Thursday, December 21, 2006

Methinks the 'Z-Listers' are winning

So is our lil meme working?

Becky at Customers Rock! emailed me last Thurs. to let me know she had 7 blogs linking to her blog, at the time.

She has 44 now.

Peter Kim had 35 blogs linking to his a week ago. He's up to 80 now.

Granted, not all of the links came from our 'Z-Lister' meme, but a chunk of them did.

I've seen several of you posting about getting a boost in traffic and links. Love it. One of my oldest blogging buds, Jordan at Tell Ten Friends says that the meme "has brought me a huge burst in traffic and links, and I haven’t had the time to reciprocate to all of the linkers. This one I will rectify much sooner. Thanks to all of you who are reposting my link over and over again, I am entirely grateful. I haven’t checked yet, but you might have moved me up the Technorati ladder quite a few notches. In blog land, that’s like hard currency."

And if anyone's wondering, I believe I had around 290 blogs linking here before leaving the 'Z-Lister' post, and now I'm at 304, so it's helping the blogs I've linked to much more than it is mine. Which is exactly what I had hoped.

So as I've been reading all the posts from all of you about how you've been getting a nice bump in traffic and links, I've been making a mental list of the blogs I want to add to the list, and I'll do that here, using Jordan's list as the starting point, and adding my new ones at the top:

Creative Think
Soloride
Movie Marketing Madness
Blog Till You Drop!
Get Shouty!
One Reader at a Time
Critical Fluff
The New PR
Own Your Brand!
OTOInsights
bizandbuzz
Work, in Plain English
Buzz Canuck
New Millenium PR
Pardon My French
Troy Worman's Blog
The Instigator Blog
AENDirect
Diva Marketing
Marketing Hipster
The Marketing Minute
Funny Business
The Frager Factor
Mindblob
Open The Dialogue
Word Sell
Note to CMO:
That's Great Marketing!
Shotgun Marketing Blog
BrandSizzle
bizsolutionsplus
Customers Rock!
Being Peter Kim
Pow! Right Between The Eyes! Andy Nulman’s Blog About Surprise
Billions With Zero Knowledge
Working at Home on the Internet
MapleLeaf 2.0
darrenbarefoot.com
Two Hat Marketing

The Engaging Brand
The Branding Blog
CrapHammer
Drew's Marketing Minute
Golden Practices
Viaspire
Tell Ten Friends
Flooring the Consumer
Kinetic Ideas
Unconventional Thinking
Buzzoodle
Conversation Agent
The Copywriting Maven
Hee-Haw Marketing
Scott Burkett's Pothole on the Infobahn
Multi-Cult Classics
Logic + Emotion
Branding & Marketing
Popcorn n Roses
On Influence & Automation
Bullshitobserver
Servant of Chaos
converstations
eSoup
Presentation Zen
Dmitry Linkov
aialone
John Wagner
Nick Rice
CKs Blog
Design Sojourn
Frozen Puck
The Sartorialist
Small Surfaces
Africa Unchained
Perspective
gDiapers
Marketing Nirvana
Bob Sutton
¡Hola! Oi! Hi!
Shut Up and Drink the Kool-Aid!
Women, Art, Life: Weaving It All Together
Community Guy
Social Media on the fly
Jeremy Latham’s Blog
SMogger Social Media Blog
Masey.com

Whew! Ok if you are new to the game (and I just added about 20 blogs so some of you might be), here's the deal: Simply cut and paste the ENTIRE list above to a post on your blog. That's it. You'll get a ton of happy bloggers suddenly coming to YOUR blog to thank you, you'll get a ton of great new blogs to read, you'll likely get a ton of links yourself, but most of all, you'll feel good about making a whole lot of other bloggers feel good about themselves.

All by taking a couple of minutes to leave a simple post. Not a bad deal, eh?



PS: Check out this list of Z-Listers from Christine's blog. Notice that her list is almost as long as the one above, and at least HALF of them are different!


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38 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Mack,

thanks for the link love ;) Will repost the list and add some of my fav blogs too!

Have a fantastic Christmas! I am flying back to froggy land tomorrow ;)

Anonymous said...

Mack,

Thanks for the link big guy. That's certainly a long list to visit today.

