do your research before you write and don’t be greedy
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or: what i learned from 55 nasty digg comments
i recently submitted a story from maxim online to digg about who they claimed were the 12 greatest video game heroes of all time.
the comments made on that submission taught me important lessons that i think are well worth sharing and that i hope maxim will learn soon.
1. do your research before you write.
if you are going to write about something that is ‘the greatest‘ and ‘of all time‘, especially when it comes to something as subjective as video games, you better have done your research. you should generally stay away from extremes unless you’re absolutely certain about the points you’re arguing, and from the looks of it, maxim was far from where they should’ve been.
maxim’s article was more a discussion of some of the great games that we’ve seen in recent times along with some older ones. after choosing games that they liked, they put forth the main characters from those games as the greatest video game heroes of all times. the post on its own wasn’t poorly done, rather it was just presented in the wrong way. had it been titled something in the line of ‘great games and the heroes that make them work’, it would’ve been much more palatable, especially considering that their list forgot to include all time favorites like link, samus, and solid snake.
2. don’t be greedy
if you wan’t to be loved by social media, you have to stop being greedy. the second problem with the maxim article was that it was spread out over 12 pages, causing people to respond with comments like this one:
Pardon the comment abuse, but here’s the entire list without the retarded commentary. (You can wade through 12 pages of Maxim, or you can just image some swaggary babblings to accompany the compiled list and save yourself the trouble):
1. Kratos (God Of War; PS2)
2. Master Chief (Halo series; Xbox, Xbox 360)
3. Pac-Man (Pac-Man series; all systems)
4. Jimmy Hopkins (Bully; PS2)
5. Leon Kennedy (Resident Evil 4; PS2, Wii)
6. Nathan Hale (Resistance: Fall Of Man; PS3)
7. Duke Nukem (Duke Nukem series; various systems)
8. Gordon Freeman (Half-Life series; various systems)
9. Sonic (Sonic The Hedgehog series; various systems)
10. Dirk The Daring (Dragon´s Lair; various systems)
11. Mario (Super Mario series; various Nintendo systems)
12. Pitfall Harry (Pitfall series; various systems)
we all know that this was done as a simple way of increasing page views. while it’s okay to spread content over multiple pages if you’re writing text-heavy content like nytimes and businessweek, this ‘article’ really should’ve been on one or two pages. readers on socially driven sites want to be able to quickly see the content, consume it in a flash, and be able to comment on it, and you shouldn’t expect them to thumb through 12 pages only to find out that you got the list wrong.
socially driven sites can send a well-written article thousands of visitors. the decision is up to you to either spread the content over a dozen pages and generate multiple page views from a small number of people, or lay your content up front and have it seen by thousands of visitors.
Technorati Tags: maxim, video games, digg, social media, page views
September 2nd, 2007 at 7:02 am
I agree with you. It will invoke comments, but isn’t that what you want? At my old job we would pass around emails ranking everything from movies to sports moments then we would argue about them for weeks.
September 2nd, 2007 at 8:51 am
Hi Muhammad,
Loved the post! very interesting.
Those two points that you mentioned are very important its vital to do homework and to know your readers, and their needs and wants. Moreover its important to know if the post is a discussion and to write it in that way. I personally agree with your points in 100%, thank you for the post.
Tal
September 2nd, 2007 at 1:36 pm
12 pages is definitely too many - they could have at least compromised and gone for 2 or 3, getting extra pageviews but not forcing it that far. And you’re right: a lot of top lists, especially ones geared toward fans of a genre/interest or type of technology are written by people who don’t know what they’re talking about. In the long term, that kind of manipulation will simply cost a site credibility!
September 3rd, 2007 at 2:59 am
I hate those posts, I never read them unless I absolutely have to. But it probably works for them, else why do it.
Maxim is quite good at doing the old linkbait though, I wonder who does it for them?
September 13th, 2007 at 8:20 am
This is very good advice. Keep it short, sweet and to the point and you should gather good readership. Also a bit of humour always helps. There is nothing new under the sun - if you show that you can laugh at yourself sometimes it helps people enjoy your words better.