I think you need to be smart about it. Link the the current event to your nice topic. For example there was a great post about personal development lessons to take from Inception. Touches on the popularity of inception but links to personal development.

I also think you must have something more for the traffic to do. I remember a guy saying he got wicked traffic once from a link and I asked how many signed up for his newsletter and it was pretty much none. A traffic surge could be nice to look at but if I think you should be mindful of trying to convert some of that traffic for longer term success.

Good point. I too get hit spikes when I post on a current topic (such as Lindsay Lohan or other related nonsense) but when peolpe realize that my writing sucks and I have nothing entertaining to say they don't come back :)

p.s. I found you on yousaytoo.

That is insane. One time I decided to do something similar...I would visit the google web trends page and would create a post on one of those topics (the one less written about) everyday. And I was getting about 400 visits to that post every day. Being the first person to write about something can really give you an edge, but a lot of times your ranking will fall way past the 3rd page after a couple weeks sometimes a couple days (if it is a hot topic). Since all the other big name sites will start writing about it. And this is where domain trust and page rank become so important.

Great job!

What a great post man!
Love the perspective you put on it, in fact just showing the figures and talking about it as you did allowed me to see trending topics in a whole new light.
Awesome man!
Tweeted and Voted for BE (mind you that's how I found this post in the first place :) )
Ciao for now

I think you need to be smart about it. Link the the current event to your nice topic. For example there was a great post about personal development lessons to take from Inception. Touches on the popularity of inception but links to personal development.
I also think you must have something more for the traffic to do. I remember a guy saying he got wicked traffic once from a link and I asked how many signed up for his newsletter and it was pretty much none. A traffic surge could be nice to look at but if I think you should be mindful of trying to convert some of that traffic for longer term success.

Good point. I too get hit spikes when I post on a current topic (such as Lindsay Lohan or other related nonsense) but when peolpe realize that my writing sucks and I have nothing entertaining to say they don't come back :)
p.s. I found you on yousaytoo.

That is insane. One time I decided to do something similar...I would visit the google web trends page and would create a post on one of those topics (the one less written about) everyday. And I was getting about 400 visits to that post every day. Being the first person to write about something can really give you an edge, but a lot of times your ranking will fall way past the 3rd page after a couple weeks sometimes a couple days (if it is a hot topic). Since all the other big name sites will start writing about it. And this is where domain trust and page rank become so important.
Great job!