Fake AP Stylebook

Here's something fun I stumbled onto today. It's called the Fake AP Stylebook and you can find it on Twitter. Basically, it's a bunch of tweets that poke fun at the Stylebook or newspapers. Here's a few of my favorite gems:

• You cannot libel the dead. You can, however, libel the undead. Vampires have professional lawyers and hypnotism, so be careful. 
• Your newsroom is alloted one usage of "Trial of the Century" every ten years. Please choose carefully.
• Always remember to close all parentheses. We're not paying to air condition the entire paragraph.

You can read a bit more about it in this Oct. 23 post on the Huffington Post. Check it out and enjoy!

How The Huffington Post Finds Headlines

What makes a great headline? Well, the Huffington Post has got a few ideas on how to choose the perfect ones. After all, a headline is a newspaper's or Web site's way of selling its product. A headline must be grabbing and informative at the same time in order to draw readers and keep them on your site.

Since September, Josh Young, the HuffPost's social media editor, has solicited better headlines from time to time through Twitter. While this way of developing new headlines isn't the best, it does make great use of the readership.

The HuffPost also applies A/B testing to some of its lead headlines. Using this method, one headline is shown to some readers, while another headline is shown to another group of people. After only a few minutes -- which is plenty of time for a high-traffic, continually-updated site like the HuffPost -- the headline that generated the most traffic becomes the headline that everyone sees when they log on to the site.

This method definitely has merit. By using A/B testing, the HuffPost can see which headline is best. Of course, this method only selects the best of two possible options, so in theory there could be several better options out there that weren't written. Still, A/B testing is a good option to crafting better headlines that seems to be working well for the HuffPost.

You can read more about this here.

1,000 True Fans

1,000 True Fans - that's all a creator really needs, this article argues. It says that all one needs is a certain number of people who will buy anything you put out, see any show you perform and follow your work religiously. After reading the piece, I had a few thoughts: First, the basic premise of the theory is more or less correct. It is more advantageous to have a number of completely dedicated patrons than to have many minimally dedicated fans, or people who buy something you do once and then move on to something else. (The writer call these fans Lesser Fans.) Obviously, Lesser Fans can boost sales and help move a product too, but they aren't the type of fans one hopes to generate to sustain a long career.

Additionally, the Internet has helped put this concept into practice. The writer of the article touched on this somewhat by discussing how someone can put out a new song on their Web site, post a new update to their blog or put up a new gallery of their work online in order to please True Fans who crave new content constantly. The writer, however, missed small simple ways that a producer could appease their legion of loyal fans with new technology online. Simply posting a Twitter update or new Facebook status can get fans talking. Or, better yet, actually communicating with a fan by posting on a fan's Facebook page or sending them a personal Tweet can really make that fan's day, which would influence them to buy your product when it is released later.

For bloggers, this means they should update their page at least on a daily basis. By continually updating a page every day or several times a day, a blogger can drive traffic to their page and give True Fans the new content they are craving. This practice will then spur fans to remain loyal to a blog, thereby helping to increase ad revenue to keep the blog afloat. Furthermore, a blogger should respond to comments if it's possible to do so. Of course, in the case of a story that generates hundreds of comments, it would be impossible to respond to them all. For a blogger just starting out, however, it could help to turn a Lesser Fan into a True Fan by responding to their personal comment.