Link Bait Me

I’m getting over the flu. I had planned on spending the weekend in a cabin in Sedona relaxing with friends this weekend, but the flu won and I’m home alone on a early Saturday morning thinking about marketing and some things have made themselves clear to me.

John Cow is a Sweet Talker
I came across JohnCow.com right as I was starting this blog, and I’ve been reading him since. Of course, I still read ShoeMoney and JohnChow.com, and more recently, QuickSprout.com, but the Dot Com Moogul reaches out to his readers in a way I understand and relate to. He is constantly giving something away. This week, he’s giving away just what I have been coveting, a $1,449 pass to attend Affiliate Summit West 2008 in Las Vegas. Of course, I think our bovine friend should give me the pass for several reasons. I’m near enough to drive to Vegas, I’m a (it seems) rising marketing blogger who’s reaching for success, and I can’t afford the ticket price… not even close.

Enough about my ‘Summit-lust. Let’s get back to the Cow. Prizes aren’t his only trick… He’s also pretty handy with the links. Have you seen his posts? I thought I was pretty good about linking out to other blogs, but he makes me look sloppy. In a recent post, he was sure to give some link love to Edward Khoo, who has some awesome posts, by the way, after noticing that TechCrunch botched up the link (now fixed). Did he have to? No. He did it because he’s genuinely a nice guy, in my opinion.

Those simple marketing tips I promised
You either read all the way through my John Cow man-crush or you’re smart enough to skip to the goods. Either way, you deserve some quick and simple marketing tips, so here they are:

1. Always look for the upside
We’ve all complained about one thing or another, but the best thing to do when faced with a negative is turn it into a positive. This is what John Chow did when Google dropped his Page Rank and it reminds us that you make your own silver lining when life hands you a dark cloud.

2. Link to sources
See that link above? That’s another link that should get me a link back and from my experience, a visit from John Chow, himself. If you can find a relevant link to your content, use it and get some additional traffic. Once in a while, it earns you a mention, too.

3. K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid)
OK… I’m not calling you stupid. What I’m saying is that readers are spreading their online time across an increasing number of blogs, not to mention sites like YouTube and Digg. Make the important stuff easy to find before your reader loses interest. Build an outline for your post, bold each point in the outline, then fill in the content as I’ve done here. When giving a tutorial, use screenshots, or photos like I used in my laptop repair article over on JoeTech.com.

4. People like (FREE) stuff
This is a no-brainer. People love to get free stuff, and it feels better to win it. Part of the initial success of this blog was the contest I held (still running) to launch the blog in September 2007. My goal for the month was 30 unique visitors a day. I doubled that for September and October and in November, I held a cash contest that drove this blog to 400+ visitors per day. If you don’t have the budget for it, give away advertising, find sponsors, get creative.

5. Being the best makes you better
When I first found Entrecard, it was new but showed a lot of potential. I saw something that could get really big, really fast, and I dove in, head first. I’ve been riding Entrecard as it climbs upward, largely because I jumped in early (with JoeTech.com) and made my mark. Use small successes to give you an over-all boost.

Bonus: Don’t forget the little guy when you make it
When you get to the top, remember that you, too, were once a net-nobody, just hoping a Shoe, Cow, or Chow would glance your way. Visit new blogs, link now and then to those you think deserve it, and just remember where you started.

Popularity: 43% [?]

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 12th, 2008 at 5:14 am and is filed under Link Love, Other SEO, Linkbaiting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

| Stumble it! | |  Print This Post