So Gabe “Techmeme” Riviera released his thoughts on how to get listed on Techmeme. Basically, it involves writing good content that gets linked back to. Let’s translate this a little further: write notable content that is link-bait.

What he also divulged was there is an “x-factor” in all of this — a secret sauce, a trump card, an inside man, a tunnel to that honey pot of Techmeme gold.

What is it?

Its simple — send traffic to Techmeme.

Gabe wants Techmeme to get inbound links. Google juice. Pimp action. To be showered with praise. Have flowers strewn at his feet. First borns named after the news aggregator (”Techmeme Hung?” — that’s a direct IN, and what my next child is named — you heard it here first).

… I think you get the idea. :)

As was clear at the Pre-Mesh Hookup, people know I post frequently, and from time to time, it goes up to Techmeme. So what happens when you actually get listed? What about traffic? Does it compare to Digg? Well, its not what you think.

Here are my thoughts on the whole thing:

My own personal story is that I got listed on Techmeme a few months ago, and I’ve had a few successes with it. In terms of traffic you really only get any if you’re listed as a primary story; very little traffic happens if you’re listed as part of the “discussion” (although its not that I’m not grateful that I’m on there, Gabe!”) — like an extra 20-50 hits max on a huge story.

To have a leading story (one of the stories that has branchpoints, or a “discussion” underneath it), it seems as though you have to be linked to; although, this is not a strict association. That is, if there are people linking to you, you will appear in the discussion; but the algorithm is such that sometimes it will associate related stories sometimes when there aren’t enough.

Also, Gabe does seem to have a manual override button (what I like to refer to as a “Defcon button”) where he can set things right if things are amiss (i.e. important stories are missed, stories picked up that don’t seem to go, overly sycophantic posts — you get the idea).

Now the benefits of a leading story is modest in terms of traffic. You can get uniques coming in to the tune of the hundreds perhaps low thousands, which is nice — but no where in league with the social bookmarking giant, Digg (where you can get blasted with almost 100K uniques in a day — a sort of server stalling avalanche of traffic).

An intangible benefit of a leading story, however, is enormous; and it has to do with the quality of the community around Techmeme — which is incredibly high. I don’t know if Gabe has any demographics — but anyone and everyone in the Tech industry reads the thing … and often several times a day. Its a case of the traffic being much more targeted and influential than Digg traffic, which is often a one-off thing, and, if some data is to believed, full of younger individuals than, say Netscape.

Bottom line — Techmeme is the place where connectors and influentials go; traffic might be modest if you get listed, but its important if you do. To get listed, make sure you’re writing good stuff, and that people know you. Comment on their blogs, start being a little more extroverted, and it will pay in spades. And name your first child after Techmeme. That’s a sure in as well. ;)

UPDATE: For a dissertion-strength diatribe on Google, linking as a central place in an algorithm, and Techmeme, please see Shelly Powers’ blog.  Amongst the points I understand, they seem really strong, like. ;)