new media

Michael Jackson – The King of All Traffic

On July 8th, 2009, I wrote a post connecting Michael Jackson’s death to an uptick in traditional media (read: How Michael Jackson Brought Back Traditional Media). Since then, a bunch has happened (including the release of This Is It), so I wanted to reexamine the theme. This is the resulting post, which is a story of apology, reality and thanks – maybe even some SEO advice – I’m not really sure myself, but here goes…

First, a reality check and an apology… The death of The King of Pop was a monumental media frenzy event that lent eyeballs for ALL types of media, not just the fledgling print and broadcast. So, while my original assertion was right that he helped bring back traditional media (even if for a short time), the reality is that even if a true rise in readership/viewership occurred, it would never be enough to bring back traditional media against its new, online counterparts. I will now apologize for making these exaggerated claims: I’m sorry my readers, I really am.

Second, the real reality (meaning as it impacts me)… I shudder at the thought of calling my ‘work’ with Iron Mountain in a Concrete Jungle new media, but it literally is just that, a blog, if you will. Having said that, what really made me switch gears on my original assertion was the traffic that Michael Jackson generated for this blog… for me, it’s unprecedented (sure it’s my first true blog, but that’s semantics).

Finally, the thank you… Since July 8th, I’ve received over 100 clicks on this post through search engines alone. In fact, “Michael Jackson” is THE most popular search engine term which was used to find my blog. Furthermore, my top 3 are: michael jackson, michael jackson clip art, google michael jackson... just for my lil ol non-blog-like blog...Mind blowing... which is exactly why I wanted to write this up and thank all those people for finding, visiting and reading my blog, as well as to offer them an update (and more things to search for).

Maybe now the spotlight will finally let Michael rest, I’ll try to take care of that at least in this particular media… then again, we’ll see how many clicks this will generate in 5 months. One can only guess…

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