I hadn’t been following the news for a couple of days, so I popped over to one of my old haunts, The Register to see if there was anything I should know about. Occasionally, especially if I visit The Register early morning in Europe, I can pick up some interesting fresh stories that are fairly exclusive, or have some different angles.

I was greeted with this story about Wikipedia:-

Great story (scandal and controversy), hot subject (Wikipedia), pretty naff headline (“Farewell, Wikipedia?”)

In fact the headline wasn’t a total disaster, it caught my eye, maybe because it could also suggests an end to Wikipedia itself, but maybe that suggestion is a bit subtle.

So I highlighted the very clear “comment” paragraph and hit my “Ultimate Digg Bookmarklet”

Ultimate Digg Bookmarklet?

javascript:(function(){x='http://digg.com/remote-submit?phase=2%20&url='+location.href+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title);if(document.getSelection()){x=x+'&bodytext='+encodeURIComponent(document.getSelection())};setTimeout(%22y.focus()%22,1000);y=window.open(x,'digger','width=650,height=450,toolbar=0,location=0,status=0,scrollbars=yes')})()

I couldn’t get this to display correctly as a dragable link
I picked this up some time ago in the comments on a blogspot blog, you can probably find it if you search hard enough – supposedly it works in all browsers, and not only picks up the URL and Title, but also the story paragraph you highlight and outputs it in a popup window. It is very useful.

I decided to just use the “comment” paragraph for my headline and story description, and forget the original title.

I ended up with the following:-

24 Year Old Fake Wikipedia Professor Forced To Step Down?

After pressure over the weekend from Wikipedia’s Il Duce Jimmy Wales, the encyclopedia’s most illustrious fake professor Ryan Jordan has resigned his post at Wikia Inc.

I did add one small detail from the original title that just seemed to add a little more curiosity… a question mark “?”

I hadn’t read the whole article in depth, and there could have been a good reason for The Register’s use of the question mark in their title.

The Power Of ?

All I did was submit a story I thought was good, seemed to be original from a reputable source, and which might be of interest to people on Digg.

A couple of hours later it was up to 5 Diggs, and I also noticed a number of similar stories that had quite a few more Diggs. Doing a little searching I discovered the story had been breaking over a number of days. With my submission effectively the same story, though with different commentary, I didn’t expect it to get much reaction.

I am not a top Digg user, and had never had a story promoted before. I have a few friends on Digg, but we are talking 10s, not 100s or even 1000s.

16 hours later I was again browsing through Digg, mainly to see if there were any interesting comments on a story about StumbleUpon I had digged (it is a really good guide).

I was actually extremely shocked when presented with this:-

As of this writing the story is still live on Digg, it hasn’t been buried.

I Am Not A Copywriter

If this story was being written by Brian over at CopyBlogger or maybe Michel Fortin then they would probably be able to tell you why that particular headline was successful.

I counted at least 20 maybe 30 stories on the same subject, and those were just the ones that didn’t get buried. I am sure The Register being looked upon as a credible source helped, but lots of credible sources were reporting on the same story, and many of the headlines I have seen were very similar, but without one small detail.

?

It wasn’t until I started reading the comments on the Digg story that I realised why the story might have been Digged, though honestly it wasn’t something that was “engineered for success”. All I did was submit a story…

Half the comments were actually related to the question mark, such as

Why is there a question mark in the title?

Hes copying fox news with the question mark. Adds mystery and intrigue hehe.

and many others…

So did one character turn a 4 day old news story into a front page Digg?

He had a great article, he submitted it himself, and it flopped on Digg.

Doesn’t that happen to us all? Multiple Times?

But John didn’t give up, and applied some things he learned on other sites.

He then submitted the exact same article, but with different headline, and a new URL (changed page slug), to all the same sites.

The new version of the article has brought him almost 5000 visitors.

It might be thought that this facelift was due to recent perceptions of the site.

Unfortunately the timeline just doesn’t reflect on the recent situation.

I have known about the revamp happening with the WordPress Tutorials site since 2nd November when I first joined their site, and honestly little has changed in the overall design since then. This is something Sherman has had in the works for a couple of months.

Blogging isn’t just about the written word. An important factor is testing and tracking your results, and not assuming that existing concepts in design and content work for all niche markets, and all audiences.
I am sure that Sherman’s initial decision to change the design was based on tracking his traffic and conversions.

You might have noticed on this blog I started with a very plain design, and over the last few weeks I have been making some subtle changes to test retention, pageviews etc.

I have been testing different colors for active hyperlinks, and adding additional navigation features such as tag clouds and related posts.
Those features were also added as a benefit for pagerank retention.

All these small changes add up. My page views per visitor are gradually increasing, and soon I will be experimenting on different layouts to increase subscription rates.

The things I am testing on my blog are very imporant for a business based blog.

The training and support forum of WordPress Tutorials are specifically aimed at a target market, that of business bloggers. Even if you intend to outsource the design of your blog to a specialist designer, that is still only a partial solution.
A typical WordPress consultant is either a designer or a programmer. They are not a specialist in marketing and search engine optimization.

WordPress Tutorials provide a unique service to current and future business bloggers.

Now to be Critical

The forums could be more lively – I love forums with lots of discussions going on. It is however a good indication of how complete the videos are. The questions that do get asked on the forum are very specific in nature, and get answered extremely quickly.

I would like to see searchable transcripts or a folksonomy/tagging system for the videos. Currently they are broken down into quite short topics. I love tagging systems that allow me to get to the information I am interested in with one click.
As an example it is currently hard to isolate videos which have specific information related to SEO.

Overall, WordPress Tutorials is a business expense well worth investing.

Bonus: I am an affiliate for WordPress Tutorials, but I would like to add a little extra value if you signup using my affiliate link. For as long as you remain a member you will receive free Gold access to my Custom WordPress Plugins membership site which should hopefully launch before the end of the year. I am an active member of Sherman’s forum now, so am happy to answer questions related to WordPress there, but if there are subjects you don’t want to discuss in a forum, I will also be at your disposal via email.

Lots of bloggers would immediately think of the excellent Copyblogger, who has just announced joining B5 Media.
Brian gets a significant amount of traffic to his blog, and has 6k+ loyal readers.

But I things are going to maybe get a little more competitive in the very near future.

I am on a fair number of email lists, and I haven’t seen mention of this blog yet. I certainly haven’t seen mention of it on the creators own blog…

Do any of these names ring a bell?

* Alan Forrest Smith
* Andy Catsimanes
* Gary Halbert
* John Anghelache
* John Ritz
* Michael Morgan
* Michel Fortin
* Ray Edwards
* Shawn Catsimanes
* Troy White
* Zachary Romero

Every single one of them is a well known copywriter. Obviously it isn’t a comprehensive list… yet.

I have a feeling the line-up will grow fairly rapidly.

The new site is aptly named The Copywriters Blog and is the brainchild of Michel Fortin.

Many of the writers in the initial lineup frequent Michel’s popular Copywriting forum.

From Day 1 (well it isn’t really day one yet, as I haven’t seen it announced), they have a professional looking blog that is highly organised. There are a few pagerank leaks I would shut the door on, such as those to Technorati, but otherwise it is a fairly tight ship, and makes good use of tagging, categories and related posts.

One interesting aspect is that this blog is produced by multiple authors with authority. You can expect the content to be widely syndicated on sites such as Google News sometime in the future.

My prediction for the future

Expect great things of The Copywriters Blog, as I think it is going become a resource to be reckoned with.