This info was originally posted in Performancing's Hive Community (which you should join!)

What I usually do when I write a listbait is:

1) come up with headline (defines the concept)
2) brainstorm list until I'm exhausted
3) remind myself that this is not a mid-term exam
4) write 1 sentence per item in the list (the "justification" for each item)
5) remove any items I can't write 1 sentence for
6) pray that the sentence writing helped clarify my line of thought and jogs my mind for a few more items
7) Remove the chaff
8) Flesh out content with pics, videos, links
9) Identify a number
10) Refine the headline to fit the final content

In my view, the key to writing bait is not objectivity, but being comfortable with subjectivity and opinion. Strong, well-formed opinion that appeals to the emotions (or creates mental drama of some sort) is almost always the kind that performs the best.

Linkbait is content that has been created with the intent to draw backlinks. With writing, these types of articles usually require a significant amount of effort to complete as they are intended to be quite impressive and informative, and they usually require a great amount of research. It is a recently popular trend to write linkbait for blogs, and I have had plenty of experience with doing just that as it was my primary job back when I wrote for Mashable. Now here at Performancing, this post is essentially a guide for all of you future expert linkbaiters in the making, and I used (and still do use) this to create and evaluate all my previous linkbait as well.

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Wow, what a PR stunt!
British humor at its best.

Paddding lamp posts and draw lines on the pavement

• Pretend to be serious.
• Publish a study and people will jump on that 'scientific' train.

Classical PR linkbait by a classical company on a London road attracts classical media (and me). Kudos for that great and funny approach.

The scientific hook

Britain's first 'Safe Text' street has been created complete with padded lampposts to protect millions of mobile phone users from getting hurt in street accidents while walking and texting.

Around one in ten careless Brits has suffered a "walk 'n text" street injury in the past year through collisions with lampposts, bins and other pedestrians.

The 6.6million accidents have caused injuries ranging from mild knocks and embarrassing cuts and bruises through to broken noses, cheekbones and even a fractured skull.

Here is the full story: Brick Lane made Britain's first 'Safe Text' street with padded lampposts to prevent mobile phone injuries

What is the whole PR stunt good for?

From the about page of 118.com:

Text your question directly to us, you already know the number, its 118118, We’ll text you your answer back, each response only costs a pound.

Only one British pound...

Yesterday I unveiled my most successful linkbait ever. In less than 24 hours, across two days, the linkbait resulted in over 1.4 million pageviews. I learned something important in the process:

The best linkbait targets multiple niches and expands your audience.

Did you catch that? It's critical. The best linkbait will target a large audience that stands outside your normal audience.

So how do you create cross-niched linkbait? It's actually not that difficult. Start by writing a list of the most popular topics on the web:

• Humor
• Women's products
• Sports
• Celebrity
• Politics
• Music
• Television
• Religion
• Gadgets and Tech
• Dating
• Pets
• Cars

The list could go on and on, but you get the point. Now brainstorm how your specific topic might relate to each of these topics in a unique way. Let's say that you have a blog about dogs:

• 25 Funny Dog Quotes / 25 Hilarious Dog Videos
• 25 Ways To Dress Up You Dog / 25 Ways To Pamper Your Dog
• 25 Athletes and their dogs / 25 Famous Sports Dogs
• 25 Celebrities and their dogs / 25 Celebrities and the dog breeds they look like
• 25 Politicians and their dogs / 25 Ways That Politicians are like dogs
• 25 HipHop Artists and their dogs / 25 Dogs That Have Appeared In HipHop Videos
• 25 Famous TV Dogs / 25 Great Dog Commercials
• What 25 Religions Say About Dogs / 25 Things We Can Learn About Religion By Looking at Dogs
• 25 Funky Gadgets For Dogs / 25 Technological Advances That Have Made Dog Owning Easier
• 25 Ways Dogs Are Better Than Cats / 25 Pets and How Dogs will Relate to Them
• 25 Cars That Are Perfect For Your Dog / 25 Tips For Taking Your Dog On The Road

The great thing about cross-niched linkbait is that it not only targets a new audience, but it also gives you a great way to brainstorm new angles on your own niche. And if there's only one rule in social media it's this: create something uniquely interesting or funny and chances are you'll reap dividends.

