There’s a kerfuffle going on today in the blog world that should inspire you and certainly offers up a nice example of how to write a blog entry that could generate significant traffic to your site and some sweet inbound links from high-profile bloggers (e.g., good link love).
The basic issue is that very well known blogger Robert Scoble got kicked off Facebook for testing out a new tool from a company called Plaxo, a tool that automatically scraped all of Robert’s connections on Facebook. That violates the Facebook terms of service and his account was automatically shut down.
Being a highly visible media guy, he promptly cried wolf, yelled that the sky was falling, and generally raised a ruckus about everything except that he might just have been at fault for using a tool in violation of the agreement Facebook has with users.
As you would expect, tons of other bloggers and media outlets, from BusinessWeek and TechCrunch on down, have joined in the discussion and there are a remarkable number of postings on this tiny tempest in a microscopic teacup. (In fact, Facebook has already restored his account, as it happens)
So how do you turn this into a high-traffic blog article?
    You take a stance.
You write an article that eloquently states your own position on the situation, perhaps referring to ownership of information (after all, it might be your account on their system, but surely you own the information in your account itself?) or privacy (is it a good thing that they monitor scrapers to minimize spam harvesting?) or even the self-reflective, self-important nature of the blogosphere, where people think that they can violate agreements but, since they’re “important”, slide by.
Of course, writing a smart article is only 2/3 of the work. The other 1/3 is to spend some time digging around and find who else – with high PR or high blogosphere esteem – is writing about this and both quote them and link to them. Of course, most bloggers track who points to them (I do!) and will read your article. If it’s good, they’ll respond, link to your blog or even modify their original entry to include a link to you raher than linking from a followup piece. All of which are good, good, good.
Even just getting on the radar screen is a huge step, but a few inbound links from the big dogs, well, that can turn your backwater 20 person/day blog into a solid news source with a few hundred a day.
Then the hard part: keeping up, producing more quaility content.
Nonetheless, if you are motivated, the time to strike is today. Write that piece, add those links, ask a few friends to Digg it perhaps, and off you go!
Note: I haven’t included any links here because I’m writing this as an insider tip, not as any sort of “link bait”. You can certainly find any of the blogs or bloggers mentioned here quickly enough with a Google search. 🙂