I wasn’t intending to join in the brrreeeport silliness initiated by Scoble’s little game, but I found the comments from Dan at Technology and Otherwise on the subject of blogs breaking news worth commenting on. Dan’s position seems to be summed up in these two sentences:
To stay relevant, you need high traffic or RSS subscription rates. It doesn’t seem like you’ll make it happen just because you’re the first to know…
I disagree. To stay relevant (or to be relevant in the first place) you have to do two things. First, you need to break the story or say something interesting. Second, you need to be willing to work hard to connect the right people to your story. Jump up and down, scream real loud, and generally let the right people know you posted something they might care about. The right people changes depending on the story. And the methods for jumping and screaming might be as simple as a polite email that gets to the point real quick and follows up with a link to your story.
The people at the top might get a boost here and there to help them up the ladder, but in general, getting to the top or staying at the top means working hard whether you’re blogging or doing anything else in life.
