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Maybe Rule Two Ought to be Rule Number One

Jimmie | December 7, 2010 | Comments (0)

Stacy McCain dropped a little nugget of brilliance in a much longer post on a nobody who is trying like heck to become a somebody but has no clue how to do it.

Rule 2 of “How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog” humorously describes a virtuous circle effect, a concept for building a blogospheric network through collaboration and reciprocity. This was the “Underpants Gnome” theory, developed ad hoc, through a process of trial-and-error, with the certain knowledge that I could write the most brilliant stuff in the world and it wouldn’t mean anything if nobody ever read it. And nobody would ever read it, if nobody ever linked my blog.

My friend — wait, would it be libelous if I called him my colleague? – Dan Riehl thinks this whole Rule 2 thing is kind of silly, but of course he was one of the first major bloggers who ever linked here, so he has earned the right to call me silly. And few things are sillier than blogging about blogging or, as it has been called, meta-blogging.

People don’t give a rat’s ass about bloggers. So nobody wants to watch a video of a blogger staring into a camera and explaining what a genius blogging idea he’s got, especially if that blogger hasn’t exactly demonstrated any particular knack for success in the blogosphere.[...]

It’s not about me, you see? Rather than trying to puff yourself up, or trying to tear other people down, you’ll generally have a lot more success in the blogosphere (and in life) if you can get over your childish ego-games and try to contribute something useful toward the common good.

This dovetails perfectly with a subject I’ve been thinking quite a bit about since I talked about it at length on The Delivery a few weeks ago — the importance of sharing your social media influence. We folks on the right have a terrible habit of stinginess with the influence we’ve built on various social media platforms. We use blogs and podcasts largely to talk about our opinions and what we think about things. Then we turn to Twitter and Facebook to get our blog posts in front of as many people as possible. For the most part, it is all about us. Precious few on the right spend their social capital to drive traffic to other people and that, I think, is a shame.

It’s not often you can enrich yourself while enriching other people at the same time. Social media platforms offer just that opportunity, if you’re willing to take it.

On the other hand, you can always just roll with shameless link baiting like, say, posting a link to Anne Hathaway in a short skirt.

P.S. I do have on quibble about Stacy’s post. You actually can make a living as a blogger who talks about blogging. You just have to know what you’re talking about and have the blog traffic to prove you do.