#since you’re following this blog I assume you want to know about shameless specifically and not. ALL my WIPs

[babygirlmickey]

w…what are the other wips u have

Bro.…too many to list

[decoding1432]

The Art Behind Manipulating & Guarding a Fandom (p. II)

Here it’s the second part guys, take time to analyse it...

NOTE: *Most of the posts I direct you to, are SHORT & in my opinion not too dense to read. In fact, the great majority are Q&As. I’ll identified every post with a letter, it means that throughout the various parts you’ll see them repeated, so no need to read one twice*

If you missed or want to re-read the first part here it is: The Art Behind Manipulating & Guarding a Fandom (p. I) – decoding1432.

Now, the astroturfers & how to identify them.

I would say that identifying some astroturfers with exactitude is very hard to do, I mean we are talking about professionals. Not even the directioners who have spent years dealing with them are able to fully assure when they are being invaded by some. Nevertheless they have learned to recognise them & some types are obvious.

*link A*

Basing it on an article by The Consumerist, astroturfers are primarily known for two things:

Vague or anonymous identities. The identities of the people, or     group of people, are very minimal or completely anonymous. Their profiles     would either be generic, unorganised or have few or no posts. If you’re     tech savvy and use tools such as Statcounter, you might notice that they     frequent certain pages that cater to certain topics and/or suspicious     recurring IP addresses.

A specific discussion path is  followed/repeatedly brought up. Since one of the main goals of astroturfing is to support one side and discredit another, most  astroturfers usually follow a certain discussion path,

ie. Opening -> Segue -> Main Topic Being Pushed

I’ll be using their examples to show you.  I’m sure Camren blogs will be like: “relatable”. A lot of shipping involved. Try to exchange “Larry” for “Camren” & “Ziam” for another ship– Laucy, Norminah, Tyren, whatever you want– I promise it won’t become tedious (I’ll keep it the OG way, to avoid confusions). Here I present you what could be the various types of astroturfers (a.k.a. sneaky little bitches):

Example 1: *link E*

“You astroturfing trotters with your generic anti messages are such a fail. If you really read this blog you would also know I don’t “ship”. Never have. I support two couples I believe have been harshly closeted. Why would that upset anyone? Even if you disagree, I’m all about the love baby. I’m all about consenting adults being able to love each other openly, happily and free from hate and discrimination. What kind of a monster takes issue with that? You can ponder that while you lick your wounds and trot to the next blog to spread your venom. You’re a real credit to humanity making excellent use of your time”

As I see it, our first specimen is the aggressive type. During my research, I found several bloggers talking about this kind of astroturfer. Apparently, it’s a very common one & usually driven by hostility but SOMETIMES WITHOUT BEING RUDE. Pay attention to the description below:

*link F*

“I follow a bunch of Ziam blogs, and I heard talk about aggressive Ziam astroturfing of two kinds: (1) asking for masterposts and analyses, and (2) asking very specific factual questions. I talked with that-regular-chick about it, and she described it like this:

“…today we chatted and realized we all got very specific asks from the same “dummy” tumblr account: REDACTED. This account hit at least four of us in the past day. Each time they asked for our analysis and masterposts. Friday, I was blitzed with anon asks about Ziam, Zerrie and Sophiam. Initially, I was answering. But as I progressed through my Inbox, I noticed a pattern: careful not to offend so they throw some false praise in, a few “xx” or sometimes “thank you”. Always very specific about what they want know. Several claimed they were new to the fandom. I got so many, I felt they were really being aggressive and definitely had an agenda.”

Personally I tend to receive these type of anons on a daily basis. I would consider it’s the hardest one to recognise since I understand there are fans out there who tend to be very gentle when asking & simply with the purpose to learn & no one wants to be disrespectful toward any anon when answering, right? Nonetheless this is an advantage they take to camouflage. Note also how that-regular-chick said, ironically enough, the aggressive astroturfer is careful not to offend. Nonetheless I’m also aware that at times there are pretty intense anons which break that pattern of softness & jump straight ahead into using a harsh approach like the one shown in the first pic. Just look at the way that-regular-chick clarified she’s a victim as well despite not being about shipping. I know most Camren blogs get the infamous “why do you assume someone else’s sexuality when it’s none of your business… SO ANNOYING OMG” anon. Well now you know it’s an anti message mainly seeking for you to stop. Since now it’s all about killing Camren no wonder why we’ve seen many of these lately.

