A post on one of The Guardian’s blog is a textbook example of boosting visitors via controversial blog posting – link baiting.

The Guardian’s Lost in Showbiz (LiS) blog recently featured an article by Marina Hyde putting the boot into Lily Allen’s PR team for comparing her lyrical strengths to the great Romantic poets – calling Lilly Allen the Wordsworth of the MySpace generation no less.

In the article http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandsty...z/2008/oct/29/ the PR who had written the hyperbolic statement was called up and challenged on his knowledge of Wordsworth’s poem (limited). One of Allen’s more base couplets about lying in the wet patch in bed was featured to highlight the contrast between her and the daffodil enthusiast’s romantic views of their surroundings.

So far so good, a dent was made in the music industry’s hype machine – walk on, nothing to see here?

Except, Lily Allen is most definitely of the MySpace generation. She made her name with her very personal blog which is frequently updated. She is also clearly of the Google Alerts generation and before too long the singer (and it was her, not one of her press representatives) turned up on the comments section to defend her corner and to criticise the Lost in Showbiz team for being unable to grasp the humour of her PR’s overblown statement. Allen also slammed them for the perceived harassment of the hapless PR in question.

It’s not that often that an actual celebrity posts a comment on an article about themselves, so this became a story in itself. The Guardian stuck it on their front page, boasting of Allen’s response and influential websites (such as Popbitch) picked it up, sending large numbers of visitors to Lost in Showbiz. This is the classic example of “buzz”.

Soon there were 8 pages of comments (363 the final total) – a huge number for a pretty ordinary story about a British celebrity. NB - by far the easiest way to generate huge numbers of new visitors is to say something slightly insulting about American foreign policy or evangelical groups – just sit back and watch them swarm in foaming at the mouth. Also, consider that it was dwarfed by the showbiz story of the week (the Russell Brand – Jonathan Ross farrago) - a big enough story for the PM to take a break from the economic summit to comment on it.

In pure search terms, this is a big result for LiS (and the Guardian generally) and it is a textbook example of how to generate links and visitors through News – which makes me suspect it was deliberate link baiting.
1) Write something controversial
2) Pick a subject that has a huge ONLINE profile
3) Invite commentary and let that commentary become a follow-up story

The story is currently 15th of 5,350,000 total results in a search for Lily Allen in Google (behind the ubiquitous MySpace page and a number of strong news results) and it’s all good publicity for the singer’s new album.

So, we should congratulate The Guardian and be satisfied that it’s a good result for everyone concerned? I’m not so sure.

The Guardian is already one of the most powerful and effective online News outlets in the UK – they got online very early and have pursued a clear online strategy that works very well alongside their print arm. LiS may not be as high-profile as other sections of the paper / website (such as the excellent Sports section), but it sits securely in the Guardian’s blog network. If I were to criticise it, I would just say that it’s sometimes difficult to find the right blogs of interest on the Guardian site (it gets particularly confusing if there’s a TV / Media / Showbiz crossover with there being a number of blogs covering these subjects). On a personal level, I’m not a particular fan of the content in LiS which is often a bit lazy (and I say that as someone with about a dozen entertainment / gossip sites on my favourites, so I’m not exactly picky when it comes to reading this sort of stuff).

Was there any need in this case to use such tactics to boost visitors / rankings? Could it potentially backfire and lead to a reputation problem for possible new readers?

Looking through the comments (which takes some time), the readers’ view were somewhat mixed. The Guardian’s largely metropolitan and very media-savvy readership were not overly surprised that Allen’s record company would come out with such hyperbolic statements and many people were discomfited by what they saw as the rather personal tone taken against Allen (in both the original article and subsequent comment replies by Hyde and other commenters). This also sat rather uncomfortably against the default “Latest stories” links under the comment box, one of which was “Allen loses baby”.

There were, however, a lot of fans of the column writing in to support the original article and from the tone of them; many of these appeared to be by the loyal, regular readership – the lifeblood of any publication.

But the new readers attracted by the comments and postings on external sites may well have been put off from visiting again, by both the critical comments and by the way they were introduced to the story. It’s dangerous playing with sites like Popbitch where the regulars are not inhibited from posting the sort of gossip that wouldn’t be allowed on a broadsheet and where details of Ms Hyde’s personal life were mocked…

It would be interesting to see the visitor stats for LiS over the next few weeks and see if any of these new visitors continue to return. It will also be interesting to see if there are similar stories with high volume generation posted on LiS in the future.

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