One of my writing inspirations is the late Alan Coren, who wrote columns for several UK national newspapers, was the editor of Punch and The Listener at various times, was a panellist on a BBC radio satirical quiz show, and wrote several books, whose titles are guaranteed to raise the eyebrows of unsuspecting bookshop browsers.<\/p>\n
At one stage in his book-writing career, he claimed he had decided to choose titles for his books based on popular topics. Golfing for Cats<\/em> was so named because books on golf and cats were popular in bookstores at the time. He then changed tack slightly; with Tissues for Men<\/em> he was (he claimed) riding the crest of the wave of popularity that man-sized tissues were enjoying at the time.<\/p>\n I thought his logic was indisputable and his understanding of the pre-internet equivalent of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as far ahead of his time as Gene Rodenberry was with Star Trek.<\/p>\n What was the pre-internet equivalent of SEO? If I understand correctly, it was making sure that your books are shelved with the most popular products or topics.<\/p>\n There was a flaw in Coren\u2019s logic though\u2014his books wouldn\u2019t have made it to the non-fiction shelves with other golf and cat books\u2014they would have ended up in \u201chumour\u201d or \u201csatire\u201d.<\/p>\n And his Tissues for Men<\/em> would have been shelved in humour as well\u2014not in the knick knack section of the bookstore along with Kleenex and Scotties. In any case, blowing your nose on the pages of his books would likely have been most unsatisfactory.<\/p>\n Perhaps I\u2019m assessing his intent a little too seriously.<\/p>\n Notwithstanding all that, I thought that armed with 21st century technology, perhaps I could attract more readers to my site if I put Mr. Coren\u2019s marketing ploy to work online. My plan; to write an article with a title that contains popular search terms.<\/p>\n My first thought was \u201cSmartphones for Fish\u201d, since smartphones continue to be a popular thing to own, and fish are the most numerous pets in the USA. Next, I thought I should try \u201cPneumonia for Dogs\u201d, since Hillary Clinton\u2019s health concerns are all over the internet today, and dogs are the most popular pets in the UK. For some reason though, neither title resonated with me. Perhaps it\u2019s because I know I\u2019m making an unashamed attempt to subvert the logic contained in search engine algorithms\u2014a form of dishonesty that makes me feel uncomfortable.<\/p>\n But then I thought, to heck with it. Let\u2019s throw in \u201cThe Carfentanil Olympics\u201d, \u201cNuclear Diplomacy in post-Brexit Korea\u201d, \u201cDrone Flying on Mount Snowden\u201d and \u201cSamsung Phones Burning Like Hot Cakes\u201d and see what Google, Bing, and Duck Duck Go make of them.<\/p>\n Search engines aside, the keywords contained in those last four potential titles don\u2019t lend themselves to humorous analysis, and any attempt to do so would undoubtedly lead to cries of \u201cfoul\u201d from all the new readers those titles would attract.<\/p>\n When I started this website\/blog ten months ago, I toyed with the idea of calling it \u201cSmartphones for Minnows\u201d or \u201cSmartphones on Vacation\u201d for the same reason\u2014that popular searches might help me get more traffic. But I quickly realized that popular (or \u201con trend\u201d) searches come and go, and in any case I haven\u2019t yet learned enough about SEO to know how much a carefully-chosen website name would contribute to the website\u2019s search ranking.<\/p>\n Attracting attention to one\u2019s work is tough when you lack confidence. Accepting praise for one\u2019s work is equally tough\u2026 when you lack confidence. A recent BBC article<\/a> related a story about the famous author Agatha Christie, who attempted to attend a party in 1958 to celebrate the fact that her play The Mousetrap<\/em> had become the longest-running production in the history of British theatre. A doorman didn\u2019t recognize her, and instead of letting him know exactly who she was, her lack of self-confidence made her turn around and sit outside in the lounge by herself.<\/p>\n Apparently, notables such as Keira Knightley, Morrissey, and the 19th Century aristocrat, the Duke of Portland all suffer or suffered crises of confidence. This, of course, is music to my ears (eyes?) because if those people can make as much of their lives as they have while fighting shyness, then there\u2019s hope for people like me, who live a Jekyll and Hyde existence of either being struck dumb by a roomful of social animals or playing very much to the gallery on a theatre stage.<\/p>\n But silly me\u2014being shy isn\u2019t by itself a ticket to fame and fortune\u2014I\u2019m confusing personal attributes with cause and effect (or something like that). You have to be shy and<\/em> talented and<\/em> either know people or hire a good publicity agent in order to get your grubby hands on that<\/em> particular golden ticket.<\/p>\n But then again, Agatha Christie didn\u2019t have pre-internet Search Engine Optimization working for her.<\/p>\n Unless, that is, she’d discovered that mousetraps were the hot-selling item of the early 1950s.<\/p>\n Hmmm. I think I might be wasting my time with this article. I think I\u2019ll write a play called \u201cThe Smartphone\u201d\u2014it\u2019s bound to be a best seller!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of my writing inspirations is the late Alan Coren, who wrote columns for several UK national newspapers, was the editor of Punch and The Listener at various times, was a panellist on a BBC radio satirical quiz show, and wrote several books, whose titles are guaranteed to raise the eyebrows of unsuspecting bookshop browsers. At one stage in his… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181],"tags":[171,170,667],"class_list":["post-394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fake","tag-attracting-attention","tag-search-tags","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1565,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions\/1565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}