In a recent post I floated the theory that Content Creators need Media Companies to help them attract mass eyeballs to read their carefully-crafted content. It would be a symbiotic relationship – the Media Co’s get compelling content and the Content Creator gets mass readership. It’s win-win and I think this is one way round the A-List or Power Law issue with the blogosphere.
My previous post is a classic case in point. It’s an interview with the CEO of the top computer book seller in the world and a leading Web visionary. The content of the interview is very compelling (IMHO), if you’re at all interested in web technology. Yet so far, about 36 hours after I published it, no big blogosphere ‘connectors’ have linked to it. I haven’t really pimped it round the sphere, other than submitting it to Slashdot (no go, this time) and Boing Boing (obviously not quirky enough). I suppose I could email the link to the connectors in the web tech blogging world – Dave Winer, Doc Searls, Robert Scoble, et al. But frankly I hate doing that kind of stuff… it makes me feel like I’m a court jester begging for the King’s attention. (I haven’t even linked to said people, such is my shame in even mentioning it).
So what to do? Obviously I want people to read my interview with Tim O’Reilly, not to mention the other things I put so much effort into writing. Maybe I need a “Blog Agent” to whip up some public relations, flick the link around to all the connectors, syndicate it on media websites – and all the other things that you need to do to get read around here. That’s not self-pity speaking either – it’s ambition…of a Content Creator who is not very good at this PR game.
Of course, it all comes back to that word ‘momentum’ (one of my fave words currently). Once even 1 connector links to you, the ball starts rolling and the meme spreads – sometimes like wildfire. That’s happened to me a number of times before – e.g. my interview with Lucas Gonze got Slashdotted and it was all go after that. The challenge for the vast majority of bloggers is to get that first connector to link to you…
