There’s no doubt that a picture is worth a thousand words. We’ve heard it time and time again. As you will notice that on a lot of social networking sites, top ‘dugg’ articles are simply images. They take the same “link baiting” approach, but instead it is applied to images.
Here’s one of the top dugg articles on Digg.com today (08/14/2007 @ 11:03AM Arizona Mountain Time) with over 416 diggs. This is a clear example of the comedy approach in link baiting. The linked to image is just a hand drawn comic created by an internet user (most likely using MS Paint). The comic is so simple, yet it makes people laugh. It made someone’s day, so they’re going to blog about it. In return, the viewers dugg it.
[edit: by the time this article was completed, this article moved from the first page to the second, and almost doubled it’s hits in less than 2 hours]
Another way to get link bait by using images through implementing the “news” approach (posting “top secret” or “just released” photos).
For example: Before the launch of the xbox 360, there were insider photos on what the console was going to look like.
Social networking website users want to know the news first; especially when it comes to tech toys. News is one of the fastest spreading link bait approaches. Problem is they are harder to come by.
It is relatively easy to see the benefit of link baiting through the use of images. Especially in the first example I posted (comedy approach).
Even pointless images, such as the one dugg below, gets some love from the digg kids.
A few of the pros consist of:
- Cheap to create
- Quick to make
- Easy to post
- Fast to view
- A pleasure to blog about
So if you run into writers block, take a step back and think of a different way you can occupy your time. Grab your readers attention by creating a image link bait post. You will be surprised at how fast you get noticed. Just don’t forget to mention in the title that an image is present. That approach seems to work best.
Author: Melinda Roberts
Leader of the Phoenix Search Engine Optimization department at obu Web Technologies
Imagebait