Eric

CB Whittemore said...

Mack, what an amazing collection to explore! Thanks for coming up with the Z list, and for including Flooring The Consumer. Happy Holidays!

Anonymous said...

By the way, there are some pretty good blogs in that list!

anne simons said...

hi mack:

this has been a great experience---i've corresponded with a bunch of new bloggers, some just to say "hey" and others that I know I'll continue to keep in touch with. I've corresponded with some great folks across the US, as well as a college student in Singapore, a designer in Japan, and agency folks in Canada and the Netherlands.

for 20-somethings who have come of age during the internet era, that's probably not a big deal. but i will be forever fascinated by the way i can effortlessly connect with someone half way across the world.

i've been having a blast. thanks so much for including me. oh, and i have received more than *50* links.

happy holidays!

anne

Anonymous said...

Mack, thanks a bunch for giving us "z-listers" a shot at bigger audiences. (I even earned my C-blog badge today courtesy of the 30+ blog boost I've enjoyed.)

I paid my link-love forward today!

Anonymous said...

Mack: Again, you rock for this meme. I'm honored to call you one of my favorite reads and a blog buddy.

Anonymous said...

I wanted to let you know the astounding affect being Z-listed has had on my site.

My blog is hopping with visitors and incoming links. Before being z-listed, I had 13 blogs linking to my blog, eSoup, and today I have 33.

I don't know the technicalities of how all the inbound links affect the rankings, but I can report that my blog has jumped 118,708 spots in Technorati in 8 days! That's right--a jump of over 100,000 spots at Technorati in a little over a week.

That just blows my mind. It's a great experiment, Mack, with some wonderful results. Thank you :-).

Cheers,
Sharon

Anonymous said...

I've seen a huge jump in links of course, but what's even more exciting is the comments, and meeting all of the other great bloggers.

Great idea Mack. I don't know who decided I was a z-lister, but I sure am proud to be one. My subscriber numbers just bumped up considerably; I hope no one sees how well I'm doing and disqualifies me...

Anonymous said...

You'll notice that I'm on two of those blogs. I'm just saying...

Seriously, though, this has been a lot of fun and I've gotten exposed to a ton of good new reads through these lists. Thanks, Mack, for showing us all what true embracing of the community looks like.

Anonymous said...

Wow Mack. Fantastic meme. My count has shot up to 98...all I can say is:

VIVA LA Z-LIST!

Mack Collier said...

Thanks Lolly! And Pete when I started the first list, I wanted to pick the blogs that had WAY fewer links than I thought they should have, and yours was the one of the original five with the most links at 35. Now I think the original 5 are all up over 50, and I'm noticing several blogs have doubled their link count or even tripled since we started!

Guess a rising meme lifts all blogs, because even Technorati won't recognize most of you as Z-Listers anymore ;)

And thanks for the update Roberta and Sharon, I LOVE hearing the stories about how the links and traffic are shooting up!

BTW what's going to be interesting is if the 'Z-Lister' meme keeps gaining steam, we may soon have some new names popping up in the Top 25 Marketing Blogs.

Now wouldn't that be something?

Anonymous said...

Mack,

You the Man! As of yesterday, bizsolutionsplus was up from 24 before you posted to 65. You rock!

Tim Jackson said...

I finally got around to doing this last night... what a dork I am...

The Kool-Aid site has jumped in links enormously too... so I guess I really do have to follow up on the threat to post there more often again. I'm working with the other contributors to really hit the ground running after the first of the year... even though I'll be starting my book at the same time. I guess I'll just forgo the this two hours of sleep I get each night.

You the man Mack!

Mack Collier said...

Lewis better check again, you're up to *90* links now! And Tim that's great about the book, do you have a title yet?

Tim Jackson said...

Mack, no title yet... I got some brain storming to do... right now it's only a drizzle, with partly cloudy skies...

Anonymous said...

Mack, sure appreciate the links and the Z-status. Golden Practices thanks you!! And thanks a ton for the great idea and the new blog-friends. So many people to thank!!

Anonymous said...

Mack,

Methinks Z-listers are definitely winning. Seth just picked up the Z-list meme and created a squidoo page on it too!

