Update (3/30): Yeah, right.

I try to avoid blog feuds like Black Death, but I became so intrigued, I decided to blog about it.

Someone calling “herself” Amanda Chapel started a blog called Strumpette. This person started off on the wrong stiletto by going after, in a very trite manner, Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion. Rubel briefly blogged about it here.

An excerpt from Strumpette’s inaugural post:

I happen to eavesdrop in on a conversation on the shop floor down at the “image factory” last week. About six of our young chicks were sitting around the lunch table cackling. The topic of course was clients… and boys. The chit chat touched on “March Madness” and oddly turned to Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion fame. Well, turns out there is a hot office pool presently and it’s not the Final Four; it’s how long Rubel will last at Edelman. How totally catty… but how absolutely fun! Apparently, it’s not limited to our office. It’s ended up inboxes throughout our network globally.

The first thing that made me suspicious is the word catty. Most women I know consider the word catty a pejorative and wouldn’t use it. The person uses a variation in this post. Along with other negative things, “she” uses the word catfight. This has a somewhat vulgar connotation, and women typically don’t use it, at least not in the presence of men. Perhaps this holds true only in my small circle of women friends; perhaps it’s universal.

Bottom-line: Strumpette went after Rubel as link-bait (very effectively), and e-mailed well-known PR bloggers about this supposed office pool. And it worked. The person received the attention he/she was after.

Enter Mike Krempasky. Mike is a fellow political conservative I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. Although I knew he worked in PR, I didn’t know he was acquainted with business bloggers. I was pleased to learn about his detective work on this Strumpette character. This is what Mike turned up:

The “Strumpette” = Brian Connolly? I think so. At the VERY least, someone at the Literati Group has some ’splaining to do.

(let me say, first - I don’t have a particular problem with the Strumpette. It’s marginally funny, and acts like a stripper in a nursing home, which is always due to stir things up. But Wonkette it’s not.)

First, on the Strumpette. Netcraft tells us this: Nameserver Organisation Literati Group, 111 East Chestnut, 30G, Chicago, 60611, United States

Ok, interesting but not significant.

The privacy policy on Strumpette is, however.

You simply must read the rest. Mike suspects Strumpette is a man named Brian Connolly, who commented on Mike’s post, a misplayed hand for someone trying to run a fake blog. Mike writes:

Oddly, both ‘Brian’ and ‘Amanda’ display the rather rare writing characteristic of signing their comments in addition to the clearly displayed ‘authored by’ field.

Intrigued, or probably just bored with politics, I did some detective work of my own. At this point I must disclose something: I “ghost blog” for one client. I blog under someone else’s name. It’s a rather sedate, non-PR kind of business, and the client also blogs. I consider myself a content provider and distinguish myself from folks like Strumpette because I don’t create phony blogs and use phony names to run badly-conceived viral marketing campaigns.

That’s out of the way. Now, on to my findings.

1) When people pretend to be someone else, there are certain characteristics they can’t conceal unless they make a strenuous effort to do so consistently. They tend to use the same or a similar style of writing, often using the same words and sentence structure. For instance, in one of Connolly’s comments on Mike’s blog, he writes:

Truth is, I have my own suspicions of the identity of your Strumpette. However, I do not know. But if I did, I surely would not tell you.

Sincerely,

Brian Connolly

In “her” current post, Strumpette writes:

But your Strumpette has gotten feedback far more dear.

Notice the usage of “your Strumpette.” Appending your to the subject is not something people normally do when they know the person they’re addressing isn’t acquainted with the person they’re referring to. Connolly slipped up here. Also notice the cadence of Connolly’s and Strumpette’s sentences. They “sound” similar.

2) Additionally, in the posts and comments, Strumpette uses the word surely several times. In Mike’s comment section, Connolly used the word surely in both comments. That’s not a coincidence; it’s a tic, an unconscious quirk. We all have them. On my political blog, I use the phrase, “by the way” quite frequently. Pretending to be someone else, I’d avoid the phrase.