Example 2: *link G*

 “Both my suspected astroturfers have responded, and their messages are overlapping under the two different URLs in question. And neither likes to use capitalization, coincidentally enough. And if you can’t send asks under your sideblog, why not just change the settings? Also, why is your main blog hella inactive? And why do you think you need a blog to lurk on tumblr? So many questions…”

Our next kind, is the non-anon type. These shameless astroturfers couldn’t bother less in going unnoticed.

Not all of these are about not using capitalization, this ultimate aspect is a pattern the blogger found in that particular case. Here are a few elements you could lean on to identify them:

*link H* (THIS LINK IT’S NECESSARY TO BE OPENED .IT SPEAKS ABOUT FANDOMS MONITORING IN GENERAL. Apparently t’s explained by an insider the directioners had contact with but I’ll address this with more detail almost by the end. If you want to read it now, by all means go ahead.)

“The best way that I’ve seen to get a handle on tumblr is to set up what basically amount to burner accounts. You create a tumblr account with an unassuming username and do nothing to the actual account. You leave the layout at default, don’t change the icon, don’t make posts, and don’t reblog or favourite anything. But you use the account to follow the blogs that control the conversation in whatever fandom you’re trying to monitor.”

Funnily enough, I was followed by a burner account (or maybe more but I did spot one) in the past 24 hours, LOL:

Example 3: *link I*

“People also ask questions they could easily google, like what's Zayn’s Instagram? I mean, you can google that faster than I can answer you. LOL”

Our third type, is the lazy astroturfer. I believe this one is pretty self-explanatory. The description provided is more than sufficient. Characterised by a lethargic tone & vibe.

Another example I could add is: “What is Dinah’s full name?” It’s the first thing I came up with since it’s something you can type in the google searcher… Besides a fan knows DJ’s full name it by heart, right? Lol

You might be wondering, why would they send these type of generic questions, why do they obtain with a generic answer. Well they come with three different objectives, it depends: Either gathering information or steering the conversation or merely keeping an eye on the blog (as in fan engagement).

Example 4: *link J*

I would classify this astroturfer as the… the Inception type, maybe? Excuse me, I’m getting Inception teas here (fun fact: Inception is my favourite film lol). As I understand an idea is put on a target (blog) by this specialised team (astroturfers) just like in the movie. Here I leave you a scene of the film to illustrate it better, min 1:05- 1:32 :

Saito (Ken Watanabe): If you can steal an idea from someone’s mind why can’t you plant one there instead?

Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt): Here’s me planning an idea in your head, I say to you, don’t think about elephants, what do you think about?

Saito: Elephants

Arthur: Right but it’s not your idea, because you know I gave it to you. The subject’s mind can always trace the genesis of the idea. True inspiration is impossible to fake--

Cobb (Leo DiCaprio): *interrupting Arthur* It’s not true.

What we can appreciate in the scene is how DiCaprio contradicts Levitt’s statement of how the subject can’t remember the origin the thought seeded.  As I understand this example of astroturfing works like this. The target will not be able to remember where the original question came from since it’s supposed to be passed to others. If I put into perspective this is the way I imagine the original OT4s & Cnizers were created. A constant brainwash pulled by the same negative comments, to an extent that they can’t tell who were the first accounts that influenced them. “The virus got to them & they’re spreading it”.

Example 5: *link K*

Blind astroturfing. How many times we’ve seen repeated questions on another blog? Or from one day to another? Or when we just answer the same thing a couple of asks ago?

Example 6: (if I were you I wouldn’t bother in opening this link since the rest is about their timeline & I didn’t understand what they were talking about but if anyone is curious enough *link L* )

“astroturfing anons will usually give us a heads up that something is coming down the pipe too (that happened with haige 2.0 - people got anons about her for weeks and then she popped up again in her weird mainly one sided stunt with harry). it happened again with babygate but none of us wanted to believe it.”

