Max,
You've missed your calling in economics. Stephen Dubner would be proud. I agree completely that one's work is enhanced through links to other sources. It's the beauty of the Internet (http://tinyurl.com/yw8co3).
It makes perfect sense that the more magnanimous (generous) the journalist is, the more esteem he'll build for his work, which naturally translates into repeat and sustained traffic.
I just wonder how linking away affects that measure of time spent on the site, and what studies exist that support your statement that "the opposite is true."
Peter, thanks for the link to my column!
Regarding the counter: "...there's one potential (non) sticking point that may put the kabosh on this Utopian PR request: by including lonks to other sites, the journalist could in effect take the reader away from his/her site, which doesn't help much on the stickiness scale."
...I don't buy that for a second -- in the age of the link, the opposite is true. As I noted, giving a link is to offer more transparency, more valuable information and better usability. It's also a sign of confidence and an acknowledgment that most of the good content on the Web doesn't reside in any single place, but elsewhere and outward. The link IS value and will actually increase stickiness AND bring people back. Just consider the world's most valuable media company, Google. 99.9999999999% of its revenues come from linking -- err, sending people away. But they just keep coming back because those links are so high quality.
Thanks,
Max
Ed --
That was a time when I actually had time to troll and comment on other posts. Thoe days are numbered. Business is brisk.
Ike,
Thanks for your always thoughtful comments. I hadn't thought about provoking more response (versus providing a relatively complete take on a subject).
I value both your insights and will pay close heed.
peter
Peter, I'm a full-on, paid-up admirer of your blog but I thought you were above link baiting!
http://bloggingmebloggingyou.wor...t-was/
#comments
Let me tell you that you are not alone - I have another client who writes brilliantly insightful posts that draw significant mainstream media attention but that can't seem to attract those all-important incoming links.
Ed
Well, at least you're still ahead of me...
I can hazard one guess for your case, and that is completeness. You tend to cover just about every nook and cranny of an issue, and tie it all together with thought and aplomb. And in doing so, you very rarely engage your readers to participate.
Questions don't have to be of the blatant "What do YOU think?" variety. I tried posting that at the bottom a few times just to get a baseline response rate. But when done in a subtle fashion it reaps big engagement. (EX: "I'm not sure what causes the _______ effect, but it might have something to do with...") That's an invitation to engage.
Now, as to your voluminous linking. It's great from a journalistic perspective, but I rarely click out when I'm in my RSS reader. So I end up missing a lot of context that you are drawing from those articles. Many of your links are a single word, like "treasonous," "propagate," and "hoax" from the previous post. Without giving me a little more context, you are forcing me to click away or assume I read the same things you did.
If you were to conversationally give context to those links, the reader might subconsciously give you more credit for adding value to the links. And once people have stronger thoughts about you being an original source, they are more likely to link to YOU instead of directly to the links you have discovered for them. Others will link to you more readily if they feel like you're giving them something other than links.
Snark and dopey opinion are shortcuts, original thought and observation are the long-haul strategy. You are clearly the latter, it's being blocked by too much Professor Himler and not enough Peter. Leave 'em something more to think about...
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