Pop Quiz: Rachel Sklar
Today I chat with Rachel Sklar, formerly a mediabistro Soul Sister blogger over at FishBowlNY. Now, she lends her skills to the Huffington Post. She’s written all over the place and just landed a book deal for her “Jew Book“, titled Jew-ish. Disclosure: I’ve blogged for Rachel at HuffPo and became friendly with her here at mb as we fumbled through the dark together about what exactly we were doing. So I have a bias for her but you can still learn a thing or two from her about freelancing and blogging.
So, based on your experience at FishBowlNY and the HuffPost, what are some key elements for running a quality blog that attracts traffic?
The two are very different – Fishbowl was basically a single-person-generated trade blog for a specific audience, and the Huffington Post has a revolving roster of contributors that supply fresh, quality content on a consistent and frequent basis, some of whom happen to be celebrities. Then there’s my personal blog, “Tomatoes Are Delicious” which no one would describe as a traffic juggernaut. The lesson I’ve learned from all of them, I’m afraid, isn’t news: high-quality posts updated frequently attract traffic. The blog is a hungry animal, and you must feed it often and heartily. I was brought on at Fishbowl last April because then-editor Elizabeth Spiers didn’t have the time to post regularly – she was editor of Mediabistro and had just lost her co-editor Christian Moerk to his busy freelance life. I started, posting at least six times per day and almost immediately people started responding, and once they realized that I was posting regularly they started coming back regularly. Traffic tripled in the ten months I was there, which was kind of cool because the media market is somewhat finite. I started tracking visits on my personal blog about a month in, and saw a definite correlation between visitors and frequency of posting. Since starting at HuffPo I haven’t had as much time, and the blog has sort of withered on the vine (tomato joke, ha!). That’s due not only to the decreased frequency but also to the fact that the posts are less meaty – I don’t have time for an analytical Jessica Alba-style post in the same way, and it’s kind of cheating to just link to something I did on HuffPo. Upshot: traffic is the reward of regularity, and quality of content.
It is also the reward of links – those who give ‘em tend to get ‘em, and so flows the lifeblood of the blogosphere. (Yikes, I can’t believe I just wrote that.) Intelligent links, not gratuitous ones – don’t think that just because you link to Gawker that you’re going to get the love back. Link to Gawker and say something smart and original – and thoughtful – and then they’ll have a reason to link to you. You gotta add to the conversation. The Huffington Post is extremely generous with its links – it’s got an super-extensive blog roll, and the many bloggers who contribute each day who include all sorts of links in their posts. That’s part of the reason that HuffPo is #5 on the Technorati Top 100 Blogs. Plug!
As a blogger, what’s your policy on breaking news? On the one hand, you don’t want to run something unconfirmed but on the other, you don’t want to be scooped.
Nope and nope. Being right is more important than being first, in my opinion. The one time I posted a tip without checking I noted that it was an unconfirmed tip and went back with the update a few minutes later. In that time, I got totally dinged by another blogger for the non-confirmation (well, at least he was checking his RSS feeds). His complaint wasn’t actually that I had posted without knowing, but that I should have known since it had been on Romenekso 15 minutes earlier. I like Romenesko as much as the next media-obsessive, but I granted myself a little leeway on that one (by the way, that post prompted my first-and-only snippy blog-related email to a stranger…which led to a beautiful blog-friendship with that blogger, the very smart John Cook, who is in two snazzily-named bands. Hi John!).
This, by the way, is an issue for very few bloggers – how many blogs really break news, or are equipped to do so? Very few bloggers have the resources or time to dig around for stories and follow up on tips. Good reporting takes time. That’s why blogs won’t replace newspapers.
Taking it back to traffic, it is good to be part of the first wave of coverage – if you ae quick and nimble you can get some good traction from the getgo especially on big stories. I jumped on the Judy Miller story like everyone else back in the fall but staying on top of it made me feel like I was part of the conversation (and I was rewarded with some good links). I’m a bit maniacal about reading up on topics before posting on this type of thing, but the drawback is that by the time you’re finished plowing through what everyone else is saying you might not have time to get in there before the inexorable turn of the 24 hour news cycle.
Bloggers as book writers: are they going to get the attention they were promised? Is the blogger-cum-’celeb’ thing going to fade?
Bloggers have done very well by book deals – where exactly has the attention been lacking? There was something in the Post recently about Jessica Cutler, Brooke Parkhurst and Stephanie Klein – then there’s Rob the Bouncer from Clublife, Anonymous Lawyer, Nadine “Jolie NYC” Haobsh (who got a TWO book deal!) and Ana Marie Cox (though her book didn’t really get much attention. Ha, ha). All of these people are writing books based on their blogs – some bloggers write completely different stuff entirely, like Elizabeth, who is writing a novel that has nothing to do with the media, or, well, me.
Is the blogger-cum-celeb thing going to fade? I don’t think so – good smart writing is still good smart writing – but the playing field is levelling as more and more peope join. I don’t think it’s the medium that sells the book though – it’s the writer.
What are your secrets for being prolific?
Assuming I can be considered “prolific”, I count “not sleeping” and “procrastinating” as big factors. Being semi-obsessed with the news helps – new fodder every day sparking a reaction and opinion. Also having a particular area of obsession – Broadsheet has turned me on to the gender politics beat, leading to a fruitful run of posting on Bill Napoli. Just paying attention to things that get you excited – at HuffPo, people get very excited about politics. No shortage of opinions there!
How do you stay on top of breaking/media news without getting burned out?
Who said I wasn’t burned out? Kidding- again, it helps to be a little obsessed. It is exhausting trying to surf the neverending stream of new must-read material – I’m actually a really slow reader, too, which makes me an annoying person to read the newspaper with. I have a few trusted news aggregators – HuffPo obviously, even though I’m usually around the corner from our crack news editors as they write it (yes! They’re that fast!), plus the usual blog-and-media suspects. Again, being genuinely interested helps: for example, on Saturday mornings I love to go online and catch up on stuff I may have missed over the past few days. (That sounds really lame. Uh, I mean, on Saturday mornings I like to wake up to a massage by a big strapping man named Sven).
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