This is Day 7 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, a group project 60+ of us bloggers are doing together in an effort to help each other become better bloggers. You can read an overview here.
Today’s assignment is to write a link post. The great thing about this assignment is that most of you already have experience doing this. And you’ve seen it pay dividends.
When?
Right here. If you’ve written a blog article about that day’s 31DBBB lesson and linked to the post here about that lesson, you’ve written a link post. And if you’ve posted a comment on that day’s post with a link to your blog article and gotten a bunch of visitors and comments as a result, you’ve seen the value of writing a link post first hand.
Today’s lesson includes some great advice for writing effective link posts, here are some tips – some from the lesson, some my own additions and examples.
1) Read other blogs. If you want to write about other posts, you have to read other posts. The 3 best ways to do that are
- Use an RSS feed reader and subscribe to the blogs in your niche
- Follow bloggers in your niche on Twitter
- Sign up to receive Google Alerts for keywords related to your niche
2) Post a comment on the original article with a link to your article. This will draw readers from the original article to your article. Be sure write a couple sentences in your comment to show how your post is related, something to get people curious enough to click.
3) Stop what you’re doing and write fast. The goal of a link post is to extend the conversation from the original post to your link post. The longer you wait, the more people will have already read the original post, and the fewer people will click to your post. Also the longer you wait, the further down the page your comment will be displayed. You’ve probably already noticed in this series that the people who post their comment & link early in the day get a lot more replies to their comment & visitors/comments on their post.
4) Tweet a link to your post and @mention the author of the original article. This will ensure the author of the original article is aware of your article. If your article is insightful and well-written, they may retweet you, which could bring lots of people to your blog.
About 6 weeks ago, Michael Hyatt wrote and tweeted a link to a post called The Leadership Strategy of Jesus. I saw his tweet and commented. Then I realized I had more to say on the topic, so I wrote a post called Leading Small and posted another comment to Michael Hyatt’s post with a link to mine. Then I tweeted “New blog post: Leading Small (inspired by @MichaelHyatt) http://bit.ly/bHSe62” Mike retweeted me, which brought my post a bunch of readers. Several people retweeted Mike’s tweet, which brought even more visitors (though unfortunately not many comments).
One mistake I made was to post the comment on Michael Hyatt’s post as a reply to a reply. Because the IntenseDebate commenting system collapses replies to comments, most readers probably didn’t see the link. Ideally, I would have thought of writing a link post right from the start and included a link to my post in my first comment.
Another example was published here about 3 weeks ago… John Saddington of Church Church posted 10 SEO Myths Ministries Need to Avoid Like the Plague. Several of the points in that post are inaccurate, so I grabbed my bro, Kurt, who is our director of search marketing, and we collaborated on a post we called Putting the Truth-O-Meter to 10 SEO Myths. I posted a link on John’s post. John and several Church Crunch readers commented on our post. It was good for both of our blogs, but even more importantly it was good for our readers who got a more complete and accurate understanding of the issue.
Discussion
- Do you have any other tips for making link posts more effective?
- Can you cite an example of an effective link post you’ve written in the past?
- Post a link to the link post you’ve written today.
The Extra Mile
A few other things you can do to take your blog, other bloggers, and this project even further today…
- Reply & give other bloggers feedback on the little things they do.
- When other bloggers include a link to a new article they’ve posted today, click, read, and comment on it.
- Check previous posts in the series for new comments.
- Tweet, share, & bookmark this post.
92 Comments
My link post references a series of posts about how churches can build and maintain a Facebook page. http://jerryfultz.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/creati…
The original series was published in Church Crunch: http://churchcrunch.com/
Hey Jerry, I've been meaning to do a post here about that Facebook series on ChurchCrunch myself. So, when I saw your comment, I was excited to click over to your post. If I can be honest with you, I was disappointed because I don't think your post really adds to the conversation. I would love for you to have shared your thoughts about Facebook pages and the 4 blog posts. What is it about the series that stood out to you? What were the best parts? Your biggest learning points?
Paul – completely agree with you. This is a lame post. The main purpose for posting it was for reference, but I absolutely need to breathe some life into it. Will edit and repost. Thanks for calling me on this.
Paul: here's the updated version. Thanks again for taking the time to throw me under the bus on my original post. http://jerryfultz.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/creati…
Let me know what you think of this version.
"Thanks again for taking the time to throw me under the bus…" LOL! I'm gonna have to tweet that.
I like the new version. You did a good job of telling readers why they should click the links & read the articles and adding your own observations.
I didn't know what kind of list I'd make, until I read Chad Estes' second post on the "Sunday's Coming" video. I pulled together a list of different reactions to the video, including Chad's. North Point Church video goes viral, touches a nerve
I also decided to use the post to ask the media team some questions about the video. We'll see if they respond… (I will tweet this to them)
Jon, excellent example of a link post. You added value by bringing together the divergent opinions of several different bloggers and extending the conversation.
That's a great video, by the way. It's so true – we do many (but not all) of those things at my church…
Wow, it worked! I took the extra step of contacting each person to let them know I linked to them. Some of them have commented, some have tweeted, and some have linked to me. Consequently, I'm getting a spike in traffic!
Great job, Jon! I hope everyone takes a moment to look at your post, the extra steps, and the results. It's an excellent example.
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Nice approach – this is something I'm becoming aware of is to be aware of what I'm reading, etc and see if I can use it to create a post from.
The quality of post and links from discussants in this blog has improved. Thanks to the good work being done by ourchurch.com. This is the link to my blog of the day http://www.christchosenambassadorsministry.com/ap…
Here is my link post:
http://inspirationalgifts.blogspot.com/2010/05/ab…
I couldn't Twitter it because Twitter doesn't seem to be working right now. I did comment on the original post with a link to my link post.
Ok
I really learned this time b/c I THOUGHT my post from Wed was similar and I didn't think to let the author know about the repost…I tweeted them. Thanks
http://parentingtwinsandmore.com/2010/05/12/wfw-n…
Last week I wrote an article discussing discounts on the new release of Photoshop that are available for folks that wish to join NAPP. I posted the link to that article in a comment that I wrote on a complimentary article on the NY Times. I've been getting tons of hits from it.
Today's Post:http://www.sensoryescapeimages.com/blog/2010/5/12…
This series is great! As an editor for a Christian lifestyle blog, your site has inspired me to try new and different things on our site. It has given me a new outlook on how to run our site.
For this lesson we used an article from Christian Personal Finance (http://christianpf.com ) that inspired our article on Walking Away From Your Mortgage.
Here is a link to the original inspiration: http://www.christianpf.com/walk-away-from-mortgag…
And here is the link to our content based on that article: http://saysomagazine.com/component/content/articl…
I would really appreciate some feedback from you blog experts out there if we are doing it right at Say So! Thanks.
This website is the GREATEST RESOURCE!
Hi James, thanks for stopping by. Based on the number of RSS subscribers and comments on each article, it looks like you're doing a very good job with christianpf.com
Even though we're already on Day 9, you're welcome to sign-up, buy the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog e-book, and join us in this project. There's a link at the top of each day's article. I think you'll learn a lot more, plus other participants will be more likely to give you feedback throughout the project as they see you participating and providing insight and feedback to others.
Finished this assignment last night and am now caught up on lessons. I linked our posthttp://ronniespoon.blogspot.com/2010/05/feeble-pl… to R. Sipes posthttp://junctionforjesus.blogspot.com/2010/05/glad… and commented. ____