It’s the nature of the beast to get the spam, and I get around 100 comments per post.  Now that may not sound like a lot but it’s basically 100 minutes (scan comment, approve/deny, etc) that I could have devoted elsewhere.

I approve few comments and pretty much assume the ones I DO approve are spam too, just better spelled and more fawning. Do I believe in comments on corporate sites? In theory yes, because two-way communication is trust building. However at a certain point when the time expended on moderating far outweighs any additional trust built, you have to pull the plug.

Can comments be done without moderating, you ask?
It depends on the community you’re trying to build, but I’m not a believer in unmoderated posting unless your topic is really time sensitive. If you’re running multiple sites that you’re trying to rank it can get really onerous administering comments. There are really only two choices.

1) you can either let your posts get junked up with spam by not moderating and later have to go in and do housecleaning or

2) you can moderate on the fly.

I think they are probably about equally costly in terms of time

Why should you moderate your comments? Well, first of all, you don’t want hatred spam about your company going up unchecked. And second, if you allow every comment that comes in, then you’re creating a junky link ratio within your site that is potentially going to be damaging to your own rankings. Too much outbound linkage to bad neighborhoods is not favored by G and you’ll be seen as spammy yourself.

Submitted on 2010/03/02 at 7:01am
Nice post! These are vital things to stay in mind, it’s usually easy to forget about the easy things after you get consumed by a project.

Submitted on 2010/03/02 at 5:54am
It’s been a while since I browse a really glorious blog post. Not only well written but relevant. Congratulations.

Submitted on 2010/02/28 at 7:30pm
Your blog is very interested. I am to find for website how your site, and it is good.

Submitted on 2010/02/28 at 12:26pm
Great Blog! I have a similar site, and get a lot of spam. Do you face such problems? Can you please recommend some steps I take to combat spam. Thanks.

Submitted on 2010/02/25 at 3:59pm
Your blog is very interested. I am to find for website how your site, and it is good.  (they came back for another crack)

Alas, you are probably up against the dreaded link spammer. Not that your piece wasn’t great, it’s just that they prey on sites with comment moderators who are asleep at the wheel. The commentary will go something like this: “Wow, I am awed by your masterful post on the weavil (sic)! Did you know that you can make ten billion dollars in the forex market? Thanks for your genius post!” There’s either a link embedded in the post or the name is hyperlinked or you’ve got a field where they can drop their URL. There are different ways they play it. An appeal to your vanity: “Saw your post on Reddit. Great link.” Or perhaps something is wrong with your site and their guise is one of helpfulness. “Your site isn’t displaying properly in my (insert name) browser. You may want to look into that.”

While tempting to jack up your comments on a lonesome post, don’t fall for it. Why? Because it can hurt you. Approving spam comments willy nilly will mean your site can have an overload of outbound links to bad neighborhoods: known spam or phishing sites, banned servers, farms, etc. Don’t think Google doesn’t know because Big Daddy knows all. This will tarnish your own sterling reputation within the Google algorithm.  You may see rankings impacted if you cross a certain threshold.

Moral of the story: Link out to quality sites and don’t let the spammers overrun the kingdom.

Welcome to the bizarre conundrum of the ugly site.  Eye and click tracking studies find people make instantaneous judgments about the quality or trustworthiness of a site in fractions of a second. For some people, it seems that ugly = trustworthy. Making a site too slick (in some instances) may interfere with a positive first impression because the user perceives sophistication as a negative.

Maybe people suspect a slick site of trying to manipulate them, or screw them. Maybe the mentality is, that’s a big corporation and I’m going to stay on guard. Maybe they are too intimidated to ask for more information because they think their business is too small for the site to be interested.

I have seen a downright fugly site just trounce a nationwide brand selling the same thing. Why?? Generally speculating….because this is much of what SEO is about, spawning ridiculous theories and then testing them….it might be that the user feels a connection to the humanness that is implied by an ugly site.

The interesting question from there is, what percentage of people might be subject to this effect….and might it be large enough to skew results toward the ugly versus glossy? If 95% of visitors don’t care, but 5% do, then measuring the preference would allow you to eke out a higher conversion rate. What if more than 5% care? Would you consider building a hideous site? If you say no, is it vanity over…sanity?

I have one very ugly site that ranks incredibly well. It’s hard to make an ugly site on purpose but it can be done with the right talent. The objective is to make it seem too homely to be untrustworthy, too pitiful to deny it a much needed sale, too openly honest with its pleadingly terrible graphics. Did you know that the number one tactic of psychopaths is an appeal to….your pity? You’re far more likely to be conned if you first feel sorry and superior to, the person doing the conning. It’s a matter of allaying fears. I believe the same principle may be operating with ugly sites. Not that they are purposely conning you. In probably 99% of transactions all is well. But phishing sites can also look homemade, the one real downside that I can see to the ugly vibe.

Most ugly sites are naturally ugly, versus  intentionally so. Still I did once work on a site where our objective was to seem very bush league and fly under the radar. We had a blast sitting around coming up with ways to make it look handmade.  But handmade as IF it was striving to be good. Making the graphics off kilter, mocking up old banners that invite you to hit a moving animal with a mallet, speed up your computer links, a color palette that didn’t match. And a series of other tricks I won’t go into. It was really fun.

