Penelope Trunk is a nut case, but she’s a smart nut case.
Penelope Trunk has a blog, book and company called Brazen Careerist. I have never seen her in person or interviewed her on the phone.* I have no idea how she is as a CEO, mom, daughter or ex-wife.
But this I do know. While she name drops, over shares and brags in a subtle, indirect sort of way, she’s also one of the best bloggers around- maybe because of all those things. So if you blog, and especially if you blog about careers, tech or start ups, you have to read Penelope Trunk.
Why is she so good?
1. Penelope Trunk understands what makes people read blogs. Her blog is nominally about careers. In reality, she uses it to carry on about all sorts of work-related topics, including her adventures starting a company, recollections of jobs past and now that she’s divorced, forays into dating life. So even though her blog has a subject, it’s big enough to encompass a lot of things. That makes it fresh and interesting reading.
2. She’s not afraid to have an opinion, even if it goes against conventional wisdom – especially if it goes against conventional wisdom. If it seems like she’s taking a stand that’s contrary to popular thinking just to be contrary, well, she probably is. But she does it to make people think about a subject from a different perspective. That’s what good columnists, writers and bloggers do, get people to look at an issue from a different perspective in order to get them to act differently as a result.
3. She always links back to old blog posts, which is great for building traffic because it sends people to other pages on her site, which have links on them that lead to other pages and so and and so on. If you don’t link to your own material on your own blog you should. Then link to lots of other blogs, especially blogs that are bigger and more popular than yours, which if you do it enough, will lead to even more traffic.
4. She’s a good storyteller. Yes, she seems to have had nine lives and written about all of them, and shares too many details of her marriage, divorce and sex life. But people eat that kind of stuff up. She uses narrative devices like dialog and what-happened-next story structure, which sets her apart from blogs that ramble on without making a point or are written in a too dry, newspaper inverted pyramid style.
5. She loves lists. Even when she’s not doing a list blog, she writes posts in list form because she knows blog readers love lists. Thanks Penelope, I did this post as a list just for you.
6. She manages to work subjects into blog posts that get picked up in search engines – like sex. Take the post she wrote earlier this week on how to write a good blog post. It had absolutely nothing to do with sex, but she managed to squeeze in a reference in the very last word of the very last line – that’s brilliant.
All of that explains why Penelope Trunk is making money blogging while a lot of other bloggers don’t, and won’t – ever.
And it’s why even though I roll my eyes at the latest crazy thing Penelope Trunk writes, I keep reading.
Who are your must-read bloggers?
* While I’ve never interviewed her, I’ve mentioned her in a few previous blog posts like this one and this one and she’s left a couple comments.
I love Penelope Trunk. I like how she tells it like it is. I don’t think everyone can get away with that but it’s worked for her.
http://www.daniellewrites.webs.com
Good points, Michelle. You didn’t expressly say so but your list is a great six-point plan for any writer hoping to attract a larger, more engaged audience.
Looking forward to having you guest,
Tim
The Social Writer — http://timbeyers.com
Hi, Michelle. Thanks for the nice post.
I feel compelled to send a warning to everyone about search engine optimization.
Sex is a terrible term to add to your posts in order to get noticed by search engines. Because the porn industry is paying a lot of money to make sure they get ranked ahead of all of us for that term.
The term that brings the most traffic to my site is “phone interview” because so few bloggers put that in the title of their post.
I get no referrals from the word sex — or, for that matter, from another term I use a lot, blow job 🙂
Penelope
Michelle (and Penelope)
As a transitioning journalist (old media), I have been studying how to build a readership for my blog (http://www.wordtrope.com/blog), and spent the past week reading posts like this one to learn more. Your post is, by far, the best advice I’ve found. I couldn’t agree more that Penelope Trunk’s blog is among the most interesting in cyberspace. She knows how to write well and knows how to keep readers interested. Count me as a fan.
Joyce Pellino Crane
This is a great summary of what makes a blog post compelling. Great job of putting into practice what you preach (in a number of ways)!
Penelope Trunk is a nut case, but she’s a smart nut case.
>>that is a false statement, she is not smart.
– “While she name drops, over shares and brags” –
Over shares is a HUGE understatement. I enjoy the hell out of her career advice but this girl suffers from TMI tourette. I feel like I have to perquisition through a Nora Robert novel to get to the good stuff.
Thanks – though I did have to look up “perquisition” to see what you meant. I learn something new every day.
M
Penelope Trunk is indeed a great storyteller and has no fear and indeed she likes to have contradictory opinions and she does a great job in giving her reasons.
The other thing that I love about her is that she sure visits people that links to her. She loves being talked about and what I love about her is that she takes a peek on what you do and gives her opinion. She’s cool at that!
I love her more than any other bloggers because I think she cares. My other favorite blogger is Danny Brown. The guy is genuine and has endless sense of humour.