Link bait is essentially viral content placed on your website or blog. You can also place link bait on other sites.  For example, you can create a viral YouTube video with a link to your company website at the bottom.  What distinguishes link bait from other content is the intention.  This is content that is meant to be reblogged, reposted, shared, and linked to.

Why would your company want to create link bait?  The simple answer is traffic.  You may find that the content your company is creating does not reach as wide of an audience as you would like.  Hence, viral content or link bait.  Spending some time to design a clever, humorous, or uber-clickable post can cause your name and your brand to be spread throughout the Internet.

Link-baiting is a double-edged sword, however.  In order to make viral content, you need to do something different, something that stands out.  Often in the process of creating something that stands out, you run the risk of negative attention. This happens a lot in the advertising world.  A company will create an ad that achieves its goal of attracting attention, but the attention causes a backlash of criticism, offense, and scrutiny.  To use a recent example, Burger King’s “It’ll Blow your Mind Away” ad.  Everyone was talking about Burger King after this ad was launched.  The ad appeared on thousands of sites and social media networks.  But the viral content was not effective.  People complained and Burger King’s image suffered.

So what is the best kind of link bait for your company?

There are a number of different types of link bait used on the Internet.  The goal is always the same, to create viral content which in turns produces traffic back to your site.  Depending on your position in a given industry, the size of your company, your company’s image, and its target audience, consider the following strategies:

1.  Resource-driven link bait

Resource-driven link bait is a good, safe alternative to risque content.  With resource-driven content, you are providing people with useful, aggregated information.  This is a common strategy on the Internet.  Think about what you or your company is an expert in, gather your known resources, and present them in a simple, easy-to-read format for readers.

After submitting a hundred or so press releases, I became somewhat of an expert on free press release submission sites.  I was also aware of just how many sites there were out there and how confusing it could be to newcomers.  I decided to create a post of the best free press release submission sites with a short description under each stating the site’s Page Rank and other relevant information.  In addition, I linked to a helpful SEO press release tutorial.  On Prechnology, I’ve created a similar post except for article submission sites.

Another type of resource-driven link bait is an interview.  If you can find an expert in the industry to interview, then people will want to read it.  Another strategy is to review services or products.  By linking to and discussing a popular product or service, you may garner the attention of consumers, and possibly, a spokesperson from the company that created the product.

The top ten list, 50 Best Sites list, or some variation is a ubiquitous link bait strategy.  Oftentimes, the longer the list, the more impressive.  What people are really looking for is the quality of your choices.  If you make a lists of the 70 Best Photoshop Tutorials, make sure you have reviewed more than 70 tutorials.  Smashing Magazine can be considered an expert at list-making and much of their traffic results from the resource-driven link bait they create.

Here are two examples how you can even make link bait out of link bait techniques.  Problogger’s “20 Linkbaiting Techniques” and Jim Westergreen’s list of link bait ideas.

2. Image/Video link bait

Perhaps the most effective viral content is in images or video.  The reason for this is simple.  Images and video produce immediate gratification.  A viewer reads the comic, looks at the picture, or watches the short video and (hopefully) wants to immediately share it.

Important here is that the link bait does not overshadow your company.  Make sure that a link to your company website or blog is apparent on the image or underneath it.  Another concern, which was mentioned earlier, is that the image creates negative attention rather than positive attention.

Twitter comics are a good example of link bait.  Posting a single panel comic about Twitter on Twitter is likely to spread.  Webdesigner Depot’s “30 Funny Twitter Comics” is thus an example of both a resource-driven link bait and an image link bait.

A lot of start-ups will create a cute video tutorial of their site and post it on YouTube.  Many of these clips are humorous and informative, but also ingenious marketing techniques.  They tend to use stick figures with funny background music.

Search Engine Roundtable reports that Mingle2’s “How Dating my Ex was Like Playing Doom II on Nightmare Mode” received 4000 diggs and 1700 links.  These types of comedic sketches/commercials are also common marketing strategies.

3. Trending topic

To ride the wave of a trending topic with link bait is often an art.  Basically it requires you to spot a topic right before it becomes over-blogged about.  You can either deliver the news first such as the release of an Apple product; or you can add a new angle on a trending topic that is already in the news. A combination of the resource-driven link bait and the trending topic link bait would be a compilation of news items.  You can also refute the news, debunking a popular news story. (More on the news hook here)

4. Just cool

The “just cool” link bait is mainly an eye-popping, curious, or fascinating link.  Futility Closet posted this mathematical conundrum:

Tags: advertising, Burger King, link bait, linkbaiting

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 12:47 pm and is filed under link bait. 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.