Link love or lazy links?

I’ve noticed that one of the prevailing types of posts in the blogosphere are link lists. You know what I’m talking about — where a blogger will simply list 2-5 links to other blog site’s blog posts. So here’s the question of the day — smart or lazy?

Here’s my general philosophy about marketing messages. Don’t make your consumers work any harder than they have to. Keep in mind, they are only marginally interested in what you have to say. All along, they are wondering "what’s in this for me?" and if you don’t answer the question pretty quickly, they will move on.

So my answer to the question posed above is it all depends. Some link lists are great. The author tells you why they think you’d find value in the link they are providing. Check out how Church of the Customer bloggers handle their links list. By reading the brief description, I know whether or not it’s worth my time to check it out. Genuine link love.

But, I’ve also stumbled upon plenty of lazy linkers out there. A laundry list of links with no explanation serves no purpose to your readers. If anything, it seems to me that the poster is simply either too lazy to actually write something and feels pressure to post or…even worse, they are trying to fake link love to get link backs. (We all know you shouldn’t fake it!)

Either way, your consumers are too smart. If you are linking for your own benefit — knock it off. If you’re linking to share great posts or give someone a well deserved shout out — then be sure to put a little meat on the bone for your readers so they can decide if its of interest.

Long term, if you don’t — they’ll self select you right out of the mix.