Well, after essentially telling the world in my free report that I think the 4 things chain-meme is actually not much of a meme at all, I naturally get tagged with it. It seems Liz Strauss over at Successful Blog has quite the sense of humor.
OK, Liz, I’ll play.
No, that’s not a typo in the post title, as we’ll soon see. But first, some disturbing news.
It’s become fairly well-known that unfortunate events reported heavily in the media lead to other similar unfortunate events due to copycat behavior. Suicides, murders and school shootings tend to occur in alarming clusters once the news about the initial event gets out.
What you may not know is that after a suicide is publicized, deaths by single-car accidents spike. When a murder/suicide is heavily reported, head-on car collisions and airplane crashes go up immediately afterward.
What’s going on here?
Steve Rubel had a rather nasty reaction to my free Viral Copy report. It’s obvious he hasn’t actually read it, because if he had, he wouldn’t be able to make the completely wrong-headed assertions that he does. But what I really don’t understand is his intra-day flip-flop on the subject of traffic.
With all the recent buzz surrounding Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere, the Magic Middle, New York Magazine’s A-List love fest, the resulting A-List denial fest, and the latest Google page-rank shuffle, links are on everyone’s minds.
We’ve had it beaten into us – links matter. I suppose if you look closely enough, what’s being said is links are all that matters.
Of course, content is what really matters. Content that gets links, according to the gatekeepers.
So, I’ve written a free 30 page report containing some ideas on how you can satisfy the gatekeepers (or actually, your readers and blogging peers – the people who truly matter). It’s called Viral Copy: Trading Words for Traffic, and beyond being free, it’s also free of affiliate links and product pitches.
Is this my own attempt to gain attention and traffic? Absolutely. It would be ridiculous to pretend otherwise. But I think you’ll find the report informative, and maybe even entertaining.
If I can ask for one thing in return, it’s this: if you have a del.icio.us account, please bookmark the download page (not this one). Yes, that will help me get the word out, but I will also be updating that page with additional content and resources. Is that a fair deal?
OK, go get it.
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If you’re not reading Hugh MacLeod’s Gaping Void, you should be. Hugh is an extremely popular blogger who spends less time pontificating and more time actually growing businesses. Not that he’s a marketing drone — Hugh is where he is today by being extremely creative, in addition to being a grizzled ad man.
