Most of us can remember at one point or another getting or hearing of a chain-letter. One of those letters where if you write this out 5 times, or make 5 copies of this and pass it on to 5 of your friends you’ll have something great happen to you.
They were all the rage when I was in middle school, then fell out of popularity in high school, and then back into popularity with the email blockbuster about how Microsoft would send you some crazy amount of money for every person in your in box you told about some letter going around that really didn’t even mention a product. That one always intrigued me, but come on, did anybody believe it? Some lawyer from Texas was quoted in it so we should all believe it. Do people believe lawyers in the first place?
Anyway, an new form of chain-letter has surfaced with the popularity of the blogosphere. It’s basically a letter telling you to do something and then link to 5 other people that you’d like to do the same thing. One of the most recent ones I’ve taken part in is writing 5 things you didn’t know about me and then asking 5 others to do the same. Hopefully my traffic will intrigue them to see what this post is that sent visitors their way and get them to write about it.
Now that one asked for me to do something. I was to write 5 things that I thought might be interesting for people to know and then ask 5 more people to do the same. One that was started back in March was similar only it didn’t need you to do anything. It just asked you to spread the indie virus and see the links fly.
See they can be simple or complex, but the key is that it gets more bloggers involved and knowing who you are, and will hopefully return some link love back to you by giving you credit either in the person that you directly link to, or maybe 2 or 3 people down the way that actually track the links back to see who might have started the whole thing.
It’s a great way to increase awareness of you blog, become an active member of the blogosphere, and maybe get a backlink or two.
