Search Marketing Wisdom

I was all set to write a new post blasting the AssHat SEO article that came out this past week in Entrepreneur magazine.  I actually wrote the whole article.  Sent out a whole bunch of teaser snap-shots through Twitpic.  Got a bunch of people all hyped up on my latest lambasting of AssHat nonsense that essentially pushes bullshit deceptive mis-information out to the world.   Then, about two hours after I was done, I had a moment of pause.  Where I freaked out because I felt that I’d actually gone too far.

Yes, me – the guy who blasts Google Labs as being run by a bunch of crack addicts.  Me, the guy who referred to Brad Fallon as nothing but an AssHat bullshitter in his deceptive SEO tactics.   Me, the guy who routinely curses like a drunken sailor on twitter, even though I know clients and prospective clients will probably see it.

I’ve never had such doubts before.  But this time, I must have had a brief moment of consciousness.  Or a serious lack of oxygen.

In any case, I proceeded to fall into a vortex of self-doubt – so deep that after a couple hours of internal debate (yeah, I argue with myself all the time – it’s a product of several decades of too much pot and alcohol, and though I’ve been clean for over five years, those brain cells will never be replaced), I was about ready to implode.

Several days have passed now since that near-death psychological conflagration.  And now it’s at the point where I think I’ve missed the time-relevance factor, and have moved on.  I mean, there’s always someone else saying or doing something that’s total AssHat quality.  New material to ride or riddle with epithets and accusations.  So I’m not worried that I won’t have something else to blog about moving forward.
What I have come to realize though, is that as much as I enjoyed the posting of those teasers, whetting people’s appetites, I also set myself up for the very conflict I ended up getting lost in.

It’s one thing to write an article where mine are the only eyes that see the article.  That lets me self-edit, re-write, and re-construct an article all I want before publishing.  But once I send out one, two, or five teasers, I’ve really embedded the core tone and focus of my article into readers minds.  Which locks me into staying as close to the original article as possible. And that’s where the big conflict came from.  As I reviewed the final article, half of me wanted to re-write it from the ground up, half of me felt that if I had done so, everyone who had seen the teasers (about 100 people) would have been confused and lost.  As it is, I’ve already caused at least some of those people to probably put a big question-mark on my trustworthiness as a blogger now.

In any case, what I think I need to do is back away from putting out teasers.  At least wait until the article’s completely done and I’ve sat with it for a couple days before posting any teasers.

Until then, to anyone who was all pumped to read that article, I beg your forgiveness.  Well, maybe I don’t beg.  I mean, if you all abandon me, you’ll all eventually be replaced by others who come along long after this article and those teasers are just a footnote in the chaotic time-line of my life.  And none of you has ever helped me monetize this miserable excuse for a blog anyhow.  So it’s not like I’m beholden to you, right?  So instead of asking your forgiveness, I’ll just say “pardon me” and chalk this whole episode up to being a big, loud, gross blogging fart.

Oh – and while I’m on this little diatribe, I need to say that Jamie Varon and Shatterboxx Media rock.  And I hope to win the Shatterboxx blog design.  Not for me or this blog, mind you.  But so I can then gift that prize of a new blog design to a friend who’s just starting out in blogging.  She deserves the help because she hasn’t alienated any of her readers yet.  Anyhow, this last paragraph was purely gratuitous because I want to win the @shatterboxx contest, which you can find details on here: http://bit.ly/9jaRmO