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When we think of readers, we immediately think of commenters. Then we look at our stats and see that there are way more readers than commenters – a ratio of 500:1 is not uncommon at all. So who are our readers?
There is a set of people whom we often do not identify as readers and yet we know so much about them. Those are the bloggers who link to us. I suspect subconsciously we do not think of them as readers; we slot them into the category of “fellow bloggers.â€
But how lovely when they appreciate and acknowledge us! Just this morning, after posting our latest edition of Canada 9-5 – a blog carnival for Canadian business bloggers – we received a little comment from Evan, one of the people featured in that post. Believe it or not, when I saw his simple, brief note of appreciation first thing after waking up – it made my morning!
So, yes, I’m linking back to him right here because he made me happy.
Currently, I write for two blogs and contribute guest posts here and there; that’s an average of 10 posts a week. A big portion of the time spent on these posts goes into identifying good links and of course all the little technical bits of actually putting the link in. So you can write one sentence in a few seconds but as soon as you add a link, it can turn into 20 minutes! Now multiply that by two to three links per post … (I’m just using myself as an example here; I know people who link even more than I do.)
Bloggers who link to us, then, are readers who have put quite a large amount of effort into that connection. They are people who have read our blogs, selected us out of hundreds of other bloggers, and gone to the trouble of placing a link to our post. They deserve a thank-you!
There are many ways to thank these people. One way that I really enjoy is how Urban Monk does it, who often adds a paragraph or two at the end of his post where he thanks people who have linked to him – here’s an example.
And talking about gratitude – I’d like to thank Ronald for inviting me to guest post here. I hope this contribution is the first of many.
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Thank you for the link isabella! Glad you like the way I do it
Thank you to Ronald for hosting her guest post as well.
Isabella, that’s a really good point about the time someone spends on you when they link to you and really does reinforce the fact that we need to find a better way to do inter-blog linking than trackbacks.
What an appreciable first guest post you’ve put together, Isabella. Well done. I’m glad you mentioned that it takes time to find and add those links, I was beginning to think that I’m the only slow blogger that takes hours to put a post together (and I don’t even link out too much).
You’re right – as bloggers we don’t need that much – links in and comments will always make our day, and some of them will even turn out readers into our friends
Andrew, I’m with you on better inter-blog linking methods. I’m still confused with those trackbacks – some don’t appear at all, some are showing up in my moderation queue many months later.
I caught a post last night just before going to bed that showed how to implement Gravatars without a plugin. On a whim, I wrote about it on WeblogToolsCollection (all you WP users probably have it in your dashboard) and the post exploded with comments. I’m sure the guy I linked to wasn’t expecting it, but I was pleased that the community liked the post.
Linking is indeed a powerful tool if done right and done well. Thanks for the excellent post Isabella.
Hello there, @UrbanMonk, @InspirationBit and @Ronald. Good to be among friends!
And great to meet you, @Andrew! I caught your comment just before I was heading out the door this morning and it’s been rattling around in my head ever since. How to improve inter-blogger communication? Here’s an idea.
How about editable ping/trackbacks? A little window could pop up saying, “We will notify the following bloggers that you have linked to them. The ping/trackback will look like this, would you like to edit it?” That would give us the opportunity to eliminate the ugly, context-poor nature of ping/trackbacks.
Isabella, I’m glad I’ve caught your imagination.
Unfortunately, the majority or trackbacks are actually pingbacks, and these work quite differently, making it not quite that simple.
I have written a plugin that does this but it is a bit of a hack, and so not really ready for consumption. I’m not sure it ever will be.
@Andrew,
That’s the way the majority of my plugins/hacks are. Ready for production, but not really ready for consumption
@Isabella,
I’ve mentioned this to Andrew before, but I really like his idea of context-specific Trackbacks/Pingbacks. With Ajax Edit Comments (the plugin hosted here), one can easily edit Trackbacks/Pingbacks to be in context. However, what blog-author wants to go through the trouble?
I agree with Andrew. The current implementation of Trackbacks/Pingbacks is simply not good enough for the concept of reader appreciation.
Hey Isabella, it’s nice to see you’re writing here! Welcome!
Indeed, the linking part is the most time consuming of all, but it surely feels good when people appreciate the links and respond. It is true that the opposite also applies: when I link to somebody who usually thanks everybody in such cases, but ignores my link, I feel bad. I realize that there may be lots of reasons for this, and that I may do the same thing without even knowing it, but still it makes me feel bad.