- Define your audience. Be able to answer the questions “who will spread this?” and “why will they spread it?”
- Know your linkbait portals. A post that would do well in Digg might bomb with Slashdot. Likewise, a list that gets a lot of Reddit love could be dead on arrival with Lifehacker. Each portal has its own audience. Figure out who hangs out where, and submit accordingly.
- Write a great title. You want to make sure that the title grabs their attention and demands their interest. This may actually be more important than the actual content of your bait.
- Make your bait beautiful. Spend some time on a unique design. Make sure your content is easy to read and informative. Have few, if any, ads.
- Create a place for discussion. You want people to discuss your idea, and what better place to start that than on your linkbait page? Plus, if you get a particularly good discussion going, you’ll get people linking strictly because of the ongoing dialog.
- Authority is important. Cite research and link out to reputable sources. It makes what you’re saying real, and people will feel good about referring people to it.
- Pick on people. If you can say something sufficiently funny, mean, or insightful about a popular internet personality, maybe you’ll get someone like Rand Fishkin, Greg Boser, Todd Malicote, Jim Boykin, Danny Sullivan, or Shoemoney to link to you. At very least, maybe they’ll check their trackbacks, like what you wrote, and link to it. A little validation goes a long ways.
- Ask for feedback. Ask popular bloggers, popular industry figures, and people who manage media sources to look at your bait and give feedback. If they like it, they may feature you, or at least send another authoritative link your way.
- Don’t shoot yourself in the foot. Make sure your servers can handle the traffic that will come if/when your content goes viral. Also, don’t get banned from your linkbait portal by practices that might go against your portal’s terms of service. This might include getting all your coworkers to Digg your post, or Digging all of your own posts in quick succession. As a side note, you ARE allowed to submit your own stuff to Digg, which allows you to control the headline and description. That’s important.
- Retain the traffic. Follow up any good piece of linkbait with other quality content to reel in the visitors that come to your site. You don’t want your site to be a one-hit wonder.
No comments yet.
