How To Reach No. 1 On The AdAge Power 150 List

Apparently, Social Media Explorer spent much of last week at No. 1 on the AdAge Power 150 list. Lots of folks have congratulated me as if I’d won some great prize. I’m sure some people on the list have crocked an eyebrow at the rating wondering what kind of back door engineering I participated in over the last few months to game the system and jump up the charts. Several people, online and off, have asked me how I did it.

I did one thing and one thing, only. I posted good content.

Please don’t take that statement or this post as some sort of ego trip. I base the good content statement on the fact that people tell me they enjoy my writing, SME entices a fair amount of engagement in the comments and my little ole blog has a fair amount of inbound links from Tweets and retweets, bookmarks and other references. If the content weren’t good, none of that would be true.

The AdAge Power 150 listing is a nice attempt at putting together a list of smart blogs to read. But to claim my writing or insight is better than anyone else on that list is ludicrous. Blogging is not a competition.

The list is a nice conversation piece, link generator and service to the blogging community for AdAge. While I don’t want to down play or disrespect Todd Andrlik for creating it, or Charlie Moran for editing and maintaining the list, it’s just one way of looking at what’s out there and putting an order to it. Anyone could come up with their own criteria, make a new list and, depending upon the variables, SME wouldn’t be on it at all. And that would be perfectly fine.

But if there is a lesson to be learned in SME sitting at No. 1, even if it were just for a day or two, it’s that good content, meaningful content, advice and shared learning that provides value to your readers actually works. That is all I’ve ever tried to do.

I’m willing to bet you can do the same thing.

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