This is a very weird but not entirely foreign type. If I can call it the “physic” astroturfer. Raise your hand if you have received the “next month (x ) will do (x) thing… bla, bla, bla” sort of message in your inbox more than once? Yep. I see several hands raised in the back lol. It doesn’t mean all it’s necessarily fake, like we saw with the 1D blogger above. BUT it doesn’t mean it’s ALL true either. Watch out for that.

Example 7: *link M* (IMPORTANT TO READ)

“It’s becoming harder for fans to hold onto the illusion that the internet is a secret club and that the management team of a multi-million dollar boyband that built on its success on social media wouldn’t be interested in what fans say on social media.

So it’s awfully funny that there are now anons popping up heavily dropping implications that if we talk openly about what we see on the internet, that management will punish the boys and it’ll all be ~our fault~ and so we need to shut up if we truly love the boys....

Guilt trips–everything is your fault and your responsibility, including the actions of the management and record companies with clear motive and power for their actions–are just another form of attempts at control and manipulation. 'Don’t you care about the boys? You don’t want to hurt them, so if you care about them you will protect them and shut up and say nothing’. That is emotional blackmail. Bullshit.”

When I read this the first time, I was not surprised that they would reach this level. In all seriousness, I had already thought about this. What if one day an anon pops into my inbox & claims the girls will get in trouble due to my “big mouth”? Let me tell you something *starts getting heated* if that happens in the nearest future, I’m going to send them right straight to hell. THAT IS UTTER BULLSHIT. I’m not allowing anyone to use my girls in order to bribe the fuck out of me & my blog. If anything it just proves the amount of manipulation they are willing to carry on in order to save & cover up their asses because they’re threatened. & I don’t want to have to say this ever again… Listen carefully, NOTHING WILL HAPPEN TO THE GIRLS BECAUSE OF US. So if anyone receives or has already gotten this type of anon, IGNORE THEM, BLOCK & MOVE ON.

Just look at the date that post was written: 2014… 3 years later & the directioners are still there. Hell, stronger than ever. We are NOT GOING TO TOLERATE THAT EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL ON OUR TERRITORY. Their biggest weakness is seeing us fighting harder against them, let’s not give them the power & satisfaction of witnessing us falling one by one like dominoes.

Example 8: *link N*

This one seems slightly tricky to me. I don’t know if can be considered a “normal” example or standard in this list since it’s reversed-astroturfing but I’m taking the time to mention it, it’s important.

“...astroturfers infiltrate with the ultimate end goal of dumping stuff on us, and monitoring how we’d respond to it, whereas (real) shady anons infiltrate with the intention to /warn/ us of stuff they know we’d respond negatively to…

the fake ones are always so ominous, and “be ready” or whatever but the real ones are just straight to the point and cautious-sounding and it’s crazy because many things we’ve been warned about are literally things we probably shouldn’t even /know/, much less prepare for...”

I’m still trying to process this last one tbh. I interpret it as the astroturfers (the fake ones) test our reactions but we can tell it’s them because we get this feeling that something is wrong. On the other hand, the real shady anons are to direct with the way they approach, it’s like if they were slapping us in the face but without harming us because they know how are we going to respond. Is it clear? Cause I have to admit, I even confused myself…

Example 9: *link O* (& last example lol)

I’m not sure if we could classify the following as part of astroturfing exactly. I would consider so because it’s so similar & incredibly interesting the way these work that I had to include it:

“Plant blogs”. What is a plant blog? This is the name directioners have christened with those blogs that are sent by the team in order to plant seeds (info) with the purpose of spreading it & ultimately achieving their goal which could be to distract, separate or influence the fandom.

“it means that we believe her blog was ‘planted’ by someone behind the scenes working for/with the boys rather than being an organic blog run by a real fan.”

Not all plant blogs are poisonous since not all the people behind them have bad intentions. I know it’s hard to believe this latter but from what I was seeing the 1D fam had once a blog on their side educating them & never disrespecting or influencing them to hate on any of their boys:

*link P*

“yes a ‘plant’ blog in the way that we’re using the term would be someone who joins the fandom with a deliberate agenda.

in our case, the agenda was beneficial to us as we learned a lot (especially about image manipulation in the press and how to limit the effect of astroturfers on us/the fandom conversation).

there are also hypothetically negative plants whose main role and goal would be to gaslight the fandom from within and make us doubt ourselves/our own observations.”

