The #1 Opportunity Most Link Party Hosts Miss

I have a love/hate relationship with link parties as a means of marketing your blog. As a new blogger I was super gung-ho about them, but as I learned more, I started to get the feeling the results I was getting from them weren’t all that meaningful to the mission of my blog. That said, I haven’t abandoned the idea altogether, and in this post, I’ll tell you why.

If you’ve participated in any link parties, you probably have learned that being a host most often is more productive for your blog marketing than being a partygoer. This is true for many reasons, the most obvious being the traffic that could potentially come to your blog on a regular basis to attend your party. Depending on your party’s rules, you might also benefit from more visibility for your posts or pages as a host than you would by just attending.

But that’s not all that hosting a link party could do for you, and it really surprises me that more link party hosts don’t take advantage of this opportunity.

The Secret Magic of Hosting

Did you know that whether you mean to or not, your link party is building you a list of people you can reach via email?

If you don’t know why this is important, ask anyone who knows anything about blog marketing and they could go on and on about the importance of building an email list. Now, granted, the people who attend your link party are not necessarily interested in subscribing to your blog and it would be unethical to subscribe them just because you have their email address… but that’s not to say that you shouldn’t send them a relevant article or two when you reach out to them to invite them to future parties!

And why would you not?

Case In Point…

My good friend Meredith over at Perfection Pending (one of my favorite blogs, btw) first introduced me to this idea, actually. She hosted (not sure if she still does, I know she isn’t blogging quite so frequently these days) a link party called Manic Mondays, for which she always kicked things off with one of her own awesome posts. Her reminder emails were always personalized and fun and they made me want to read her post, even if I didn’t link up at her party that week.

Brilliant, right? 

Having learned this great tip from her, on the IBA link party Social Media Saturdays, I always try to take advantage of the opportunity to send weekly emails by including with my reminder a link to a helpful (relevant!) article that I think that audience might be interested in. In the case of Social Media Saturdays, of course, I know that those people are interested in growing their following/presence on social media, so I keep that in mind when I choose articles to share with them. Sometimes they’re articles I’ve written myself, sometimes they aren’t. My first goal is always to provide them with something they’ll find helpful and fun to read.

Why Not Do It?

I still get emails from link party lists I opted into back in the early days and I always delete them, not because I think there’s anything wrong with the party, but just because I don’t have time to link up all that much anymore and I don’t find it particularly productive.

I also delete them because I know that all I’ll find there is a reminder of the party. However, if I had come to expect something extra, an interesting article I might not have known to read before, I might think twice before I deleted it!

Do you see how powerful this tip could be for you? Every link party attendee is a potential fan of your blog. Why not take that opportunity to capture a little bit more of their attention?

The Right (and Wrong) Way to Make This Work

Now, there are a couple of different ways you can make this work for you. First, the semi-sneaky way:

You can add them to an email list without an official opt-in. I’ve seen this done and never been particularly offended by it, but I’m sure there are people who are. Hosts just throw a little “you’ll be automatically added to our email list” clause as part of the outline of the party and the next thing you know, you’re getting emails.

Technically, I think this is only SEMI-sneaky because you are entering your email address when you attend the party, so you have to assume that the host will have access to it… but most link party attendees don’t really think about it that way. That’s why I highly recommend the second option:

Adding an email opt-in form to your party’s code.

This is better for two reasons: 1) You make sure that people actually do want to get your emails and thus significant decrease your risk of making them mad at you, and 2) You don’t have to go in and manually update your list each week.

In order to accomplish the first option, you’d have to export a new list out of inlinkz each week and check it for duplicates, etc etc, over time that can become a pain.

If you have an email opt-in form, though, it can feed directly into your email provider and you won’t have to worry about updating it.

Who Can Benefit from This?

Now, generally co-hosts don’t have access to the emails collected from any given link party. The person who runs the back end of the linkup process is the only one who can take advantage of this opportunity, of course, because that’s where all the emails are held.

Not currently hosting your own link party? Why not start one now? I use Inlinkz like crazy (you see it in several places on this site, I’m sure) and it’s incredibly easy to figure out if you have a few minutes to play around with it. I think it’s a great way to let readers share what they’ve been up to.

For a really low-maintenance linkup, I love using their new-ish “neverending linkup” feature, which lets you keep things open as long as you want– kind of a “set it and forget it” option. I use this format for the IBA blog directory as well as my faith-based linkup on my personal blog, Spiritual Sundays. You don’t see quite as much traffic this way, but if you don’t mind that and don’t have a ton of time to devote to it, I think it’s a great option. I always get a notification when someone posts a new article and I love learning about other people’s faith promoting experiences there.

What Do You Think?

What are your thoughts on link parties? Do you host them? Attend them? Think they’re a complete waste of time? I’d love to hear from you.

Are you ready to turn your blogging hobby into a career? Make sure you pick up my eBook, Top 10 Secrets of Successful Mommy Bloggers, available now on Amazon!