Link blog pros & cons

My friend, colleague, and fellow blogger Dave Taylor wrote on March 7 about how he's finally "succumbed" and created a link blog: Dave Taylor's blog clippings

...A link blog is a way to use a weblog to share interesting links. There are lots of different ways to do it. For this weblog, I save links (with relevant excerpts or comments) in del.icio.us and then use an automated system to compile and post a daily roundup of links. (For instance, here's yesterday's link posting.)

Dave points out that while having a linkblog fulfills some needs (for him and, presumably, his audience), it's not exactly conversational -- especially in his case, since the tool he's chosen does not allow comments.

I shared my thoughts on linkblogs with Dave, and asked him to explain his linkblog rationale further....

Here's what I said:

Cool, Dave. Glad you're doing the linkblog thing.

I started doing this too a few months ago, but I took a different approach: I use del.icio.us as a link blog. But rather than have it on a separate site, I use that in a few different ways.

For Contentious, I use RSS-to-Javascript (a free tool) to run my feed into my sidebar, always showing the 5 most recent items as my recommended reading list.

I also use del.icio.us to track comments I leave around the web, and I run a feed from that into my sidebar on my other blog, The Right Conversation. I figured that would be appropriate since the focus of that blog is conversational media.

Finally, I use del.icio.us to feed linkblog-style postings to The Right Conversation and to my citizen journalism venture, I, Reporter.

Personally I like integrating the linkblog into my main blog this way, it works for me and it seems to work for my audience.

So why did you decided to sequester it all in a separate site? I'm not second-guessing you, I'm just curious about your reasoning.

We'll see how Dave responds, if he gets a chance.

There are other reasons to linkblog, of course. Like Dave, when I sit down to write I tend to put more into it than tossing off a couple of quick paragraphs. That means I don't blog daily. Yet every day I see, and bookmark (or Furl) cool stuff online that's worth sharing with my audience. I figured, since I'm saving it anyway, I might as well share it -- especially if doing so can be automated.

Of course, there is the self-serving angle: Daily (or near-daily) content does improve search engine rankings. Every online publisher, no matter how established, has to make a concerted effort in order to improve visibility. That includes me.

I'll never post a link just for the sake of having something -- anything -- to say. All of the links I post offer value; at least, I think so. That's why I always take a few seconds to use the comments field in del.icio.us to indicate the value or relevance of each link I post.

The way I handle my linkblog on this weblog (although not on Contentious) also means my daily link posts get included on my feed and get recorded in my blog's database. So all that content is accessible via Google and Technorati -- which means my site can potentially appear in more search result listings, which brings in more potential readers.

...Come to think of it, I haven't specifically asked my readers in Contentious or here in The Right Conversation what they think of my approach to linkblogging.

Do you like my link posts? Hate them? Scan them occasionally? Ignore them? Do tell! Please comment below.

Comments

[Kent Newsome]

I like them Amy. They lead me to good stuff that I wouldn't otherwise know about.

Link posts allow you to point to stuff you find interesting, but don't have the time or inclination to write a full post about.

[Dave Taylor]

Sorry to be unexciting, but the main reason I'm using a separate linkblog and it doesn't accept comments is because it's tightly integrated into Bloglines, which I'm now using as my RSS feed reader. I wish it WAS a bit more powerful and sophisticated, but "blog this" is a very easy-to-use button when I'm reading the latest buzz...

[Lumpy]

I like them. I use them at lumpyscorner.com for comments and my more recent del.icio.us postings. (I got the idea from contentious.)

I also use them at radiostatic.am to list the more recently featured musicians on the show and the more recent songs played. I really like the strong RSS features of delicious and how one can, even with almost no coding skill, easily pull material into a web design.

I alos use blogrolls for listing blogs. I like the fat that it allows one to create a description that will show on mouse over.