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Can Weblogs Get a Good Man a Great Job?


One of a series of Can Weblogs...? experiments from 2002-2004.

Objective

To make Scott from The Ultimate Insult the obvious choice as leader of customer support for a large and morally correct company in Boston, MA.


Your Role

For most, this requires only a small amount of communication and a coordinated effort of link support.


Background

The Ultimate Insult is one of the best weblogs going for original links. For me personally, it was the weblog that finally prompted me to get off my arse and stop feeding my discoveries and thoughts into Usenet and a range of web groups. It's thanks largely to Scott that I can now coordinate support for a wide range of people, companies or causes, and this makes him the perfect choice as subject of this next experiment.

It also helps that everybody loves his arse.

Scott has, through his unique eye for entertaining and/or skewed content, provided many with a regular - often, daily - selection of enriching diversions. As a result, he has earned valid link popularity through static and/or credit links on a staggering range of weblogs and related interest sites. He has also earned the gratitude and/or friendship of many of us.

This Can Weblogs…? experiment means to use this full range of strengths to reward Scott with a senior customer support (or related) role that incorporates a generous amount of fully paid time for the upkeep of The Ultimate Insult.

This arrangement is meant to benefit the employer as well as the employee, but the employer will have to be the kind of organisation or company that recognises the importance of maintaining the current integrity and quality of The Ultimate Insult.

Potential Employers: This basically means that you can't go introducing restraints or demands that might fuck it up. Please pay attention to that last bit. In fact, read it again now.

Done? Good.

The Ultimate Insult can play a very powerful yet low-key role through the simple inclusion of a static 'these are the folks what employ me' link. This, combined with some basic research and arming measures, can significantly improve search engine results in the two top search databases on the planet - Google and Yahoo!

This latter activity (of search engine optimisation) will be undertaken by myself at no charge. While some changes to the core site may be called for, the end result will be much higher generic results than that of competitors. In other words, when the majority of web users search for the kind of company involved, they will find the company that hires Scott first.

This, therefore, would ideally suit a company that boasts or requires excellent and friendly customer support as part of their brand value. And currently has really sucky search results.


Method

The basic plan is to introduce this page to a number of weblogs, and then feed this coordinated link support into Blogdex and other portals. This will allow us to reach even more bloggers, and possibly even create the kind of industry buzz that gets us additional coverage.

We will also be calling on participants to submit a link to this page to groups they regularly participate in or portals they regularly submit to. Please, if a post or submission is not going to be welcome or isn't a natural part of your daily routine, don't do it. We only want genuine links.

From here, we rely on the 'six degrees of separation' principle. Someone knows someone who knows someone who can see the value of this and make it a win-win situation for everyone.

If you know such a person (or know someone who knows such a person, etc.) then we will be asking you to send them a link to this page, hopefully explaining as you do why you think it is a good idea for them to get involved. Again, if this isn't something you would do naturally as part of an established relationship with any someone in particular, please - please - don't do it.

If you are that magic person who has a senior role in a company based in or near Boston, MA - and have a genuine interest in this young man who is worth his weight in gold - then you can ignore the rest of this page. All you need to know is:

The person you need to reach with a serious offer is Scott.
You can reach him via his site at www.ultimateinsult.net

There. That's it. Get behind this quickly and do your bit, and we should be able to nail this within two weeks and get on with the next project.


Instructions for Linkage

The URL you require is http://www.bloggerheads.com/can_weblogs/perfect_job.asp (if you wish, you can copy and paste the full HTML below, or use/add your own words to tell people why you are supporting this initiative and why they should help).

Doing it sooner rather than later would be a good idea (preferably on the evening of Sunday, March 16th or anytime after). We want to be in everyone's face and the talk of the town quickly and early in the week, so journalists and industry watchers can jump in towards the end to do their bit - thereby (hopefully) spreading the word far and wide before we all get bored of the whole thing.

Updates to follow.


Here's the easy-peasy link-o-sleazy:

UPDATE - Our best Blogdex ranking was 9th place. Not as high as I would have liked, (we were up against a talking fish, a pro-Google article, and some small concerns about war) but this high point did coincide with the time when most Americans are groggily scanning websites as they wait for the second caffeine hit of the day to take hold. A few links we knew of - with sites that are registered with Blogdex - somehow failed to make themselves known. Still, No. 9 on a Monday morning is pretty respectable, and the page outlining the plan received over 2000 visitors as a result of the Blogdex listing and the weblog linkage (with an average of 7 click-throughs for each blog that listed it). The message also spread through a few Boston-based community groups.

UPDATE 2 - This project was launched on the 16th of March 2003. By the 17th, we peaked at 9th place on Blogdex, and from then on got drowned out by some war thing that was going on at the time. We reached about 2,000 people from the voluntary bloggage and subsequent Blogdex placement, but sadly did not reach that one all-important person who could see the value of a blogger as an employee and ambassador. Still, Scott did end up finding a good job a couple of weeks later (after months of moping around the house and watching daytime TV) so I'd like to think that we at least helped on a karmic level.


Back to 'Can Weblogs...?' for further results and updates.


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