Who Are These People?

Americans?

If you look at the numbers, you soon realize that a huge portion of the population apparently:

• Has read two books in the last year, Harry Potter and The DaVinci Code
• Uses only two websites, Google and Facebook
• Visits only a few blog posts a day, and every single one of them is on the home page of Digg
• Watches only two or three TV shows, including the Super Bowl
• Eats only at McDonalds
• Watches only incredibly snarky or juvenile videos on YouTube

Mass phenomena are tricky things. It's true, the typical American reads exactly one book a year. How are you going to predict which of the 75,000 books published are going to be that book? You can't.

Many bloggers seem to be on a perpetual hunt for the front page of Digg. Sure, it brings you hordes of eyeballs, but then they turn around and leave. What's the point of that, really?

I think that are plenty of tips you can follow to optimize your offering for this fickle mass group. But it's still a crap shoot. Doesn't it make more sense to incrementally earn the attention of a smaller, less glitzy but far more valuable group of people who actually engage with you? And the best part is, your odds of success are a lot better.

(HT Joe Carter)