One Techmeme Hit Wonder

Our guest writer, Larry Chiang, is at times a tortured blogger. If you have seen his GigaOm post, “9 VC’s You’re Gonna Want To Avoid“, then you read his ONE Techmeme hit. In Silicon Valley, if it doesn’t make TechMeme, you did not really blog it.

This article will NOT be in his book…,

By Larry Chiang
I used to laugh at Rick Springfield. He wrote the song, that is also my ringtone, “Jessie’s Girl”. Entrepreneurs also can be one hit wonders too.

Well after nearly a year of blogging, I have one techmeme placement.
One. It is documented on Henry Work’s crunchBase via “BloggerBoard”

“BloggerBoard ranks publications and their authors by Techmeme headline appearances.”

Below are confessionals of 9 ways I tried to get back and place an article on Gabe Rivera’s Techmeme.

-1- Cut and Pasted someone else’s work. Did you like my post, “How to Work a Room“?! Well I ripped it from Susan Roane’s book of ‘similar’ title, “How to Work a Room“ . I still get inbound links but it never made it to techmeme.

-2-  Tipping Bribing and Comping. At a wordpress event, I handed out slices of Pizza to bloggers in exchange for filling out a contest form with name, email, cell phone and blog address. Contest Secret: everyone was a winner.

Tipping Bribing and Comping might work for getting a couple of inbound links but it won’t get you onto the granddaddy of blogger validation: TechMeme.

-3- Blog about a book project sounding like a sequel (to a tome I never wrote). Have you heard of the twelve year best-seller, “What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business School” by Mark McCormack? It came out in 1983 and was a NY Times bestseller for over ten years. My sequel sounding book comes out 09-09-09 and is called, “What They Dont Teach You At Stanford Business School”

The article 9 Things Stanford B-School Won’t Teach You was pretty popular, and kinda evergreen, but alas no techmeme coverage.

-4- Mànàg à Troìs your way onto Techmeme. I wrote about a unique
three-way: sex, founders and an exit strategy for your Stanford Business School girlfriend. I thought that mànàg was edgy and savvy enough to game the Techmeme secret algorithm… it was not.

-4b- Another entry angle onto Techmeme vis a via mànàg à troìs was to promote a conference I was not even speaking at. No, it wasn’t Blogworld but rather SXSW 2008. Just because I did not mooch a press pass from Hugh Forrest, does not mean I didn’t cover Sarah Lacy at SXSW :

-4c- Constant Mànàg à Troìs in the TechCrunch50 blogger pit. In this case I use Mànàg à Troìs to mean be involved in three-way conversations and linking people to each other.

I mechanically wooed, charmed, butt-kissed and candoodled top tier bloggers in the #TC50 blogger pit. I even got the alpha of the conference Michael Arrington to mention me BY NAME from the stage.
Althogh I did not hit TechMeme gold but did man-charm a potential co-founder for Buck9  and got lots of Twitter/Facebook/FriendFeed love.

In short, my three-way, triangular effort to attack the goal of getting onto Techmeme from two fronts fell short. Similar to a mànàg, three person dynamics are either working for you or against you.

-5- Get mentored by a celebrity billionaire to get onto Techmeme. I write stuff that I myself wanna read. My Mark Cuban interview was meant to be a window into Cuban’s entrepreneurial soul and a confession about my own wants and desires to be a billionaire. Techmeme did not care and the blogosphere was indifferent.

-6- Navigate and embrace bad blogger fortune. In the same way we “Navigate bad entrepreneur fortune” ,
we realize that blogging will have good and bad seasons. I was an entrepreneur before I became a blogger, so surviving a storm is second nature to me.

-7- Close a deal via voicemail to get a techmeme placement. Ever hear a voicemail I leave? It is goose bump-ly killer in that it leverages listener train of thought, top of mind needs, a dash of content/news, a sprinkle of WIFM (what’s in it for me) and a healthy dose of humor. It usually elicits a call-back, an email, or IM reply. At the very least I get a text message response.

I see voicemails as an old-school, sniper app because like good direct mail, it can quickly rise to the top of a dying channel of communication. Hmm, maybe I should do a direct mail campaign to get on TechMeme… err wait, I did . Bloggers, look in your postal mailbox NOW.

-8- chaBillionaire. Blog about something way outside of technology, but still technological. I picked covering rappers . No, I did not get onto Techmeme, but I gotta new BFFsINCLUDE PIC WITH Brian SOLIS ATTRIBUTION. A mentor once told me, ‘if you want to have a valuable tech company, you should take tech out of the company as soon as possible”.

-9- If all else fails, write about TechMeme Comments contest: best comment that adds value in the effort to land a post on Techmeme get a winter fleece jacket.

Yes, Sarah Lacy, “Once you’re lucky but, Twice You’re Good” also applies to Techmeme placement, so maybe – maybe – maybe I will luck into bookending my blogging career with one last Techmeme placement.

Good luck out there and text/call me during my office hours of 11:11am (and pm) +/- 15 minutes. PDA to sms: 650-283-8008. Landline to call 650-566-9696.

Larry Chiang is the founder of Duck9 , which educates college students on how to establish and maintain a FICO score over 750. He has testified before Congress and World Bank on credit.

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