James from Semvironment created a plug in to automatically email webmasters you link to from within Wordpress blog posts. When he launched it, the opening post sent me an email

Hi! We linked to your website in our post: Link Builder for Wordpress – Download it Now!. Please stop by and check it out, subscribe to our blog and if you find something useful on our site or blog – we would welcome a link back anytime … no obligation – we’re happy to link to high quality websites and blogs like yours! To your continued success, [Your Name Here]

That link was broken (pointing to a revisioned archive version of the post before the URL changed), but even beyond that I sorta do not like the idea. Why? Automated communications is the enemy of relationship building. And the worst people to offend are the people you find interesting / important / influential enough to want to talk about them. You can get the person’s attention just as easily by clicking the link in the post a dozen times and by commenting on their blog. And most of them would even be up for lending their time to you if you stoke their egos.

As more people start using a wider array of automated link building tools the effectiveness of automation will drop. And you can’t train an automated tool to be personal. A tool like this might work in some verticals for a year or two, but if people find it effective look out for the tragedy of the commons to be heading toward your inbox some time soon!

Continue Reading: Wordpress Automated Email Link Building

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