144: How to Create a Link Post [Challenge]

Challenge: Create a Link Post This is 7th and final challenge in ProBlogger’s 7 Days to Getting Your Blogging Groove Back Challenge that we kicked off back in episode 137. You can listen to this podcast in the player above or here on iTunes (please take a moment to give us a rating and review if you could). If you’re new to the challenge - this week I’m nominating a different style of content for you to create each day over the week and the challenge is to create a post within 24 hours of hearing about it and then sharing it with us in our ProBlogger Challenge Group on FB on this thread. All week hundreds of bloggers have been creating some great posts and today I’m going to present you with a last post in the challenge that has the potential to share the love around our community a little. Before I tell you about today’s challenge…. I also quickly want to tell you about something that is happening in a couple of days time - we’re putting virtual tickets on sale for this year’s ProBlogger event. We hold an annual event for bloggers here in Australia each year and this year - by popular demand - we’re bringing back our virtual ticket so that those of you unable to get out to Australia can come along virtually and get all the amazing teaching we offer live attendees. Today my challenge for you is to create a piece of content that links to someone else’s content. A link post. One of the reasons I was first attracted to blogging was its collaborative nature. Blogs linked from one to another freely and regularly. We linked out when we were inspired by another blogger, when we agreed with another blogger, when we disagreed, when we wanted to encourage them and sometimes just to be useful to our readers. That was back in 2002 but since that time link sharing has gradually gone to other mediums more and more. Today more sharing of links happens on Twitter or Facebook but less so on blogs. This is possibly for good reason, but I sometimes fear that perhaps in losing the link post that maybe we’ve lost something as a community and maybe our readers have too. Benefits of Linking Out to Good Content You Didn’t Create: If you link to good stuff it serves your readers It can show that you’re well read and add to your own credibility It helps you to get on the radar of others that you link to - good things can come from that - great for networking If groups link to one another it can help to pass traffic around I’m told it can actually help your Search rankings if you link to quality sites Approaches You Might Take with Today’s Challenge: Write something inspired by another blogger Find a collection of things to link to on a common theme Create a “reading roundup” Another idea - why not head over to the FB Challenge Group and find a few articles from this last week to be the basis of your link post. Find half a dozen articles that are relevant to your niche or that you got some inspiration in and create a post based upon that. The key 3 things I would encourage you to keep in mind: Keep it relevant to your audience/topic/niche Make sure you link to quality content Add a little something of your own - tell people why they should read it, add a thought or two etc. This makes it unique and shows you’ve actually read what you’re linking to and have your own thoughts on the matter. The challenge: Challenge - create a link post. It could be a blog post, video or social media post Share it in our FB Group Check out some of the other link posts that others have created - encourage, support etc. Lastly - thanks SOOO much for this last week. I hope you’ve got back into the groove. I’m going to keep the FB group open for at least a few weeks and I’m thinking about doing some more of these in the future so may keep the group open. We won’t do them daily but maybe once or twice a month. I’ll run a poll in the group in the coming week or so to get you...