Being final, or authoritative, or helpful, or any of these obviously positive attributes is avoided, because they don’t bait user engagement.

Influence is ultimately the goal of most blogs and blog publishers, because that influence can be sold to a larger media company.

It’s enough to make anyone bitter and angry. And indeed they are. They grind with the “rage of the creative underclass,” as New York magazine called it.

Readers might be better served by posts that inform them about things that really matter. But, as you saw in the last chapter, stories with useful information are less likely to be shared virally than other types of content.

Remember: Every person in the media ecosystem (with the exception of a few at the top layer) is under immense pressure to produce content under the tightest of deadlines. Yes, you have something to sell. But more than ever they desperately, desperately need to buy. The flimsiest of excuses is all it takes.

Create the perception that the meme already exists and all the reporter (or the music supervisor or celebrity stylist) is doing is popularizing it. They rarely bother to look past the first impressions.

“It’s difficult to get a man to understand something,” Upton Sinclair once said, “when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

The constraints of blogging create artificial content, which is made real and impacts the outcome of real world events.

With social sharing comes traffic, and with traffic comes money. Content that isn’t shared isn’t worth anything.