Content with your content?...

byrocr7

2.6K followers

11 years ago

Years ago I read an article about a joke that was so funny and cute, it was read by over 8,000,000 people within 24 hours. The concept was simple... something people found so funny and cute (valuable), they read it and quickly forwarded it to others on their email list. This perpetuated itself until, in the scope of one day, a mere 24 hours, 8,000,000 people read this funny, cute story. Have you ever been to Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor? It's HUGE and holds like 100,000 people. That little joke touched more lives than that stadium sees in years!

I get it. Google has these algorithms and little spider bot thingy's that scoot around the web, deciphering content, in an attempt to improve the ranking of content that displays a high quality. They've spent millions of dollars to hire the smartest people to develop the best way to identify high quality content. This fact created a barrage of other super smart techno types that continually try to figure out what Google is doing, so they can put the right key words in all the right places to get their web site or blog ranked as high as possible. The dance continues day in and day out. Still, that little joke, the funny cute story, stepped out of that box and beat the system. How? Why?

The how is simple. I basically explained it above. Assuming the originator of the joke emailed it to about 15 of his friends, who all read the joke and forwarded it to about 15 of their friends within an approximate 5 hour window, and this perpetuated itself, in 24 hours or less, 8,000,000 people would read this little joke. As a side note, if the average reader chuckled 15 times... well, that's a lot of flipping chuckles.

Now, as to the why. I'm not the smartest guy you will ever run into, and as such, this will not be exhaustive. However, I think most of us place value on "funny"... on a good laugh if you will. When presented with something that makes us laugh (something of value), we want to share it with others, so they might receive the benefit (value) of a good laugh as well. We push a few keys on our plastic box and viola!... before you know it, 8,000,000 lives have briefly been enriched, which I might add, could have much farther reaching affects if you let your mind wander. I mean who knows, in 8,000,000 people there could have been at least one person mad enough to kill someone, when he or she hears "you've go mail", reads the joke, laughs enough that their mood is changed, and forgoes the murderous plot. The intended murderee may be the person that goes on to find the cure for cancer. One of the caner survivors... I digress.

What's the point? As I mentioned earlier, Google spends millions of dollars devising ways to determine the quality of any given content. Instead of spending so much time and effort trying to figure out what criteria Google uses to find high quality, relevant content, and then sticking key words in contrived articles to get rankings, why not just write good old fashioned, high quality content that creates honest value in the lives of others to start off with. The value derived from the content you create will permeate the populace proportionately to that value. If, like a cute, funny joke, it creates enough value for enough people, it will get shared into oblivion on it's own merit.

Just sayin'.

Thanks for listening...

...Rico