So...

This were some examples that I consider we have already encountered in the past. I believe the list can continue to go on & on but we’re beginning to study this new concept. I guess with time the experience will shape the “astroturfy” messages adequately enough so we can recognise them with more ease.

Don’t worry, on Part 4 I will give you recommendations I found on how to deal with them...

DON’T BE NAIVE KIDS.

[thelmasirby32]

Seven iron-clad methods to drive traffic to your website

You’ve written and published an awesome blog post, and now you’re waiting for that website traffic to start pouring in?

Well, I hope you’re comfortable because it’s going to be quite a wait.

While the benefits of content marketing are well-known, they are well-known to everyone. Blog posts, case studies, and white papers are published left and right (four million pieces each and every day, actually) so getting through the clutter can be difficult.

How do you get noticed in such an oversaturated environment? You master these two important skills:

Writing educational, engaging, and timely content, and

By working hard on driving traffic to your website.

I’ll assume that you know how to write engaging content (if you don’t, this article could help you) and focus here on seven methods of driving traffic to your website.

Some are conventional (like social media and email) but it’s the unconventional ones that I hope you will put to good use. Ultimately, it’s a mix of both that will help you generate a steady stream of website traffic, and I hope that you’ll find some of the ideas here inspirational enough to try them out.

Conventional methods to drive website traffic

1. Organic Traffic (SEO)

Organic search engine traffic is the Holy Grail of website traffic.

Most authority sites in your niche get the bulk of their visits from organic Google searches but this is an important traffic channel for every type of website (see screenshot below – 12% traffic from organic is nothing to be scoffed at for an ecommerce store).

Here are a couple of evergreen tips for you to keep in mind when writing content and doing SEO for your website:

Keyword research – Spend some time learning how people search for content in your niche. Identify keywords that you have a chance to rank for (long-tail keywords with low competition, for example), and write content around them.

On-page and technical SEO – Work on your headings, keyword density, meta descriptions, load times, and similar. Most importantly, make your content engaging, informative, and fun to read. For more on on-page SEO, check out this guide that we published recently.

Backlinks – Backlinks are the votes that other websites cast that tell Google that your content is worthy of that top spot in the search engine results pages (SERPs). They can occur naturally but you don’t want to depend on it – make sure you have a couple of backlinking strategies up your sleeve whenever you publish a really good piece of content.

2. Promotion on social media platforms

Social media is dominating the web, and if you’re not there promoting your content and your website, you’re missing out on a very important source of website traffic.

Depending on your niche, you’ll want to consider (at least) making an appearance on the following social media platforms:

Facebook – Set up your Facebook business page as soon as possible, and start working on growing your base of followers. Regularly publish your content here but make sure to cross-post to other relevant groups and pages on Facebook. Check out this post for more tips on how to get the most out of your Facebook business page.

Instagram – To interest your Instagram audience, you will need to become a visual storyteller (think infographics and beautifully designed images). Since Instagram doesn’t allow links, get creative and use your bio section, Instagram Stories, and IGTV video descriptions to drive traffic to your website (for more details, read this Instagram traffic generation guide from Tailwind).

Twitter – This is a very cluttered and noisy social platform but it’s still great for sharing bite-sized pieces of your content. Use a post scheduler like Buffer, TweetDeck, Hootsuite or others to get several tweets out automatically during the day. On Twitter, it pays to be provocative, funny, and on time (think about hijacking trending topics and hashtags) if you want people to click on the links you share.

When using social media to drive website traffic, the most important thing is to make sure that you’re on all of the platforms where your target audience(s) tend to hang out.

3. Email marketing

Marketing your content and your offers to a curated list of people who have already expressed an interest in what you have to say is a no-brainer, right?

To drive traffic to your website using your email list, consider the following:

Send out a newsletter regularly, highlighting your recently published blog posts, unique tips and tricks, or special offers.

Segment your list and send special reminders to different subsections when you publish something that might be of particular interest to that group.

Add social media buttons to your email blasts so that your subscribers are reminded to follow you on your preferred networks. Encourage them to share your newsletters with friends either via social networks or by forwarding the emails.

