 Article Writing & Marketing Insights |
Delivering Content Without Flipping
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Last month I talked about Delivering on Your Article Title Promise (meaning, does your article body give content that delivers on the hook or promise you put in your article title).
Today, another related topic: Articles that are mis-representative and leverage on the goodwill of others for the purposes of flipping the reader to their brand or product will be rejected. For most people, this is common sense… but there is a percentage of authors that this concept escapes them…thus:
Example of what not to do:
- Promote the disadvantages of cable TV and in your resource box, pitch satellite TV products and services. Worse: Name a cable TV provider.
- Discuss specific Mastercard or Visa brands and pitch an American express or Discover credit card sign up form.
- Write about the benefits and disadvantages of Alli (the new weight loss drug) and pitch a competing brand.
Anytime you mention a brand name in your article title or article body, we’re going to slow down and really review your use of that brand. In the majority of cases, we rejected it to avoid a Cease and Desist order. You can reasonably expect that any article that mentions someone else’s brand in the article title may become trouble down the road and should be avoided.
The difficulty becomes in product reviews (which we do accept, generally) where a mention of the brand is required to review the product. If you present the brand in a positive light, most brand owners are appreciative, but there is always a percentage that will not appreciate it, regardless as to how positive you review is.
 Posted by Christopher M. Knight on July 8, 2007 at 10:39 am | Views 987 | |
3 Comments »
Christopher M. Knight writes:Comparisons are ok, just be blatant about your bias…
The acid test for us on this one is looking for fraud or misrepresentation or ill-will to lean on anothers brand to win traffic favor to pitch your competing brand.
This is a gray area for sure.
Emma writes:I understand what you are saying about misrepresentation.
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How many times have we seen ads for Coke vs Pepsi or Subway vs Quiznos or Satellite vs Cable on tv? Quite often. Keyword research also supports the fact that people are actually looking for these comparisons and I would suspect that most would recognize that the majority of what they read is going to show a clear preference for one product over another.
It is an accepted form of advertising and marketing practiced by many consumer brands because people do react positively to showing favoritism as it is something we all do naturally. We all are showing favoritism buy choosing one brand over another in the same category.
So I don’t get why it isn’t acceptable to write an article saying I think satellite television is better than cable tv, if I honestly think so — especially since cable tv doesn’t actually have any goodwill ;)
Right now Ezinearticles has over 2000 articles that come up on a search for “cable vs satellitle”. So are you saying you aren’t going to accept those anymore?