May 19th, 2008

Getting people’s attention

in: Communicate, Standing out

About a month ago, I wrote a piece on ways the Internet could die. It was an interesting experience: The story got Dugg, comments went through the roof, and lots of people decided to comment on it. At the same time, news sites picked it up, “summarized” it, and posted it. This in turn led to a new wave of traffic on those sites (and some slightly more thoughtful discussion than the initial Digg invective.)

The lessons from all this:

• Bumper sticker headlines work
• People click on Top Ten lists because they love order and structure
• People complain about Top Ten lists because they’re often linkbait for Reddit
• If you can work in enough topics, everyone will have an opinion

For a site like GigaOm, which is well respected, you can do this stuff from time to time. But you have to back it up with real content; in my (unscientific) experience, others are more likely to steal or linkjack a top ten list, and visitors are less likely to subscribe to the post.

And last of all, whatever your idea, Trey Parker and Matt Stone have done it already, only better.

Thanks to John Overton for that one.

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