Why Aren’t You Linking Your Posts To Your Blog?

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Mar 28, 2011

There’s something going on these days that I really don’t understand. I’ll be on Twitter and I’ll see someone linking to a post or an article that they want to share. Since I know them, I click on the link to see what I’m going to be reading. However, instead of taking me directly to the article, it takes me someplace else where I now have to click on the link to read the article.

Sharing Dogs
by Richard Stine

I must be missing the point about blog directories or social sharing sites. Sites such as StumbleUpon or Digg or Amplify or Ping.FM or any of the others allow people to post links to them, kind of like Delicious. Then those sites help them build up readership or visits or traffic in some way, supposedly, because people are visiting those sites and reading one’s material through them.

Okay, I get that… kind of. I only use Delicious to post some of my articles, but I’ve never gone through a single article I’ve ever seen there. I have a Technorati account more for the tracking of blog performance than anything else, even though I’ve pretty much decided it’s a joke since their numbers don’t make any sense to me anymore. I’ve never known if I get any bounce through those sites or not. According to Google Analytics, almost nothing comes from those sites now, though I can’t say whether it’s always been the case.

However, what I don’t get is why someone would send a post to Twitter through those sites instead of just sending people to their blogs. Maybe for articles that they’ve posted that belong to someone else that aren’t on blogs it makes sense, but otherwise… someone will have to explain this one to me.

It works differently in a few other places. For instance, on both Facebook and LinkedIn you can post a link to your blog post but you’d be irritating everyone is you posted your entire post into either of those sites. As a matter of fact, you wouldn’t want to do it anyway because suddenly you’d have duplicate content; that’s never good. Even so, what good would it do me to post a link to a blog post of mine on Facebook, then go to Twitter or wherever and post the link to my Facebook account so people can only see the headlines there and click on the post so they can come here?

Nope, I’m missing it; I don’t get it. And I know some of you are doing this. So, if you’re not afraid to “out” yourself, can you explain to me how this benefits you?

Tags: blog directories, Blogging, Delicious, links to posts, social sharing sites, Technorati

16 Comments »

Gabriele Maidecchi:

I recently started to link out posts on my blog using StumbleUpon’s su.pr shortener. All it does is adding the SU bar on top of the post, giving you stats about stumbles and clicks it gets.
It’s, for now, just an experiment I am going though, to see what kind of benefits in traffic and clicks this might give to me, I read it somewhere (wish I remembered where, I will point you to the post if I find it again) and I decided to give it a go.
It’s not annoying ’cause it doesn’t really bring you to a “page-in-the-middle” as Delicious does.
I saw some other annoying example of what you say though. Sometimes, clicking a legitimate bit.ly link brings me to a totally different website, full of ads and banners, and with just an excerpt of the post I wanted to read, with a link to the full article which finally brings me to the blog itself. Now THIS is something I dislike.

Mitch Mitchell Reply:
March 28th, 2011 at 4:16 PM

The second thing is really the thing I hate, Gabriele. Like I said, bookmarking is okay because it might help to spread the news about your blog, but using it to then send people to the other site before your blog is irritating.

March 28th, 2011 | 10:09 AM

Evelyn Parham:

Hi Mitch,

You can now comment on my blog without any problems.

I actually have a few things set up to feed when my post goes live. The post only gets shared on Twitter via my Network Blogs of Facebook. I share links on both my Facebook personal page and Fan page. I think that’s all I do.

I never do what you mention in your post. At least I don’t think I have.

There is an option to share your post on Stumbleupon via Twitter, but I never do that, unless it’s someone else’s article. I also only stumble my articles when they are really informative. I know you’re probably thinking they should all be informative, which they are, but there are some posts, I’d rather not be stumbled at least not by me.

I’ve seen what you’re talking about and it can get on your nerves.

Mitch Mitchell Reply:
March 28th, 2011 at 5:13 PM

Wow, look at you Evelyn; thanks! Course, I’m not conceited enough to think you changed it because of me.

