Today I read a post about how you can get more traffic by capitalizing on current events.
For example, 2 days ago Steve Jobs died and yesterday everyone was posting their thoughts/feelings about him.
(I am going to miss Steve Jobs!)
And some marketers decided to capitalize on this by writing things like:
What Steve Jobs’ life taught me about {your niche goes here}.
Clever or tacky?
While I think this a clever way to get traffic I see 2 potential problems:
- It’s done in poor taste then you’ll lose return visitors.
- If every marketer does this then it’ll lose it’s effectiveness.
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{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
Personally, I think it’s tacky and smacks of the kind of rubbish that is clogging the intertubes. But, hey, it’s making people money.
Personally, I prefer the old fashioned way. That is, creating interesting stuff that consumes people’s valuable time, which is precisely why I’m recommending everyone visit [link removed]
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This is generally a trick which is played inorder to get more visitors as folks like to read something new and current. Yes but one who played is firstly then s/he would be more benefitted than others who follows.
It is effective if done correctly with a proper plan.
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It can be a fine line sometimes but as long as it is essentially done in good taste for the most part, it is not a bad thing to do, to be honest.
-Jean
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I think it really depends on the situation and why the person is posting. That may sound strange, but – I don’t think everyone necessarily posts *just* to make money. Sometimes an event reported in the news brings up strong feelings that people just have to talk about; for example, in the case of Steve Jobs’ death I think there were a lot of people who were genuinely upset about it, and posting was a way they could share their feelings. In other words, it was part of the grieving process – for the writer and possibly for the readers as well.
But even when the post is made to make money it may not be a bad thing. If someone is providing more information about something then it may be valuable because it could help readers understand the event better or get a discussion going about it, which I think is a good thing. The problem I have is when the writer seems to be pushing their own agenda at someone else’s expense; for example, if a celebrity gets arrested for drunk driving and the post is nothing but jokes about it. To me that’s an obvious attempt to get attention (aka traffic aka $$$) on the part of the writer. And it’s definitely tacky.
It’s okay to capitalize on current news and events as long as it is consistently done well. However I think it must not be done *all the time*
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When the news relates somehow to the topic of the site I promote, it makes sense to ride on that wave. But using the death of a celebrity or a highly regarded business person just because you are selling some fruit or vegetables, is IMHO not the best way to promote a site.
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Actually option 2 “If every marketer does this then it’ll lose it’s effectiveness” is the case. Not only marketers but also every news agency publish a huge amount of articles about this kind of trends in a short time. So i think there is no effectiveness for this method.
Found this one, which has a quite controversial headline, but content wise quite good (hope it is OK to post the link)
Why the World Shouldn’t Mourn Steve Jobs
http://www.andyjenkinsblog.com/2011/10/10/world-shouldnt-mourn-steve-jobs/
Very many people in the internet business like to capitalize on the recent issues. It is true that when Steve Jobs died almost all sites were talking about him in one way or another. I am sure they got plenty of visitors trying to find out more about his death, his achievements and many other things about him.
OK, may he rest in peace. However, if the allegations that Mr. Jobs cared nothing at all about charity are true, at least I personally could not respect him despite his accomplishments in business and technology.
As for the concept of using current events to drive traffic, as many others have said, it is a good idea to use that method of traffic generation if done well. There are ways it can be done, and no sense brushing aside something that could be very helpful.
Soon before the 2008 US presidential election I wrote content with a title suggesting it was completely possible that through fraud or some other trickery Obama would not be the next president even though he had a large lead in the polls. The shocking nature of the title could have helped that current events content gain more than 1000 views in a short time.
Nick, I will share my experience with Aakash Tablet: The Indian Ipad.
I was watching news, suddenly I saw in news that our Indian Government is distributing tablets to students free of cost and to other people it was only $35. I was shocked. I published the news on my blog and now I get 1700 unique visits from Google itself daily. My article was on first page of Google.
So this is my story and I think following the news is a cleaver way of getting traffic.
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That’s awesome. Thank you for sharing your story.
If it is related then it might be okay to capitalise on the topic, if the article itself does more than mention the headline keywords. It does seem like a clever way to capitalise on traffic, but I’d guess it would be a lot of work to keep hitting the bit news events, that would tail off just as quickly, whereas a less ‘choppy’ keyword selection might be able to be done once and return the same average numbers long term with much less effort?
I think that if the link is a tenuous one, readers will not return, as it is a tacky way to get traffic.
Interested to hear how the traffic fared for this post compared to others?
I think a better way is to write a post about the merits of writing about Steve Jobs death, and get others to comment
One thing I found interesting though, there was a massive outpouring about Steve Jobs’ death, and yet Dennis Ritchie’s death, from which UNIX and C programming languages were invented did not get a mention. Both Apple and Microsoft owe a lot to Ritchie.
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Thumbs up for Dennis Ritchie!
i think its definitely a useful idea if used tastefully – it doesnt have to be the news of a death or tragedy that is used!
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I agree. One question I have is: how do I do this tastefully and yet get people’s attention and drive traffic?