The Daily Beat becomes "blog-worthy"

I haven't met too many people who aren't Seinfeld fans, so you may remember the phrase "sponge-worthy" from a particular episode. I can co-opt the brilliance behind that phrase to my own ends because the show featured a very beat character: Cosmo Kramer. In fact, he might become the subject of a future Six Degrees of Kerouac post.

But I digress. The point of today's post is to brag a little bit about how The Daily Beat blog - thanks to you readers! - is starting to become "blog-worthy." What I mean is that it now has some characteristics that it didn't have at first: followers, links on other sites/blogs, and growing statistics.

The Daily Beat has followers! Three Four of them! And I don't even personally know any of them! But thanks go to them for following. I hope my readers will click their icons (scroll down over on the right) and give those fellow bloggers some traffic in return!

The Daily Beat is linked to at two (so far) other sites/blogs: Matt Gibson and The Beat Generation Dot Net. Again, I hope readers of The Daily Beat will click on these links and give them some traffic!

The Daily Beat has had 525 visitors since October 25! And that includes visitors from Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Ireland, Canada, Phillipines, Greece, India, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Germany, Turkey, Taiwan, and a whole bunch of the states. It averages about 20 visits per day, with a high of 37 on November 16 (my How to write like Jack Kerouac post).

The above developments represent how the Internet works - like a virus (thanks to Elizabeth for pointing that out) - spreading slowly but surely by contact and connections until (maybe) a "tipping point" occurs and the growth becomes exponential.

What can YOU do to spread the word about The Daily Beat (and thereby promote The Beat Handbook)? Think like a virus. Ask yourself, "What would a virus do?"

Here are a few ideas:

1. "Infect" other websites with The Daily Beat (and its URL). Mention it in your blog, on your website, in your postings on other blogs and websites, in your MySpace/Facebook/LiveJournal/Twitter/StumbleUpon, etc.

2. Give my blog a thumbs-up on StumbleUpon and review it there.

3. Use Technorati and Digg and similar sites to spread the word about my blog.

4. Give my book a 5-star review on Amazon and mention my blog in your review.

5. Seek out on-line news items that have anything to do with Kerouac or the beat generation and post a comment, mentioning The Daily Beat.

6. Post reviews of my YouTube videos (Reading at Jack Kerouac's grave and The Big Lebowski...) and mention The Daily Beat.

And the above are just Internet-based ideas. Word of mouth works, too.

Anything you can do to spread the word about my blog would be appreciated. In return, I pledge to blog every day and try to give you a reason to visit. And if you're a blogger or website owner and want to play quid pro quo, let me know.

If all my readers today took just one of the above six actions, think of the effect. Imagine a pebble dropped in still water . . . .