Check it out here: http://www.squidoo.com/zlist/!

Mario

Anonymous said...

Seth did pick up the list but disagrees with the term 'z-listers' - we have a debate going on there! Loads of updates on my blog as I am on holiday which is auite nice!

Merry Christmas1

Mack Collier said...

Thanks Lolly. And I think Seth is a bit late, he's saying that there's no such thing as Z-Listers, but recall that was the main reason why I started this meme, because I disagreed with Technorati's 'authority-ranking' system of assigning a blog's 'authority' based on links. So this meme is a way to beat Technorati at its own game by giving you guys more links. And Seth is smart enough to know that there's definitely an 'A-List' of bloggers, I think he's trying to present it as a 'list of good blogs', so that way the 'A-Listers' will have a reason to get involved.

Again, I don't like the voting aspect, because it turns it into another version of Technorati Favorites, but at least it does help bring more attention and traffic to you guys, so I thank Seth for that.

Anonymous said...

I love love love the people like Seth or Jason Calacanis saying there's no "A list". Too funny.

Thanks again, Mack for kicking this meme off. I'm getting a boost in traffic, but more importantly a nice crop of new visitors who are engaging in the conversation.

Jake
communityguy.com

G.P. said...

Thanks to Ben, Im joining in on the fun as well Great finds, great list a great new year all

Anonymous said...

Mack - thanks for starting this! I jumped in and am glad I did. I've found some great new content to read from other blogs.

Anonymous said...

I love you guys, I love you all... I don't want to be a buzz kill, I love you all, really... I do... I even want in... but...

isn't this a pyramid scheme?

I love you, don't hate me... please... but isn't it?

Mack Collier said...

Of course it's a pyramid scheme. And from the links/traffic standpoint, that's exactly what it is.

But that's the whole point, Technorati's method of 'assigning authority based on links' is total bullshit. So this meme adds a ton o links to everyone, and according to Technorati, suddenly gives everyone a ton o authority. That's why it was called the 'Z-List', to make fun of the fact that Technorati thinks any blogger with just a few or no links has no authority.

The real benefit to us all SHOULD be how many blogs we can discover, and how many bloggers we can become familiar with. The boost in links and traffic will likely fade, but if we can find some new blogs to read, and some new bloggers to call 'friend' after the dust clears, then it's all worth it.

Anonymous said...

true that.
I'm in

http://www.radicaltrust.ca/z-listers/

Fact is, you are right, I have already added about 6 blogs to my bulging RSS feed.
THanks for thinking of this... great idea.
collin

Anonymous said...

Why stop at Z-List? Why not Z-Tags?

check it.

Anonymous said...

Hi Mack
thanks so much for the mention and the link love
I'm a bit behind the ball it seems. All I can say is that I've recently moved countries and haven't looked at my stats in awhile.
Your comments and support had been a tremendous boost- and now this! Cheers.

Anonymous said...

Wahlau Z Listers Here

Come grab the link here

Kleio the Muse said...

This is so cool. It was absolutely brilliant!

Btw, I found your blog through a link on a Z-lister. Great blog you have here. And this Z-list thing is happening. Kudos.

Whitlam said...

Loving the link love z-list, just added one twice!

Anonymous said...

I've gone from 32 blogs linking to 176.

It's incredible, I'm now something like 19,800 on Technorati.

Thanks seems somewhat inadequate :-)

Niki said...

THANK YOU for this fantastic idea!!

Anonymous said...

can you please add my blog http://info4beingrich.blogspot.com in your Z-list please.

Anonymous said...

Just starting out, can you add me:
http://www.freewebs.com/syndexco

cheers!

Thejak said...

Hi Mack,
I'm not really sure how this works, but I just started my blog about 2 months ago, so how would I join this z-list. My blog is http://theblogabouteverything-thejak.blogspot.com/

Thanks!

Sheridan Folger said...

Posted some links and what not...Eric over at pardon my french suggested I check this out...glad he did. Also, good content on the blogs themselves...lots of new great things to read.

thanks
Slainte'
Mad.

http://madirishmaninc.blogspot.com

Mack Collier said...

Exactly right, the main benefit you get is finding great new blogs. The link-love is a pleasant by-product.