Weekly post every Saturday on blog marketing, administration.

MITCHELL BLATT

Sorry, I missed you last week. I was visiting family in Columbus. I’m back today to tell you about the linkbait, or how to get a ton of people linking to a single post.

The benefit of the linkbait is that you gain a ton of visitor and you also get a ton of search engine benefit since search engines look at links.

Here’s how to do it:

You have to think of it as a different kind of post. You aren’t doing it specifically because it’s what you would write on a daily basis, but because you need to market yourself. It’s best when you can write a linkbait and a great post in one, but that’s not always possible. For that reason, you shouldn’t write them very often.

Just think, what kind of posts would sports bloggers like to link to?

-Breaking news
-Hilarious videos
-Controvery in the blogosphere
-Anything about themselves

People in general are egotistical, none more so than bloggers, so if you write something good about them, there’s a good chance they are going to link to it.

That’s where my most famous linkbait comes in: The Top 100 Most Influential Sports Bloggers. (The formating is kind of messed up now.) The post listed who I thought were the top 100 most influential sports bloggers, with details and mini bios for the first 10. It took a long time to write, but it was well worth it.

It caught fire through the blogosphere, and, according to Google, it has been linked to 127 times. I also brought in 1,000+ visitors four straight days.

Now, the writing of a linkbait post is what you have control over. Getting people to link to it, you don’t. So how do you encourage people to link to it once you have it written? No matter how much you glorify someone, they won’t link to it if they don’t know about it.

Email them. If you mention 100 people, it doesn’t make sense to email all of them. I only emailed the top 40. Don’t ask for a link in the email. Just say something along the lines of, “Congratulations, You were ranked #15 on the list of the top 100 sports bloggers! Here is the top 10: … View the full list here: (link).”

Submit to social media sites. Ballhype had a ball with my list. Well, I shouldn’t brag too much, it only got 26 votes, still my personal high, but the most hyped ones get at least 50. Point is, bloggers are going to be interested if you post that you have an authoritative list of the top 100 bloggers.

I also submitted to some other social networking sites like Reddit, and Digg, but I didn’t have much of a profile there, and most people there don’t care about sports either, so it didn’t gain any traction.

The fact that so many people linked to it got it popular on some blog trends sites showing the hot posts of the day, and that also helped.

That’s the story of my greatest linkbait. I tried that style again with the Top 20 Sports Blog Stories of the Year and Top 20 Athlete Bloggers with limited success.

But there are other types of linbaits, too. Like the news linkbait. ESPN always has these when they post breaking news. They aren’t really linkbaits, in that they aren’t written specifically for links, but they always garner a ton of links, so they are the best possible type of linkbait. Unfortunately, most bloggers don’t have the ability to break news.

I used to write for a fantasy football site, and one of my readers happened to be friends with the Bucc’s team doctor. He told me Cadillac Williams had herniated disks. Originally published as an unsubstanciated rumor, it got a lot of traction on sports forums where people trashed it’s credibility. It was good for visitors because it was in the first few weeks of my site, and the first time that Deadspin linked to my site. Will Carroll emailed me to tell me I got the story right, and I interviewed him on the matter.

Those are a few of my own examples. Here are some examples from other sites:

-Lists
On 205th’s Top 22 Worst Dunks Ever
54 Ballhype votes, 21 links

Injury Rate’s 25 Best Ricky Henderson Quotes
64 votes, 26 links

-Videos
Awful Announcing’s vid of a reporter crying following the Yankees playoff lose
74 votes, 29 links

-Controvery
Crash Burn Alley’s email exchange with a blog-hating columnist
69 votes, 41 links

-Stuff About Bloggers
Busted Coverage’s Sports Blog Tournament
72 votes, 27 links

Hope this gives you some inspiration! If you write a good linkbait, give me an email, and I’ll help you hype it.

For more info on how to promote, market, and make money from blogs, got to the Sports Blogger Forums.

If you have any questions for me for this column, email them to mhblatt(at)gmail.com

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