Linking to other blogs

Build good will; support great blogs & be more relevant

The web has many communities of writers, thinkers and creators. Blogging can be a way to interact with this community, as well as express thought-leadership. Linking to other blogs can build good will and be useful to your readers as well.

By participating in this way in combination with writing great content, you can participate within a community of thinkers, as opposed to living on an deserted island. By building good will online, you may forge new and interesting relationships within your industry. These alignments can be very useful for both parties.

Linking outwards to build relevance

• Find another blog article as support for an argument that you wish to make. Mention the blog author, create a proper citation and link to the post, as a reference. Consider sharing your post with the author on social media, most likely Twitter.
• Cite another blog article as an additional reference to your post topic.
• Critique a blog article fairly. Don't baselessly attack another author or poke fun of spelling mistakes. Instead, critique the concept and provide context for your argument. Keep the critique highbrow. Perhaps even identify or empathize with the stance of the author, but crave out your own perspective within a larger argument. This kind of intellectual discourse can be more productive and exciting than arguing with a single-mindedness that only offers a dead end for a relationship.
• Write a summary of a recent trend or event and use other blog articles as reference points. Provide links to those articles where appropriate in your own content.  Write about why you agree or like the post.
• Resources. Offering additional resources can be helpful to readers and build good will for your own blog.
• If you follow a blog, consider also following and retweeting the same author on Twitter.