6 Valuable Lessons from Writing a Controversial Blog Post

In early June, I wrote a blog post voicing a strong (and somewhat controversial) opinion about Facebook Pages. The post was called Please, Please Don’t Ask Me to Like Your Facebook Page, and it was probably the most opinionated piece I’ve ever published.

I published it because I wanted to teach you, my faithful reader, that one commonly-accepted way to accrue more Facebook fans might actually backfire on you and cause more harm than good.

I used the post to give you some alternative suggestions for getting more Likes on your Facebook page.

I also had another (smaller) motive. Since I had never written a controversial post before – not on my own site, and not on any of the other industry sites I write for — I was curious to see what would happen if I wrote a mildly inflammatory post.

I wondered how much traffic it might attract, whether the post would get shared, and if I would get angry comments from people who disagreed with me.

I didn’t write the post specifically to experiment, and I didn’t manufacture an opinion on Facebook pages just to write the piece. I simply picked a strong opinion I already had, wrote a useful post about it, then kept a careful eye on the results.

Here’s what I learned from my editorial experiment:

1. I did get some negative comments, and I lived through it.

Out of 24 comments on the post, 2 were critical. I was called angry, petty and mean-spirited. I have to admit, that stung a little.

It helped me to think about the fact that the angry commenters were peeved about the opinion I voiced — not necessarily at me personally. I tried not to feel too hurt by it, particularly because these comments weren’t left by people I personally know.

I’ve also heard from other online marketing experts that it’s actually good when people start to criticize you and your opinions, because it means you’ve reached a certain critical mass with your content. Once you grow to a certain point, they say, some criticism is inevitable.

The good news is that the other 22 comments were all supportive. Those commenters agreed with me, thanked me for bringing up the issue, and said they thought the highly critical comments I received were unreasonable. I

Interestingly, a number of commenters said they had always wondered if that method of asking for Facebook fans was a good idea, and they thanked me for addressing the issue so directly.

Lesson learned: The negative comments hurt a little, but I recovered (with the help of the positive commenters and the rest of my audience) and will live to blog another day!

2. Traffic SOARED on the day I published the controversial post.

I attracted three times more traffic on the day I published this Facebook post than ANY OTHER DAY IN 2015.

That means you can take the top traffic day on my blog for all of the previous days in 2015, then TRIPLE that number, and that’s the traffic I received on the day I published this post.

Lesson learned: Whether we want to admit it or not, controversy sells. You will likely get more traffic if you are willing to express a strong opinion and publish it.

Yes, this is a strategy that can get old quickly. I’m not recommending you publish controversial posts just for the traffic, or that every one of your posts needs to be a rabble-rouser.

But if you’ve got a post you’ve been considering publishing, and you’ve been holding back because you’re afraid of offending people, you may want to take a chance and put it out there.

3. Social media shares also increased for the controversial post.

The Facebook post has been shared over 100 times, which is higher than normal for a post published on my own site.

It’s tough to say whether people shared the post because they agreed with my post, or because they were annoyed by it. Either way, they shared it – so that’s good news for my traffic stats.

Lesson learned: People are more than willing to share controversial posts on social media, so it’s likely you will see more shares when you write a strong opinion piece.

4. Headlines matter.

I didn’t add a truly inflammation headline to this post. I could’ve called the piece, “The #1 Way to Annoy the Crap Out of Your Facebook Friends,” or something similar.

A headline like that would potentially whip people into a frenzy, but I downplayed it a bit and chose a slightly mellower headline. That may have hurt by traffic, but that’s okay. It was a trade off for me.

Lesson learned: You have to decide whether you want to use an inflammatory headline or not. I was willing to try this post without it, to see what kind of results I could get.

Who knows? I might re-publish this post in a couple of years with a different headline, and see if the results are any different.

5. My opt-out rate for that post was no higher than normal.

I send all of my blog posts out to my email list. I use a little teaser emails, which hints at the content of the post and includes a link back to my site.

One of my biggest fears about publishing a controversial post was that I was going to lose a lost of my subscribers.

My list is large enough that I always get some folks who unsubscribe (every time I send out a post). That’s true whether I’m sending out something that is heavily promotional, or if I’m sending new content.

The good news about this controversial post is that my unsubscribe rate was no higher than any of the previous four times I had sent out a newsletter or a new blog post. My fears of a massive exodus from my list were largely unfounded.

Lesson learned: Even I write a controversial post that causes some heated discussion in the comments, I’m not likely to lose a ton of subscribers. This may not be true for EVERY topic, but it was for this Facebook post.

6. Get a friend, colleague or editor to read the post before you publish it.

In the future, when I’m considering publishing something that might be a bit contentious, I will plan on having a friend or colleague read the piece before I hit “publish”.

I wrote and published my controversial post late at night, and sent the email to my list about the post the following morning (very early).

I didn’t have a second pair of eyes to read it and let me know if I had gone too far. In retrospective, that was pretty dumb. It’s always (ALWAYS) a good idea to have someone read your posts, just to make sure you’re coming across the way you intend, and not overdoing it. This is true with any post, but it’s even more crucial with a controversial post.

Leasson learned: If you’re thinking about writing something that’s going to raise some hackles, plan far enough in advance that you can have a friend, colleague, significant other or editor read it before you click that “Publish” button.

Was It Worth It To Write a Controversial Post?

In a nutshell – yes. A million times yes.

If you have a strong opinion and you’re wondering if it’s a good idea to take a chance and publish a controversial post, I think you should give it a shot and see what happens.

Again, I’m not saying you should manufacture controversy or publish something simply to make waves.

But in my (very limited) experience with taking a chance on publishing a post that might piss people off, I think it’s absolutely worth it. I got a HUGE traffic spike on the day I published the post, and that rush of visitors continued for the next 4-5 days. We also generated some fascinating discussion in the comments, and that discussion is now part of the permanent content on my post.

Got a post you’re considering writing? Maybe you’d like to express frustration about something, or you’d like to give your readers some advice that is outside the normal recommendations in your industry.

If you’ve got a controversial idea in mind for your blog, I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

And next time I feel like mouthing off about something on the blog, I’ll let you know how it goes. 🙂