Update (3:01 p.m.): The account is working again. Thanks for your patience!

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

While I like helping clients create blogs and market their businesses, I really like helping them with blog content. I enjoy doing the research and writing necessary to keep their blogs fresh and informative.

Back in April I blogged about Passion and Profit and doing what you really enjoy. In the next couple of weeks I plan to redesign the site to reflect the shift away from creating and marketing to copywriting and blogging.

One of my last creation/marketing projects is Conservative Comebacks. Client Gregg Jackson wanted a web site to promote his new book, Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies. Gregg, a radio talk show host, blogs at Pundit Review with co-host Kevin Whalen.

If your company has a blog and you need help with content, research, etc., contact me.

This blog will be on hiatus until the beginning of June. I’m working on several political blog-related and freelance writing projects, and updating the business blog has to be put on hold for a few weeks. The Language Artist is still in business and working with a number of long-term clients. I’m very fortunate, considering that I started TLA only a year ago.

While I’m gone, please peruse the archives and visit each of the great blogs on the blogroll.

Thanks for reading TLA.

Ethics aren’t rules or laws, of course, but who’d put together such a code? Lawyers? Business bloggers? Students? Homemakers? Would there be one code or several? My head spins just thinking about it…

The issue arises because of a big blog swarm last week. A Los Angeles Times reporter and blogger named Michael Hiltzik pseudonymously defended his own articles on blogs and attacked other bloggers on their blogs. That wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t pretended not to be Hiltzik.

The Pulitzer Prize-winner (!) was exposed by Patrick “Patterico” Frey, whose blog he frequently commented on. Here’s Patterico’s first post. It’s a beauty. After noticing a pattern, Patterico started digging. He has quite a few posts about the scandal, so I’d recommend you start with the proper category, Dog Trainer, and start with the earliest posts.

Very simple to track this guy down. I can’t believe Hiltzik was that dense. The Times suspended Hiltzik’s blog, and the blogosphere is having fun debating back and forth whether he should be fired.

In a recent post Patterico criticizes the New York Time’s coverage of the scandal.
JustOneMinute calls for “An Army of Hiltzik’s.” Don’t get the reference? See this post.

I have a confession. My passion is writing. While I enjoy helping others set up blogs, writing for a living is all I really want to do. I want to write from home, on my own schedule, and be paid for it. I want to be able to support myself writing books and articles, with occasional speaking engagements to promote the books.

OK. I’ve said it. How do I make the dream a reality?

Via Micro Persuasion, I found a link to MyYawp.com, a site that helps people turn passion into profits. At first I thought it was a company offering consulting services, but as far as I can tell, it’s only a resource site. On My Yawp you’ll find success stories and a six-step plan to turn your passion into profit. I think it’s definitely worth a visit or two.

A yawp is a sharp cry or yelp, and the first place I’ve ever saw the word was Walt Whitman’s poem Song of Myself:

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
…

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab
and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

It’s almost criminal to quote so brief an excerpt because it doesn’t do the poem justice, so I encourage you to read the entire piece at your leisure. To learn more about yawping, see YAWPING—A PRIMER.

Following our passion and making money while doing it sounds easy, doesn’t it? I’ll keep you updated on my progress.

Et tu, Steve?

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…

* 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!