It seems like you’re of the same mindset as Gabriele and myself, that being that it seems unnecessary to include the middle man in trying to get our blog posts and anything else we care about out to the public. Of course, me being contrary like I can be at times, only belonging to one blogging social site (I don’t include Blogshares) instead of all of them might seem to hold me back some, but I don’t like the controlling nature of sites such as Digg, which I know has dropped lots of people who it suddenly determines it doesn’t like to play with anymore. Nope, not getting a shot at me.

March 28th, 2011 | 1:19 PM

Carl:

It is mostly related to the option “log in with facebook” or log in with twitter”, so for example article directory, blog search engine or social bookmarking site can be accessed with those accounts. As soon as you post there it goes automatically to Twitter or Facebook.

Mitch Mitchell Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 1:22 AM

You’re probably right in a way, Carl, but it’s kind of strange and irritating if you know what I mean.

Carl Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 8:13 AM

All of them are fighting to get more traffic, unfortunately some of those websites are even trying to access address books and contacts and sending invitations which is even more irritating.

Mitch Mitchell Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 2:39 PM

Oh yeah Carl, I never allow anything like that, even from LinkedIn. I will handle my own independent searches for people I know, thank you very much! lol

March 28th, 2011 | 9:48 PM

HI:

Carl says “It is mostly related to the option “log in with facebook” or log in with twitter”, so for example article directory, blog search engine or social bookmarking site can be accessed with those accounts. As soon as you post there it goes automatically to Twitter or Facebook.”

- the problem lies in having to login but also from a sharing point of view, if you have people on both facebook and also following on twitter, they see both things and it gets repeated. Managing that is almost as problematic in my view.

Mitch Mitchell Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 2:41 PM

I have to admit that’s not an issue I have all that often, or at least I haven’t paid any attention to it yet. I just think it’s not only irritating to have to follow more than one link to get to content you’re interested in but think a person has to be losing something by having their content going through other channels like that.

March 29th, 2011 | 9:41 AM

Alex:

Hello Mitch,

From what I understand I think there might be some of this cases:

1. They might be getting paid if they deliver traffic to that link (you know like adfly or something like that).

2. They might want to get more votes or pageviews on that network

3. They might want to gain some link juice from that network and they mass share that link in order to get indexed and they included by mistake twitter too.

4. I don’t know why .

Mitch Mitchell Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 3:20 PM

Actually I think you’re right on Alex, and I’d add a 5th; they didn’t know what was going to happen with what they were doing. I think many people start trying all this stuff out without really knowing what it’s going to do and thus it could be a lot of false links going out from many sources.

March 29th, 2011 | 1:00 PM

Mitchell Allen:

Ahhh, the benefits of tweeting old posts. I hope that my cavalier use of Facebook to reprint my blog posts doesn’t annoy too many people. I never gave it a second thought because, frankly, not everyone comes to my blog.

When the plugins do whatever it is they do, Facebook creates a Note. I usually get a few likes, if nothing else. Sometimes, I get full-blown commentary in the Facebook stream and that person will not come to the blog afterwards.

Interestingly, with Google Plus, I wonder if sharing is considered duplicate content.

Cheers,

Mitch

Mitch Mitchell Reply:
July 12th, 2011 at 2:14 AM

Mitch, my issue isn’t necessarily posting your content elsewhere. If I click on a link and I’m taken to content, I don’t mind so much. It’s when I click on a link and it takes me to a page where I now have to click on another link to read the content that I don’t get and I’m definitely irked. And I don’t see the real purpose for that because it seems like people are promoting another site rather than their own, then having people come to their site. I just don’t get it.

July 12th, 2011 | 2:02 AM

Val-Mom Chats:

I’ve come across quite a few tweet links that are going to FB THEN you can go to the blog post. That is a total fail in my book and annoys the crud out of me. Because when it opens to FB it’s the same message I just read on twitter. I think it’s a little lazy. You can set up programs very easily to auto post to your social media accounts separately.

I haven’t had an issue with it going to other sites first, but now that I typed that I’m sure it will come up lol

Mitch Mitchell Reply:
July 12th, 2011 at 2:15 AM

Thanks for your comment Val. You’re feeling my pain; I click on a link, just take me to the content and not a go-between. Kindred spirits are we! lol

July 12th, 2011 | 2:05 AM

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