Mouthwatering Linkbait: Food-centric Ways to Gain ReadersHuman beings generally eat three times a day (though if you are anything like me, it might be a little more frequent than that). And when a person isn’t eating, chances are they are thinking about their next snack or what they’ll be ordering for their next meal. What does this have to do with linkbait? Actually, quite a lot. By tying your content into a food-related topic, you can satisfy two cravings at once: a person’s love of eating, and their love of funny/interesting articles.
Obviously, food-related linkbait would fit right in on a site about restaurants, cooking, or the culinary arts. But because food is such a pervasive, constant part of our everyday routine, you might be surprised at the number of ways food can tie into your linkbait topic du jour. Here are three simple reasons you should work edible endeavors into your next piece.
1. Draw in the foodies.
Here’s the thing about the internet these days: everyone’s a critic. And while that means that a lot of people are leaving crude YouTube comments to share their point of view about the latest Justin Bieber video, there are plenty of others who are passionate about sharing their opinions on food.
Whether it’s a review of the new restaurant in town or a recipe for their grandmother’s famous cookies, foodies are incredibly vocal and active in social media. When they see something they like, they will share it (and your traffic and search rankings will increase).
2. Create an allure for readers outside of your core readership.
Say you need to write a piece about the most boring thing in the entire world. Your idea of boring is probably different from mine, but if I had to write an article about deep-sea kelp harvesting, I think I’d fall asleep. But whip up an article like “X Foods You Didn’t Know Contained Seaweed”, and suddenly kelp-farming is a topic that seems relevant and pretty darn nifty.
Everybody eats. Not everybody cares about the same industries or hot button issues. Food-centric linkbait can bridge that gap, and draw in traffic from outside of your core base of readers. It’s hard to resist the allure that food has for us, so use that to your advantage.
3. Food is funny.
As I noted in a previous post, linkbait has the best possible chance of succeeding when it amuses or entertains. The simple fact of the matter is that there is a wealth of funny when it comes to writing about food.
Maybe you want to do a piece on the ugliest cakes ever made, or the most unfortunate mistranslations/typos on restaurant menus. Food is a goldmine of funny, and if your linkbait style tends towards the comedic, you should start thinking of some ideas related to dining or cooking.
In Conclusion
Tying your content into a food-related topic is a great way to build traffic, and challenge yourself to look at your topic of choice in a new light. You might be surprised at the direction you go in when you start thinking with your stomach. After all, I Can Has Cheezburger has very little to do with cheeseburgers. I’m just sayin’.
What are some of your favorite food-related articles you’ve read online? And what other benefits do you think food-centric content can have for growing and maintaining readers?
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Awesome article! I especially like the humor angle, it’s something I should work on. My blog posts (especially technical ones) may make even the most learned persons fall of their seat in boredom =(
Thanks for the tips! I’m gona go grab a shack =P.
Thanks so much for reading!
My concern with linkbait/viral marketing is that I believe it’s unlikely that people will click through to the main site and then buy something.
Certainly, in the case of the ugly cakes site, they are selling books of the ugly cakes, rather than, say, cakes themselves.
How do you suggest that you move a user on from the viral to the sales part of a site if it doesn’t directly relate?
That’s a great question, and an important point to cover.
I’d argue that 9 times out of 10, linkbait has no business trying to increase sales. Not only is it not a medium that is NOT conducive to making a marketing pitch, but power users in social media will ruthlessly downvote an article or IG that seem to have any kind of corporate bias or sales angle.
The real benefit of linkbait for potentially increasing sales comes less from an affiliate approach (ie links to product pages embedded in the body of the article), but in many cases has more to do with driving traffic, increasing pageranks, and just building brand awareness by word of mouth. That’s really why you need to have a multi-pronged approach to your social media campaigns. You need someone creating compelling content, a great team of people to promote that content and do blogger outreach, and a search team. Linkbait is just one tiny part of the puzzle.
I’ve always been taught that what people are really looking for online, at least when it comes to linkbait and other types of entertainment content, is that quality is what counts. When the quality is high, the results will be more likely to impress you. :)
LOL, anyway, that’s my two cents.
Awesome article! I especially like the humor angle, it’s something I should work on. My blog posts (especially technical ones) may make even the most learned persons fall of their seat in boredom =(
Thanks for the tips! I’m gona go grab a shack =P.
Thanks so much for reading! It can be really hard to make technical posts interesting (well, they are interesting, just perhaps not to the general reader), and so I tend to fall back on food and “the funny” to make it happen. :)