April 1. I always seem to get suckered into falling for at least one prank each year, simply because the prankster does a good job at convincing me that whatever it is “could” be true. I have seen a lot of really good blog posts and some not-so-great ones in the past few years. So, instead of trying to pull one myself, I am going to give you some tips on how to create a successful April Fools post.
It Must Be Believable and Original
A post about you hitting the lottery or finding buried treasure isn’t very believable simply because things like that are extremely rare. Your post needs to have at least some sort of credibility to it, something that could actually happen and wouldn’t raise suspicion immediately. For example, a video post from Shoemoney describing how to make $1,000 in one hour is credible, because he is a well known blogger who makes a lot of money from the internet.
Lead Up To The Planned Post
In the blogging world, its good practice to make posts as frequent as possible (a few per day is optimum). If you do this, then completely stop a few days before April 1, your readers will begin to wonder “what’s up”. This can help add to the suspense of your post when you do post it.
Posting Early: The New Fad?
What better way to catch someone off guard than to publish your post a day early? My buddy John pulled this stunt by releasing his John Chow Blogger Cola a day early. The majority of the comments so far have “figured it out”, but some seem to have totally fallen for it. By posting early, this leaves John totally open to post something even wilder on April 1!
Get Your Friends To Help
The odds of you pulling off a successful prank can increase greatly if you get your friends involved. Have someone do a guest post on your site, announcing something tragic, like a motorcycle accident, then take it one step further and have a few others post comments with their condolences, prayers, etc. This will get your readers thinking, “hey, maybe something bad DID actually happen”. So evil!
These are just a few ideas that you can use to help create a really great April Fools post.
Have you ever pulled off a prank of “epic proportion”?
