why? Have I gone soft and developed a love for BlackHat SEO done wrong? Nope. I’m not deleting these spam comments because they actually help me. You see, everytime someone with a Disqus account leaves a comment on my site, Disqus creates a followable link on the commenters page. This means while the comments don’t help the spammer, they do help me, if only a little bit.
And that’s the kind of spam I can live with.
So, here we are, the new year. And what have I done so far this year? A great deal of behind the scenes work. Just like being a writer today means you spend half the time being a businessman, running a website means a great deal of behind the scenes work. It’s a life of constant tweaking.
Here’s a list of changes and some helpful hints.
I updated my Portfolio, moving my writing content onto the portfolio’s primary page, deleting the writing only page, and moving my design portfolio to the bottom. Why? Well, my focus isn’t on designing websites, that’s basically a hobby I get paid for. Rather, I’m shifting the focus to my writing.
My Links and Reads Page has undergone a much needed infusion of links to things that I actually read. I read a lot of writing industry-related websites – agents, publishers, other writers – so that I can keep on top of everything that’s going on. This is by no means a comprehensive list, and it’s not even all that I read, but it’s a start in the right direction.
Server Cleanup. As my website has progressed, a lot of information has ended up being left in scraps on my server. I went through and cleaned up all of those scraps. I also added redirects to all of the pages that Google’s Webmaster Tools tell me are currently dead links. I’ve found that this is slightly more helpful than being greeted by a simple 404 error page.
SEO functions. I cruised the net for a few hours today and located about 75 directories which accepted free submissions. One can never have too many inbound links.
Well, that’s what I jokingly refer to it as. In addition to this website, I’m also running a second blog hosted off site. Why? Well, the first and foremost reason was to generate links both in keywords and using the titles of each of my posts to the posts themselves for SEO purposes. But, as I started doing this, I realized that I should probably generate some original content for this blog so that Google doesn’t treat the site as merely a scraper. The question was what to write about what I was writing. Yes, I know, it’s all very meta.
The actual reason, pulled from the external blog, is this:
When I was at West Point (yes, as a cadet), I was one of 53 freshman placed on the accelerated English track. This meant that we skipped the standard English course and instead were placed directly into literature. In the course of that course, we encountered the obligatory section on poetry which was paired with a certain amount of discipline one would expect at a military institution. What, praytell, was that discipline? When we read the poems that we created, we were not allowed to comment on them. We were not allowed to make excuses, we were not allowed to explain. The poem was forced to live or die on its own. My true website will run in much the same fashion. This blog, however, well, expect commentary. Also expect runon sentences and comma-splices galore!
So there you have it. If things ever get too stuffy over here, you can check out the Director’s Commentary. As this is an experiment in progress, I’ll keep you abreast of the results.
Bradley Robb likes TV and books, and has an intense dislike for cinnamon. Once, Bradley stopped a Soviet T-60 with his middle finger. Bradley writes speculative fiction and edits Fiction Matters, and never really got the hang of talking about himself in the third person.