SEOmoz offers some humorous jokes through which people can know whether their writings are influenced by the Internet. The comments are amusing, but I wanted to address one related conflict that I have found between my prior career as a journalist and my current one as an Internet marketer.
I have written this blog since 2006, when I was a newspaper editor and publisher in Boston. By using various Internet utilities, I have always known the common search terms, links, and keywords through which people have found this blog. But, after I know this information, I have a conflict over whether to use it.
For example, here are the top-three search terms through which people have found my blog since I started writing three years ago:
holocaust — 53,261 visitors
universe — 22,187 visitors
dollar — 20,108 visitors
If I merely wanted to increase my traffic (in pursuit of advertising or fame), then I would write more posts about the relevance of the Holocaust to today, the science the Big Bang versus the creation of the universe in the Bible, and the future of the dollar in relation to today’s financial crisis. But the journalist in me, of course, might rather want to write about other subjects that are timely or about which I am passionate. The subjects that are popular are not always the ones that are desirable.
Traditional media outlets have always faced a similar dilemma. I cannot remember any specific data or a source because it was years ago, but I heard this story from a journalism professor back in college at Boston University: Whenever the Boston Herald, the major tabloid in the city, would publish a picture of Ted Williams on its front page, the newspaper would sell something like tens of thousands of more copies. So the editor, of course, would face a dilemma: publish a picture of Williams even if it was not timely (and please his boss, the publisher, by selling more papers) or put something else on the front page the was more relevant and timely to the news of the day even though fewer copies would be sold.
SEOmoz was making a joke in its post, but the issue raised by the writer is actually quite serious. When bloggers and other Web 2.0 writers decide what content to publish and what headlines to put on their posts, they must choose whether to discuss interesting topics and use “punny” headlines (as newspapers have always done) or publish content that draws as many readers as possible and use simple headlines consisting solely of popular keywords that attract search engines.
In more ways than one, new media providers are facing the same delimmas faced by traditional outlets. It is a choice between authenticity or popularity, between journalism and marketing. It will be interesting to see which route the Web 2.0 world takes.
