"Mention them and they will come!"

It's seems like years now that I've been saying: "Someone once said 'Mention them and they will come!'" as a way of explaining how to attract someone's attention in the Blogosphere. On his blog today, Stephen Spencer talked about this technique and how it relates to "a new set of rules" for the PR industry:

"If, for example, you want to catch [Robert] Scoble’s eye, then you would say something interesting that somehow relates to Scoble and work in a mention of his name. Scoble, like many other bloggers, follows what’s being said about him in the blogosphere by subscribing to a PubSub search results feed for the word “scoble.”

I can't remember who coined the phrase "Mention them and they will come!" and when was it first used. Do you know? If so, please drop me a line or a trackback.

bob wyman

Comments

[Nikolas 'Atrus' Coukouma]

No matches for "mention them and they will come"
Closest matches:
"insult them and they will come" [1]
"blog it and they will come" [2]

[1] http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000137.html
[2] http://blakelyblog.blogspot.com/2004/07/blog-it-and-they-will-come.html

[Nikolas 'Atrus' Coukouma]

No matches for "mention them and they will come"
Closest matches:
"insult them and they will come" [1]
"blog it and they will come" [2]

[1] http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000137.html
[2] http://blakelyblog.blogspot.com/2004/07/blog-it-and-they-will-come.html

[richard]

I have no idea who may have said that first, but one of the people I was reminded of when I learned of Robert's PubSub, was James "Kibo" Parry who did that sort of thing back on USENET... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibo)

"uncanny, machine-assisted knack for joining any thread in which his nom de guerre is mentioned (to "kiboze")"

[Aristotle Pagaltzis]

This particular phrasing may be new, but the notion itself has been around since untold times: “speak of the devil.”

[Robert Scoble]

Richard: Kibo is here! Heh.

[Len Holgate]

I was wrong, they didn't come ;)