Now that everyone and their grandmother’s smoking buddies are trying to spam Digg, Reddit, and Netscape into oblivion, I think the opportunity to use that as a reliable factory of linkbuilding has jumped the shark. 

For me, one of the most significant athletic feats of our lives is Tiger Woods’ 2006 British Open victory.  With everyone else in the field trying to be the next Tiger Woods, Tiger ran away with the Claret Jug because he wasn’t being Tiger Woods.  He was hitting 2-iron off the tee while everyone else was launching drivers 30 yards past him (mostly into the high grass and bunkers).  His ability to go from winning with brute force to winning with brute finesse was remarkable.  If you don’t play or follow golf, this would be like Shaq deciding he was going to do nothing but launch three’s in the NBA Finals or Roger Clemens deciding to pitch underhanded in Game 7 of the World Series…and pulling it off.

You see, everything about golf in the last 10 years has been about the rest of the field trying to catch up to Tiger.  Mostly by emulating him.  Technology and fitness regimes have everyone hitting the ball longer, more consistently, and with greater control.  Yet, nobody is catching Tiger.  I see the same thing in Internet Marketing.  There’s always 1% of the practitioners beating the hell out of the system and 99% of the hacks waiting 6 months until the 1-Percenters start discussing it publicly. 

There are a lot of great professional golfers.  I don’t think you’ll find too many people who think Phil Mickelson actually has less game than Tiger.  But nobody can take that high level of talent and combine it with the perspective, creativity, and discipline like Tiger can.  In a sport where most of his peers never get to win a single tournament, the gray matter between Tiger’s ears is the single biggest factor that lets him win regularly.  Tiger would be a part of the 1-Percenter Club of Internet marketers. 

Back to the masses of chainsmoking grandmothers and why you should jump off that bandwagon immediately.  If you are trying to linkbait now, good freaking luck.  Depending on the community, Power Accounts have either been marginalized or it’s too late to build an effective toolbox of them.  It’s time to stop buying into the hype of Linkbaiting Millions and accept the fact that you “bait” an audience the same way people have been audience building for centuries.  You just have to be Tiger Woods and not one of the Pretenders to his Throne.

Let’s agree that links are everything in building a new audience.  Whether you need them to drive future search results or you want people passing your site around virally, the conduit to cheap mass audiences on the Internet are links.

What if I told you that if you sued Google, you’d get more high quality editorial links cheaper than if you hired a top notch SEO firm to go bait your project on Digg?  Is that something you’d be interested in?  If you look at the link equity that Aaron netted out from his lawsuit defense, it makes a good month on Digg look like Phil Mickelson at Winged Foot.  That’s because hot legal topics resonate very far in high trust arenas of the Internet.  Similarly, Howard Stern saying the four words “VOTE FOR THE WORST” on the radio created on of the most powerful Internet anecdotes yet.  There’s an entire offline world to go bait! 

As an effective Internet Marketer, you should focus less on unstable search engine algorithms and more on how our society works.  Let billions of people do the legwork for you.  Orchestrate offline events that will result in online discussion.  While everyone else is trying to bomb 350 yard drives on Digg (and not very effectively), grab your 2-iron and set the offline world afire. 

The “Next Big Thing” is already here.  It’s always been the same thing.  It’s called society.  Whatever you talent is, there’s a way to leverage the rest of the world into building links for you.  It may be writing.  It may be speaking.  It may be selling.  You may be the biggest asshole on the planet.  But each on of those activities can be leveraged into building the links offline so that your online asset succeeds.  Figure out that lethal cocktail and Jessica Alba will be yours.

Ok, I lied about the last one.

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