I'm taking a deep breath before I write this because I know Ardell has hit a nerve with a lot of people in her last post What Does "Bait and Switch" Blogging Say About You?. First I want to clear up that I did not take this as a personal attack from Ardell and I do know that she had good intentions. A lot of people don't like the way her message comes across, but that's their opinion......we can all agree that she does get a message across with a BAM! (TLW, I hope you don't mind if I borrow your staple)
The beauty of Project Blogger goes beyond all the judging and standings, heck I think I'm last place right now,
but I can say that I have gotten way more out of this competition that I could have ever imagined. I will confess that Kelly's comment made me smile, " It sure would be nice if blogging was a little less like reality and had a nice little list of 'do's' and 'don'ts' that everyone agreed upon. The longer I'm involved in Project Blogger the more confused I get. I miss writing with blissful ignorance".
All the coaches have their style and so do we as apprentices and getting offended or distracted by how the message is portrayed, in my opinion, is not taking full advantage of the competition and loosing out on great lessons.
Paul Chaney gives an incredible perspective because he is THE BLOGGER, he has been blogging for years and even wrote the book, his gentle nature is powerful and what I've learned from him is priceless.
Ardell's perspective is that of a successful real estate blogger that gets a lot of consumer traffic and has been dealing with "consumer bloggin issues" for a long time - whoever doesn't see that is insane. She has taken the time to critique other apprentices and she is brutally honest, which by the way, I love and I thank her for it. Ardell....you can critique me any day.
Jeff Turner IS the consumer.....knock, knock! OK. He is also the president of a company that offers a product to the real estate industry (and a great one at that), but he gives us the emotional side of the competition, he teaches us on a daily basis that blogging is about connecting - and I have to add that Rocky, his wife, Rocks.....there's always an incredible woman behind a successful man.
So here's what I have learned from these 3 coaches with regards to "link baiting" -
- there are people, consumers and Realtors alike, that will be annoyed when redirected to another blog, plain and simple. I am guilty of doing it too often, since my new site, Miamism.com (yes that was a plug) went live and I need to slow down.
- Instead of writing "READ MORE......" it is good to be more specific and possibly write "READ THE FULL STORY AT MIAMISM.COM". That way the reader knows that they will be redirected to another site and will not feel tricked into it.
- And lastly, we are all here to learn about blogging, to improve our business, and to get Google Juice, anyone that says otherwise is kidding themselves.
So as we learn, we need to look at all sides of the story and make sure you do things for the right reasons, whether you call those "tactics" or "experiments" or whatever else you come up with. I think we are educated professionals and can inform ourselves, have our opinions and create our own methods, but it's important to keep an open mind.
Man, I feel lighter!
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