It’s probably how handwriting experts can tell whether an individual wrote something. They compare the way a person writes certain letters and uses certain words and phrases.

That’s all I want to add to the discussion for now. If Strumpette doesn’t delete “her” blog, I’ll look for more tics later.

Addendum: According to the chatter, Brian Connolly of Literati Group isn’t Strumpette. Maybe not, but whoever this character is, he/she is probably the same person, based on those tics. Come clean, whoever you are!

Other bloggers: Media Orchard, Adrants, B.L Ochman (as blunt as ever!), Usher Blogs, infOpinions?, Silicon Valley Watcher…

We’ve all heard that search engines love blogs. With frequent updates and relevant keywords, a blog - any type of blog - can be optimized for most search engines. How? Writes Search Engine Optimization expert Lee Odden:

* Consider keywords when writing your blog post titles. Some blog software allows plugins that can suggest keywords. Otherwise, you can use Google Suggest or one of these free keyword suggestion tools: Digital Point, SEO Book or the Google AdWords Keyword Tool Aaron Wall mentioned yesterday. Keywords should NOT determine your content (unless it’s an AdSense blog).

* Optimize the template. Make sure post titles appear in the title tag and append the title tag (hard code) with the most important phrase for your blog.

Example:

“50 Ways To Write a T-Shirt Slogan - Search Engine Journal”
Search Engine Journal is included on every blog post title tag automatically.

Also use the blog post title as the permalink. If you’re using keywords in the blog post title, then they will occur as anchor text in the permanent post link. While you’re at it, just make the post title a permalink.

Read the entire article.

Update: More SEO - “You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too many links.”

Absolutely!

One day I’ll get around to writing basic “how-to” posts. Until then, I’ll direct you to others writing noteworthy posts and articles.

CT Biz Blogs is writing a series on Really Simply Syndication (RSS), that mysterious technical feature that’s difficult to explain. I may not be able to explain it clearly, but like obscenity, I know it when I see it.

Click over to the RSS series.

Anonymous Lawyer is one of my favorite blogs. It’s a fictional account of a partner in a high-powered law firm, but the real blogger is still in law school (I think). The fictional partner is ruthless, working associates, paralegals, receptionists, and interns like slaves.

Trust me. It’s funny.

The anonymous blogger posts maybe once a week, and although I wished he’d post more often, I understand (a little) why he doesn’t. Law school can be ruthless, too. Speechwriter and blogger Jane Genova is also a fan. In fact, the blog was one of her inspirations for joining the blogosphere. Lately she’s become disenchanted with the Anonymous Lawyer and offers some unsolicited advice:

• Get some classy graphics. The cute primitive phase is over in blog graphics. Actually it was over last April. That’s what designer Paul Chaney of Radiant Marketing Group nicely told me and for a discounted fee did an extreme makeover.
• Post more often. The only other alternative is to abandon the blog and that is never a good idea, say Robert Scoble and Shel Israel in their new book “Naked Conversations: How blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers.” Blogging happens in real time and when there isn’t fresh content readers get annoyed.

Read the whole list. Whatever the blogger decides to do, I hope he keeps blogging.

What a brilliant idea!

Wayne Hurlbert at Blog Business World writes about the benefits of customer service blogs, but I don’t believe I’ve ever run across blogs dedicated to customer service.

Customer service has got to be up there with telemarketing as an unpopular career choice. Rarely, I’d imagine, do customers call service lines in a good mood. You’re calling to pay a bill, provide proof that you’ve already paid a bill despite the second notice you received, report a problem with a product, or some other not-so-pleasant reason.

With the emergence of big corporations buying out or shutting down smaller companies and Mom-and-Pop stores, owners are often bigwigs behind the corporate veil, remote, unreachable, and seemingly unconcerned about the individual irate customer.

