Effec­tive imme­di­ately, I’m insti­tut­ing a new com­ment pol­icy for this blog. Before I explain it to you (it’s really sim­ple as there are only three rules), let me give you the rea­son why.

I’m see­ing a grow­ing num­ber of com­ment spam lately. Not the usual, software-​​driven kind — Akismet and Dis­qus do a won­der­ful job to keep those at bay. But the ones that look, on the sur­face, as legit­i­mate comments.

Legit­i­mate, they are not.

They are faux com­ments mask­ing as real ones for the express pur­pose of siphon­ing traf­fic. Called “friendly com­ment spam,” they are typ­i­cally sim­ple, often just a sen­tence or two, and most of them are generic, irrel­e­vant, and com­pli­men­tary in nature.

Believe me, I love praise like most peo­ple. But just say­ing “nice blog” (or “nice arti­cle,” “nice post,” “good job,” “love this post,” etc) does not con­sti­tute a com­ment. They are not con­tribut­ing any­thing to the con­ver­sa­tion, or any­thing of value to my readers.

I talked about this on Twit­ter and on Face­book, and while most peo­ple agreed with me, some were opposed. One per­son said that many of these com­men­ta­tors are aspir­ing copy­writ­ers and that I should be grate­ful for such a problem.

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Some peo­ple tend to tweet, blog, post, and status-​​update their lit­tle hearts out. Be it on Twit­ter, Face­book, LinkedIn, MySpace, their own blog, or what­ever. They say it’s all about trans­parency, and trans­parency is good.

But I think we need to be careful.

While we may be open­ing our­selves up for the world to see, we may be open­ing our­selves up a world of trou­ble, too.

Trans­parency may seem like the lat­est fash­ion. But it can also become dan­ger­ous on many lev­els. Some dan­gers are obvi­ous, like being robbed after pub­li­ciz­ing you were out. Oth­ers, not as much, like being rep­ri­manded for say­ing some­thing you shouldn’t have said, or even being fired for insult­ing your customers.

My con­tention is, too much trans­parency can hurt you in many ways.

I agree that social media is great for devel­op­ing and nur­tur­ing rela­tion­ships. That’s what the word “social” in social media means. Or what it should mean, anyway.

But as with all rela­tion­ships, even when con­tin­u­ous, open com­mu­ni­ca­tion is an impor­tant com­po­nent, there should be a lit­tle mys­tique to keep the flame alive. A lit­tle room to allow for explo­ration and dis­cov­ery over a period of time instead of all at once.

In today’s open, Web 2.0 world, pri­vacy is more cru­cial than ever before. Why? Because trans­par­ent or not, every­thing you say online is per­ma­nent, can be found, and can be eas­ily mis­in­ter­preted. Espe­cially when taken out of context.

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Yes­ter­day, I had a tweet burp.

(If you’ve been liv­ing under a rock in the past year, a “tweet” is a brief, text mes­sage on micro-​​blogging plat­form Twit­ter.)

I call it a “tweet burp” because it’s some­thing like a brain fart. But I pre­fer “brain burp.” Rea­son is, unlike a brain fart where one for­gets some­thing basic or says some­thing mean­ing­less, what I thought, and sub­se­quently tweeted about, was sur­pris­ingly meaningful.

And for some, even profound.

They are tips on how to Twit­ter bet­ter. (Try to say that 10 times in a row really fast!) Let me share it with you by post­ing some of the high­lights here.

Some of these tips are not extra­or­di­nary, of course. Most of them are sim­ply com­mon sense. But they are some of the things I do in my own social media involve­ment that has proven to work well for me. I rec­om­mend you do the same…

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I rarely do this.

But after my last blog post on the idea that Twit­ter is pop­u­lated by drones and fakes, Tiffany Dow posted a spir­ited rebut­tal to my blog post.

A gaunt­let has been thrown down.

I felt com­pelled to respond.

In fact, I posted sev­eral com­ments. But that’s not what I meant when I said “I rarely do this.” (I always love a healthy debate.) What I rarely do is repost my com­ments on its own blog post, which is what I’m doing now.

Why? Because I believe they’re rel­e­vant and impor­tant to this discussion.

So here are some of them, with a few addi­tional edi­to­r­ial com­ments here and there. (Yes, I know this blog post is long, and I apol­o­gize in advance. But I think you’ll find this dis­cus­sion insight­ful, if not some­what interesting.)

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Not a copy­writer or just start­ing out? Can’t afford a high-​​priced copy­writer? Need copy real fast to start sell­ing or to pro­mote affil­i­ate prod­ucts right away?

Here’s some­thing that might inter­est you…

Com­puter pro­gram­mer Robert Plank shares his quick and easy for­mula for writ­ing com­pelling sales let­ters fast.

Sure, noth­ing beats know­ing how to write great copy. But…

This pain­less for­mula will have your prod­ucts launched and your web­sites up and run­ning in less than an hour! (If you hate writ­ing copy or don’t have time, or you sim­ply need copy really fast, you’re going to love this.)

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The most impor­tant part of your copy is not your head­line, not your offer and cer­tainly not your ben­e­fits. The most impor­tant part is your customer.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been cri­tiquing some pretty good copy. Very well-​​written and com­pelling. But if the con­ver­sion rate is low (hence, the rea­son why I was hired to con­duct a cri­tique con­sul­ta­tion), it’s because these saleslet­ters do not tar­get the right audi­ence for the offer, or the author and the copy fail to con­nect with their readers.

Research­ing your cus­tomer in depth is vital to the suc­cess of your copy. It’s not only an impor­tant com­po­nent of tar­get­ing and qual­i­fy­ing the best prospect for your offer, but also an effec­tive way to dis­cover new ideas, dif­fer­ent angles, cap­ti­vat­ing sto­ry­lines, unsought ben­e­fits, and appro­pri­ate length and lan­guage of your copy that will con­vert more.

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So what exactly is Web 2.0? I’m not an ana­lyst or some dot­com pun­dit. But being online since 1991 (or since 1982 if you con­sider bul­letin board ser­vices), I’ve wit­nessed enough to have a good grasp of what’s going on.

So here’s my perspective.

At the dawn of the Inter­net the web was pri­mar­ily a uni­di­rec­tional, one-​​way com­mu­ni­ca­tions process. The web was com­prised mostly of sta­tic web pages, filled with hyper­text and links. It was akin to the direct mail indus­try, only this time it was served up on a com­puter mon­i­tor rather than on a piece of paper.

In fact, web pages that worked the best, espe­cially in a direct mar­ket­ing con­text, were ads and saleslet­ters that closely mim­ic­ked the long-​​copy print saleslet­ters we often get in the mail.

For many years and until recently, this was true.

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