Ah, fame and fortune. It’s something that many up and coming actors, musicians and to a lesser extent, writers covet, yet without any concrete vision about how to best achieve it, just as many blog writers don’t have a plan of action about how to turn their blog into a widely read online powerhouse. There are a number of celebrities (Meryl Streep springs to mind) who don’t appear to have ever wanted to be famous, and the fame is simply a by-product of success in their chosen field. It was perhaps easier to be famous in the pre-Internet days. Certainly while Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor might have been chased by the press while they were having an affair that began during the filming of 1963’s Cleopatra, deniability was certainly easier (and more plausible) before anyone and everyone could snap a photo on their Smartphone and upload it to Facebook a few seconds later. In the 1990’s, the rapid rise of reality TV brought fame to various group of nobodies who were plucked from obscurity to live in the Big Brother house or eat some obscure animal part on a far off island in Survivor, thus giving birth to the professional celebrity.
Being Well Known In The Internet Age
Fast-forward a few years, and there’s an emergence of “celebrities†who were born from social media, achieving (or strengthening) fame through Facebook and Twitter. While a number of these persons were known for other activities, a well-aimed Tweet or Facebook campaign has served their career well, as in the case of struggling singer Carly Rae Jensen, whose Call Me Maybe song was disregarded by the general public until a Tweet by fellow Canadian Justin Bieber led to dramatically increased online plays of the song, which led to a record deal and international fame for Jensen. And let’s not forget that Bieber himself landed a record deal on the strength of several clips uploaded to YouTube by his mother. Speed and a sense of “now†are pivotal in the use of Twitter, and in this digital age, the most obscure of topics can jump to the forefront of Internet visibility, if they’re fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to become a trending topic on Twitter. While you might not harbor any desire for global fame or infamy acquired via the Internet, there are certain aspects of these trending topics and a sense of “now†that can be utilized by any blog writer or online practitioner.
Using Twitter To Your Advantage
When Twitter was launched in July 2006, few predicted that this micro blogging service that allows users to post 120 character messages (the same length as a standard text message) would prove to be so incredibly popular, both as a social and corporate tool, with more than 400 million of these messages (known as Tweets) being sent each day. Twitter uses a complex algorithm to identify the most popular Tweet topics of a given timeframe, relying on subject matter, tags and user behaviour to compile a list of trending topics. Topics that are trending on Twitter suddenly leap to the forefront of the Internet, racing up Google rankings to become the most widely searched for online topics, albeit usually only for a short timeframe. To drive traffic to your blog, you could conceivably monitor trending topics on Twitter, and quickly create content that features these topics, ensuring that your blog suddenly contains some of the most searched for online content.
What To Write About?
This depends largely on the overall angle of your blog, and whether you’re writing it for yourself, or as part of your business activities. If you’re writing a blog about gardening in Milan or graphic design in Los Angeles, then you might encounter difficulties inserting references to Justin Bieber breaking up with his girlfriend Selena Gomez (again, which was one of the top Twitter trending topics at the time of writing). Some rather bizarre occurrences have become hot property on Twitter, such as when Angelina Jolie wore an Atelier Versace gown to the 2012 Oscars, split to the thigh, ensuring that her right leg was on permanent, prominent display. “Angelina Jolie’s Leg†immediately became a trending topic on Twitter, and a number of parody accounts were created, most notably @angiesleg, which acquired more than 36,000 followers in less than 48 hours. A savvy blog writer could have easily inserted references to Ms Jolie’s leg into their blog, thus ensuring a brief but potentially lucrative surge up the Google rankings.
Using Twitter trending topics to determine your blog content is a viable option, but these topics often trend for a fairly brief period, and unless you’re a fulltime blog writer who is constantly online, there is a chance you might miss the trend. But that’s OK- there is bound to be a new trending topic coming along at any moment.
Samantha
