Linkbaiting is basically the art (or sometimes dark art) of creating something that makes people want to click, share, link, or react. At its worst, it’s cheap headlines engineered purely to drag people in, usually with loaded words like “secret”, “urgent”, “shocking”, or a suspiciously neat number in the title.
At its best, though, linkbaiting is just a good hook. Something useful, interesting, funny, controversial, or timely enough to make someone stop what they’re doing and pay attention.
Years ago, I admit it, I turned very slightly to the dark side and did a little bit of baiting myself. In my defence, it was only an experiment. Also in my defence... it worked.
This was back when I worked for a small independent software vendor, and we wanted to get more database administrators onto the website. We had something relevant for them, a short free guide, and the business sold ODBC and JDBC drivers, so it wasn’t a random audience we were chasing. These were exactly the sort of people who might one day need what we offered.
I could have gone into forums and started pushing links around, but that would have felt clumsy. I had no relationship with those people, and if some stranger had dropped into a discussion with a salesy link, most of them would probably have ignored it. Fair enough too.
Instead, I used LinkedIn.
The 1st step was the bait. I slightly amended my LinkedIn profile so it clearly mentioned that I worked with a business developing ODBC and JDBC drivers. Nothing too heavy, just enough that if the right person landed on my profile, they would understand what we did. In truth, that’s still a useful tip today: your LinkedIn profile shouldn’t just say what your job title is, it should give the right people a reason to be curious.
We also made sure the free guide for database administrators was easy to find on the company website. That bit mattered. There’s no point drawing people in if they land on a page that gives them nothing useful.
Then came the simple bit. I searched LinkedIn for database administrators and visited their profiles, one by one.
LinkedIn, being LinkedIn, would then show some of those people that I had viewed their profile. Some would ignore it, of course, but others would naturally click back to see who I was. When they did, they saw the short mention of ODBC and JDBC drivers, and from there a small number clicked through to the company page or website.
That was the whole tactic.
It wasn’t clever in a “look at me, I’ve cracked the internet” sort of way. It was just curiosity, relevance, and timing. The people I viewed were people with a genuine professional connection to the thing we offered, and the thing we offered them was at least potentially useful.
Would I describe it as pure linkbait? Probably. Would I describe it as spam? Not really, because the targeting was relevant and there was something useful at the other end. That distinction is important.
Good linkbait shouldn’t trick people. It should catch their attention, then reward that attention with something worthwhile. A free guide, a useful article, a proper answer to a common problem, or even just a genuinely interesting point of view.
The lesson from that little experiment is still true. You don’t always need a huge campaign to get attention online. Sometimes you just need to understand where your audience already spends time, give them a small reason to notice you, and make sure there’s something useful waiting when they do.
That’s the bit too many people miss. The bait gets the click, but the value is what makes the visit matter.
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