To engage in manipulation is to use your influence on the behavior of others. One official definition of manipulation is as follows:

Exerting shrewd or devious influence especially for one’s own advantage; “his manipulation of his friends was scandalous.”
WordNet

So what is reader manipulation? Reader manipulation — according to my personal definition — is to use one’s status as blogger to selfishly or scandalously influence the readers to act in a way that will directly benefit said blogger. Within this post, I will point out three types of ways to manipulate readers. My hope in pointing these out is so that you may avoid these techniques at all costs.

Guilt Trips (Emotional Manipulation)

We’ve all seen the pleas: “Why aren’t you commenting? I’ve put in all this time and effort and you readers are just sitting back?” or, “If you don’t donate this amount of money a month, I won’t produce any more content.”

When a blogger seems to be using coercive techniques to get some activity on a blog, you know there’s a problem. On smaller blogs, using emotional manipulation to get readers to perform certain actions isn’t a problem. In that case, readers just leave and never come back. On bigger blogs, however, the blogger has a certain influence and can very well give a reader a guilt trip into performing an action that the reader would not otherwise take. There is a tactful way to get comments and subscribers, and then there are the guilt-trip techniques. I will elaborate on this point further in a later post.

Contest Manipulation

People will do some incredibly stupid stuff for money or to win a contest. Contests can be very outrageous and potentially deadly. For example, a mother trying to win a Nintendo Wii for her child was killed from water intoxication after trying to “hold her wee” longer than everybody else.

Monetary manipulation with regards to blog readers is to force the reader to do “crazy” and un-normal behavior to win at a contest. Some of these antics might be to spam certain blogs, write absurd posts, comment a certain number of times in a day, and more. The reader may not even have a good chance of winning.

It’s not bad to ask of a little extra from readers for a contest, but to demand the readers to behave in a manner that is “over the top” is contest manipulation.

Quid Pro Quo Manipulation

Quid Pro Quo is most commonly affiliated with sexual harassment, but can happen on blogs as well. Quid Pro Quo more-or-less means that the blogger will do something if the reader does something. Although this isn’t necessarily bad, it can get to the point of being manipulation.

For example: One blogger only links to others only if the other person links to them.

Perhaps a better explanation of the manipulative techniques is that the blogger will not do something for the reader until the reader has done something for the blogger. It’s a “give and maybe I’ll give back” type attitude.

Are You Guilty?

If you have been guilty of some sort of manipulative practice in the past, don’t let it stop you from progressing forward as an honest and faithful blogger. We’ve probably all been there. Learn from your mistakes and move on. It’s those bloggers that know they’re manipulative and keep doing it that I’m worried about.

Thanks for reading.

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