Unconventional methods to drive traffic to your website

4. Slack communities

Slack is a tool that teams use to communicate but it’s also home to Slack Communities where like-minded people hang out. Even if a group has only 1000 members, a lot of them will be active at any given time, which means that your potential audience will have a chance to see and interact with your link in real-time.

How to do it

First, find Slack communities that fit your niche.

Note that you will quickly get a feeling whether or not Slack is the right traffic channel for you – communities mostly revolve around marketing, tech, business, SEO, and similar digital topics (check out this list of great SEO Slack communities from Ahrefs).

Don’t get discouraged if you’re not in marketing: photography, writing, design, web dev, community management – if you publish content in any of these niches, you’re golden.

When you find a community that interests you, send a request to join.

Here’s some advice on how to use Slack to drive traffic to your website (without getting booted out of a community on day one):

Introduce yourself and let people know what it is that you do, and what you expect from joining the community.

Don’t just spam your links everywhere – answer questions in full, and only add a link to your content if it adds context and details to your answer.

If a question has a weird angle (not exactly something you talk about in your content) but it’s related to a piece of content you’ve written, consider updating the post and then answering the question and adding your link.

Slack communities are searchable. If your comments are particularly valuable, you can expect other users to share them with newcomers from time to time. Because of this, even older comments can yield a small trickle of website traffic from time to time.

5. Blog and forum comments

Blog comments may not be a very reliable SEO link building technique, but they still work for traffic generation.

How to do it

First, look for blog posts related to your content. Pull up recent articles by clicking on the “tools” box on the search result page.

Copy the URL of interesting posts to a spreadsheet (do the same with interesting forum topics). Keeping these links in one place helps you build a database of sites in your niche for future reference.

The key is to make thoughtful comments and only link to your content when it’s actually relevant. Try to add real value to the blog post with every comment that you make.

Each blog comment may only drive a few visitors to your site. But, if the post goes viral or sits on Google’s page one for a long time, that’s enough to get a steady stream of visitors to your website every month.

6. Appear as a guest on popular podcasts

Podcasts are huge – around 51% of the US population has listened to one or more in the last few months. Somewhere around 35% of them listen to the entire episode once they start it.

This means that podcasts are a great opportunity for savvy marketers.

And, what’s best, you don’t even have to record one, you can simply pitch your ideas to hosts of existing podcasts to try to secure an invite to a future episode.

How to do it

Do a quick Google search – just type in “top [your niche] podcasts” and go through the list while recording URLs (and requirements to guest star) in a spreadsheet.

Craft an interesting (and personalized) pitch, and send it to the host, outlining why you should be invited to star in one of their future episodes.

When appearing, be informative, interesting, and educational. But, above all else, be shameless when promoting your content and your website. Answer questions thoroughly but don’t be shy about adding “By the way, you can read all of this on my blog, which you can access if you visit [your website]”.

Ensure that the episode description mentions your name clearly, as well as links to your website and some of the more interesting pieces that can be found there.

7. Use QR Codes to drive traffic to your website

QR codes (or quick response codes) are another great, but a severely underutilized way to drive traffic to your website.

By placing a QR code on business cards, flyers, and posters (and even your Facebook and LinkedIn pages), you give people a quick way to access your website. All they have to do is scan it and their phone will open up any URL associated with the code.

How to do it

Use a free QR code generator to create a unique code that people can scan. Add a general code that leads to your website to your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles.

If you’re visiting a conference or a meet-up, consider adding content-specific codes (meaning, the ones that link to a piece of content on a specific topic) so that people scanning them land on something that will feel a bit more personalized and tailored to them.

Closing note

Driving traffic to your website is an 80/20 game  – 80% of your traffic comes from 20% of your actions. Once you have enough data to determine where that 80% of traffic is coming from, it will be easy to ramp up your efforts in that area. But, to get there you will have to experiment with both conventional and unconventional methods of driving website traffic. Try some of the ones listed here and then comment here to let me know what worked best for you.

The post Seven iron-clad methods to drive traffic to your website appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

from Digital Marketing News https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2019/12/10/seven-iron-clad-methods-to-drive-traffic-to-your-website/