A potential linker to your website has power.
Linkbait, is all about the transfer of power.
She has the power to link to you, once you persuade her to link to you she has transfered that power to you.
She must surrender, to your pitch to induce her to link to you.
Linkbait is all about seducing the linker to link. The clever linkbaiter, the one who understands the psychology of his target will attack on two levels.
He must reasure his target’s fear of both loss and risk.The fear of linking to something that lacks integrity and exists only to get her link. The fear of linking to something that is false and lacking of honesty. In other words, she doesn’t want to be taken for a ride and also does not wish to be seen as being duped by a piece of linkbait.
But at the same time she must be excited, juiced up about the possibilities. She must think your content is so marvelous she says “oh yes”, in your attempt to get you a link. Something has to be offered to initiate this state of excitement.
Linkbait must reasure and excite.
Remove the negatives and create the positives.
Reasurance, the sense that she is in a place where she is valued and safe. Turn off the ads, make your content accessable, the design doesn’t have to be cutting edge but it must not be broke.
Don’t scream, a whisper is far louder.
Subtlety is called for. You must excite without needing to excite. Any whiff of desperation on your part that you want her link and bang! She is gone.
Signs that you are desperate will put her off. You must chase that which retreats, I talked about this in the Tao of Linkbait
If on the positive side you fail to create excitement,you will leave your target feeling nothing towards your content and she will simply leave your website, the smell of her presence the only thing which remains.
Emotion is what you need to inject into your reader. Even if it’s a negative emotion like anger or disgust it can be quite positive.
I have argued in the past that anger can be positive in that it can be an agency of change, but that’s another story.
Like an explosion in the brain, your itty bitty bit of linkbait must be detonated deep with the psyche of your target. This will provide the motivation for the initiation of the transfer of power.
Once you have been linked to, you have the power.
Doesn’t that power feel good?