Ugly sites work really well for ecommerce that’s niche, as well as niche information (such as conspiracy sites). A brazenly template-looking ecommerce store solution with its simple grid format and in the box fonts would be something to consider. The French have a saying, jolie-laide, meaning beautiful ugly. That about covers it.

Actually Dave promised to write three songs about the incident and post videos. Video #1 reached viral velocity this fall after uploading in July.  It’s a classic tale of taking on the Man and winning. It helps if your retaliation video features talent – as his does. But Carroll also clearly had some web smarts.

The video is a catchy song called “United Breaks Guitars.”  The name of the song/video features two important keywords: United and Guitars. He could have sung about My Bad Luck Airline Story. But you capture viewers from what people search for…keywords with volume….so why not make music with an eye to traffic?

To date the video has had over 7 million views, and United is said to have contacted Carroll about a settlement in return for taking down the video. “Good luck with that pal,” Carroll is said to have responded. Haha, just makes the story juicier doesn’t it, whether true or not. So let’s take the campaign apart from what can be found on the web. Step 1, create video and post to Youtube. Now what?

Emails & Initial Comments

My first awareness of this story came via an email and I would definitely hope that Carroll was behind that initial roll-out.

There are 4 band members in the band Sons of Maxwell and that means there are 4 networks plus their significant others’.   The first step in awareness would be a simple email with a link to the video and a bit of tantalizing background on the story. Using personal networks probably garnered the first couple hundred views and comments – all positive. Did you know that studies show the first few comments on any piece of content are the most critical? It turns out humans are a bit lemming like and comments trend in the direction of the first postings. So when posting your content, try to control initial comments.

If each member of an initial network of say 8-10 committed individuals sends to 100 of their friends and shares on Facebook – just that, you’re knocking on a roll-out of 1,000. If you get just 5% partisans who pass it on to their network that’s 50 more people doing your work for you. But likely participation is much higher, since the second round of senders would be able to say they are FRIENDS of the hero of the story so there is personal recognition and validating in it for them. The third round of email senders could say, hey my friend is friends with this guy…help him out…and so on.

Keywords

One of the smart things in this campaign – ok, genius – was using the brand name Taylor Guitar in the song and in the tag of the video. Guitar players are picky about guitars and they’re uh, musicians, who are social media literate and  LOVE TO SHARE MUSIC. What a great core group of people to engage by enraging them at someone’s Taylor being trashed. So they pass the video on to their friends.

Content Submission

A little sleuthing with a “united breaks guitars” G-search reveals the video was uploaded July 6th to Youtube.

On July 7th, the story, video and lyrics were posted at The Consumerist, a ripoff site.  A great way to propagate the story. A simple email to the upper right hand corner tips@domainhere.com should have done it. They bit. Remember, sites are desperate for good content. If you serve it up, they’ll eat it.

Also on July 7th, the LA Times had a blog post on the story, reporting in the first 24 hours the song had 400-odd hits, not earth shattering or newsworthy but those newspaper blogs need content. Who alerted them? The writer mentioned that United was already on it and quoted a representative who said they’d contacted Mr. Carroll to make it right. Perhaps a press release was sent to a number of newspaper blogs. That’s what I’d do.

Next Huffington Post had the story on July 9. Facebook, retweeting, diggs and other avenues were used to continue generating momentum.

On July 24th, Internet Hitler weighed in and I think at that point you have a certified hit on your hands.

On January 11, I am here writing about it, showing the huge potential for proliferation (and people using your success).

On-Page Factors

When you visit the Youtube page, what do you see? A bunch of interconnected links or what I think of as a matrix effect.

• Band site URL rolls before video starts  (REASON: secondary address outside of Youtube to sell, inform, etc)
• iTunes buy it pop up (SALES)
• Sons of Maxwell video channel (ENABLES SUBSCRIBERS, BUILDING DATABASE OF PARTISANS)
• Numerous links in the subscribe area to 1)the backstory  2)the first song  3) a SECOND song just posted as the viral is going through the roof
• Tags: united airlines  broken guitar  sons of maxwell  dave carroll  UA  baggage claim  lost luggage  consumer complaints  damage claim  taylor guitar (These tags reveal targets – people who are enraged at their United experience, Taylor lovers, people trying to learn about the band. Tags are like a honey pot capturing device.)
• Twitter link (Link propagation)
• Personal video on Dave Carroll’s website explaining the story and declining United’s settlement (This is beautiful image management, it says – I’m just a nice, regular guy who intends no harm and holds no grudges)

Managing a campaign like this takes patience – roughly seven months and the energy to write/produce the songs and videos. You’ve got to have a great backstory. The fortuitous breaking of the Taylor provided an incident for exploitation – people want to see the little guy go up against Goliath and win – and Sons of Maxwell was smart enough to realize they had something: a story that would really engage other people. They had the talent to back it up, unlike the Balloon Family. The charming videos are low cost but high quality and with an artfully naive presentation that’s both ironic and still almost believable. Who knows how far they’ll go? They’ve separated themselves from the baying hordes of musicians desperate for attention and that is commendable. Are there better bands? Probably. But that’s not the point.

Watch it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo&NR=1

Meanwhile,  I am using the same keywords as Dave did so hopefully some Taylor loyalists will be along shortly. It’s basically tag teaming. Thanks Dave!