The result? You often find yourself on the telephone with someone who doesn’t like his/her job or doesn’t really care about your problem. They don’t own the company, probably don’t care about the company’s reputation, and couldn’t care less whether you buy from XYZ, Inc. ever again. Customer satisfaction is probably not foremost in their minds, and I doubt they care whether you bad-mouth the company.

But the company suffers. Happy customers say and write good things about the company. For free. Hurlbert writes:

Many studies of word of mouth advertising have discovered that previously disgruntled customers, finding their problem resolved to their satisfaction, often become the firm’s best customer evangelists. They let the world know that your business keeps its clientele happy. Satisfied customers are any business’s best and least cost advertising and client recruitment resource.

He adds that an open and honest dialogue with customers could head off problems, and a real-time customer service blog may be the solution.

Friend and colleague Ken Yarmosh of Technosight blogged about a debate between blogger Glenn Reynolds, author of An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths, Joe Trippi (former manager for Howard Dean), and Barry Lynn at the National Press Club.

See the announcement and reactions from other attendees.

I’m reviewing An Army of Davids for Townhall.com, and I’m only on the second chapter and can’t blog knowledgeably about it yet. The book is about technology and how it’s empowering ordinary folks. It’s quite conversational so far, and I appreciate Glenn’s use of the David v. Goliath imagery. I’ll have more to say about that in my review.

I encourage you to read Ken’s assessment of the debate in Part I and Part II.

Update: An Army of Davids in action?

Update II: I’m soliciting quotes from “ordinary people” empowered by technology.

Update III (3/11): Download an MP3 of an earlier presentation at Cato.

A company called ConAgra Foods, Inc., recently benefited from chatter in cyberspace. Apparently it assigned some employees to hang out on message boards and figured out the low-carb fad was fading. ConAgra changed its menu accordingly.

It’s no secret that companies follow blogging trends even if they don’t have company blogs. Following blogosphere chatter is cheap, relatively easy, and valuable. ConAgra probably saved millions by simply surfing to food discussion groups instead of relying on focus groups. If you’re a company with a strong online presence and you’ve got your ear to the “cyber stone” (that was terrible), good for you!

If you’re a company with a weak online presence and you’re not paying attention to the online world, you need to read the linked article and hire me.

From the Washington Post:

Following online conversations is the latest attempt by companies to grapple with the growing clout of their customers. Empowered by the Internet, consumers can broadly express their skepticism of brand icons, demand the lowest prices and mobilize for action. In recent years, many companies have tried to influence consumers by generating their own favorable word of mouth. But measuring sentiment expressed in cyberspace — whether provoked or not — has always been difficult. The high-powered new technologies aim to fill in the missing pieces by searching, tabulating and assessing Internet postings.

To capture the chatter, Nielsen BuzzMetrics, a giant in the industry, uses software that collects hundreds of thousands of comments a day. The technology can scan for specific companies, products, brands, people — anything searchable. It can slice data into a range of categories to quantify the number of times a subject was discussed online, the individuals who mentioned it and the communities where it appeared.

Cyber cheap, cyber cool. The web in general and blogs specifically are great places to find out what’s going on with your customers, potential customers, products, competitors, and consumer trends. Catch the wave and surf into the 21st century.

(Image from An Atlas of Cyberspaces)

The old “Do as I do, not as I’ve done” adage has been updated and neatly packaged in a free e-book authored by business blogger Rich Brooks. He blogged it back in November 2005. I drafted a post and saved it but forgot about it. No matter. The e-book is still free.

My business model has shifted in the last few months. As I focus more on providing web site content, I’ve shifted away from creating web sites and doing online marketing. As of February 22, 2007, I’m no longer accepting new blog creation and online marketing clients, at least for the foreseeable future. The same applies to editing, proofreading, and manuscript typing clients. 

On a limited basis, I’m accepting new clients looking for a blogger/copywriter. If you need content for your existing blog and/or web site, contact me.