I logged on early yesterday morning and quickly realized that an article I had automagically set to go live minutes after midnight had already gone viral. Late night west coast and early morning European Twitter users found it first–15 Way Cool Social Networking Sites You Never Heard Of–and tweeted it some three dozen times before I woke up.

I couldn't believe what my eyes were seeing!

By late morning my stats pushed past 1000 visitors, topping 2000 late in the afternoon. This morning I reviewed my stats and have found that nearly 5000 people have stopped by to read this one article alone. And the traffic is still flowing!

I promised Dominique over at 4 Walls and a View that I would give a recap today about what exactly transpired as she noticed that something was up too. Though all isn’t “said and done” when it comes to this story I can tell you this: when all is said and done, this viral outbreak will rank in my Top 3 of all time. Not bad for five years of blogging.

Importantly everything came without much effort—in other words it was stupid easy.

Background Details

But first for some background info. The site—SayCampusLife.com—belongs to a customer of mine. I’ve been blogging there and on another site of his, SayEducate.com, since late 2007. Both sites have a decent amount of traffic, but as you might guess some of the competition is formidable.

SayCampusLife is a college information website, offering college bound high school students, current college students, and their families information about scholarships, college life, careers, schools, you name it. The site ranks well for certain keywords and has a decent following. But it is the occasional article about social networking sites which seem to bring in the traffic, particularly those working a certain angle.

Planning Stages

I set out as I do every day to pick an article I felt people would be interested in reading. Sounds simple, but it isn’t always easy coming up with a good read.

But I also wanted to write about a topic that had a chance of going viral, with the appropriate amount of link bait added, which meant that I would turn to Wikipedia to find something different. Sure enough, a listing of social networking sites caught my attention, so I set out to pick 15 from that list and modify accordingly.

I wanted a large enough number to help the article stand out, but I didn’t want to go crazy either. I visited many more sites than the 15 I chose, but I narrowed the list down quickly to add a good mix of sites. I also knew that having just enough information about each place was important which meant that I had to give these sites more than a cursory glance.

Once I got everything together I worked on my headline. I needed something to catch your attention and I wanted to use a more contemporary term besides awesome, amazing or stupendous. I thought “way cool” would work and decided to use it.

Big Push

When I want an article to get an extra amount of attention, I’ll often give it a big push by tweeting, stumbling and sharing it with friends. But in this case I had some help as someone shared it via Delicious which ended up having far more “juice” than StumbleUpon. SU has been a big disappoint for so many reasons, but I thought I’d at least get some noticeable action there.

Thankfully, Delicious, Twitter, and natural search traffic was more than enough to propel the article. And thanks to each of you who helped spread the word too: everyone who added a comment will certainly benefit. Yes, you can still jump on the comment train (40 and counting) if you have something of value to share too.

Customer Satisfaction

I mentioned to my customer late yesterday morning that the article went viral and he was pleased. Later today I’ll provide more detailed traffic information to him and I’ll also be tracking the article long term.

So what lessons can be learned from how this article performed? A few things including: working a unique angle with whatever topic you choose to write about, create an eye-catching headline, and then hope that a number of invisible hands come to your aid.

In this particular case all three worked together, delivering a viral outbreak I won’t soon forget.  Stupid easy? You betcha!

I haven’t done a “shout out” of blogs in some time, so let me do that today with a focus on those offered by freelance writers, bloggers, journalists, and others who write for a living. I’m not going to include the usual suspects because everyone knows the A-listers. Oftentimes, the best stuff is found elsewhere; besides if you want interaction from the blogger him/herself, the smaller sites are often the best for that.

My Blog Guest – I wrote about this site’s forum last week, but have since found Ann Smarty’s related and recently launched blog. As you might guess, Ann’s topic is about guest blogging which is something I know can help raise your visibility if you choose to go down that path.

Freelance Folder – I would not have known about this site if my writing friend, Laura Spencer, from Writing Thoughts hadn’t alerted me to it. Well, it turns out that Laura is a regularly and frequent to contributor to this site which has been picking up a ton of traffic in recent months. Laura always shares stuff of interest to writers including “Mastering the Art of Client Relations.”

Carson Brackney – Several years ago I crossed paths with Carson when he ran Content Done Better, enjoying his advice which always seemed to fly in the face of conventional wisdom. Carson sold his blog and disappeared for two years as he took on a regular job, but now he is back and as caustic as ever! Carson is an advocate of content distribution sites (he runs one himself) and a slayer of elitist writers. Nuff said.

A Writer’s Word, An Editor’s Eye – I’ve referenced Lillie’s site before, but her site is worth a visit. Lillie is a writer, but she is also an editor and a darn good one at that. A couple years back I referred a friend to Lillie who needed some advice with a book. Lillie took the time to help my friend out, an invaluable and totally unexpected response from Mrs. Ammann.

4 Walls and a View – Dominique Small launched her newest site in January and has been doing very well. Instead of offering writing tips per se, Dominique uses her blog to advocate on behalf or chronicle illnesses, namely chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. By sharing her personal battle with these diseases Dominique does a wonderful job in educating people on a very personal level. She demonstrates that good writing can come forth despite life’s challenges.

Thanks for stopping by; I’ll be featuring additional favorites in the near future, but covering a different topic.

I’ve been battling with a virus which infected some of this blog’s files, a problem which caused some of admin files to forward to a blank page — the dreaded white space of death.  The problem was mostly an annoyance seen only on my end, but it began to impact visitors to this site who thought that they were getting a virus.

Dominique’s New Blog

Near as I could tell, the virus was self contained, but that doesn’t mean that your own virus detection service wasn”t going to set off it own alarm. That is exactly what happened when Dominique Small (4 Walls and a View — new blog, you have got to check this one out) discovered when she stopped by last night, then sending me a message explaining what happened.

I immediately decided to tackle the problem, which ended up taking nearly five hours to resolve. For security reasons I can’t mention the fix, but I will say that someone hacked into my account, set themselves up as an administrator, and began his work. I say “his” work because his handle alluded to his gender.

5 Fun Thrilled Hours…Not

I had to delete files, upload new files, create a new database, and do some other stuff before I determined that getting rid of my previous theme would help. Sure enough it did, which is why the theme you see on my Auto Trends blog is also being used here.

I don’t have time to find and test a new theme. I’m mentally exhausted and plan on relaxing the rest of today.

Be Back Soon

My apologies to you for this rambling post too. I wanted to alert my faithful readers about what is going on here, but I’m not up to putting too much more brain energy into what I’m writing. Thank you for your patience, I’ll follow up with a new article later this week.

Thanks again, Dominique. I’ll be checking in to your new blog very soon.