Regular readers of Perfomancing probably already known what linkbait is: an article that for some reason generates loads of traffic social media sites and backlinks from other websites. Linkbait can arguably be divided into two categories: (1) useful and (2) novel/ interesting. Sometimes linkbait is both.

Seth Godin gives a nutshell, positive definition of linkbait that makes it sound easy and fun to do. And it can be. But look at the example that he gave, Web Trend Map 2008. Which category is it in? Is it actually useful? It's definitely novel, displaying popular websites clustered like stations in a subway map. But because of that very presentation, I don't really find the paradigm that useful. It's rather hard to absorb the map as a whole.

Subway maps are useful because a person using one is interested in getting to from point A to point B. They'll mentally filter out all the distractions - i.e., all the other subway stations. This Web Trend Map cannot really be used for analogous purpose because there's no real-world physical relationship for the clusters, so it might be hard for some people to follow.

My point is that it's easy to come up with web content that give the semblance of "linkbait" but isn't really.

Now at the time of writing this, the map itself only has five diggs at Digg. Will it get more? Do you think it's effective linkbait?

Don't force your content into the mold of a social media user base in exchange for a quick fix.

Lots of blogs are going in the wrong direction by building gimmicky linkbait designed to push the buttons of Digg users. Gimmicky linkbait is a waste of time and resources in exchange for a quick fix - the rush of traffic over the course of 2 days. Instead, you should be building strong, solid resources that will stand the test of time and establish your site as an authority.

The fact of the matter is that Digg is no longer the guaranteed linkbuilder it used to be. Sure, you'll get lots of links from Digg accounts and lots of links from Digg syndicators and lots of links from duplicate content. But that's not really the best kind of linkage. What you really want is for other sites in your niche to notice you and to view you as a credible source of information.

Digg should be secondary in your linkbuilding plan. It's not that Digg is bad, but you shouldn't shape your content around the Digg user base while alienating or ignoring your own user base. Instead, put a lot of time into building the best, most interesting resources in your own niche. And only as an afterthought consider whether it might do well on Digg. Even if it isn't the kind of content that would do well on Digg, it will probably do well on Stumble...maybe Reddit...and maybe Mixx (a new favorite of mine).

So the basic principle is this: think long term with your linkbuilding plans. Build content and resources that will be soaked up by other fanatics in your niche.

Let social media follow your content, and not the other way around.

As social media marketers, one of the most common questions we get about linkbaiting and social media promotion is this:

My niche is boring and / or non-technical - how do I turn it into something popular and linkable?

Last week I stumbled across a Wikipedia article that was, despite its dry (and boring) subject matter, doing quite well on Digg.

The article in question is this introductory piece on Montessori. You might want to take a few minutes to go through the article and figure out any angle that would make it interesting to the average Digg user. My best idea (and this was after reading the Digg link) was about how the Montessori system was a cover for brainwashing little children and sapping their creativity.

Paranoid delusions apart, I strongly doubt that my spin would have done better than this take:

Monetessori Method, the educational system of Google founders.

It is, for lack of a better term, f'n brilliant.

Instead of forcefully making a boring topic appear interesting, this digg user took something that would guarantee attention (Google founders) and related it to a quite uninteresting topic. The result is a Digg headline that probably got enough *blind diggs* to make it popular and it ended up getting 562 diggs (as of writing this article).

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Google's rumored (and now confirmed) purchase of FeedBurner has gotten plenty of press, but for all the wrong reasons. While everyone is weighing in as to whether the purchase is more about mindshare or monetizing RSS feeds, there has been very little said about the implications of this move on the future of SEO in general and link building specifically.

Now that this deal has gone through, Google has gained access to millions of pieces of user-data which collectively is a very reliable separate indicator of user preferences. Coupled with their SE algorithm, these RSS subscriber figures will provide Google with a set of end-user preferences which is far more comprehensive and thus difficult for SEO's to game.

For example, if a site has a top-notch backlink footprint but less than a dozen feed subscribers it's a certain red flag to GOOG that the site might not be as trustworthy as its backlink profile suggests.

If Google is planning on incorporating feed subscription figures and Google Toolbar browsing data to go along with with a site's backlink footprint into SE rankings, we're going to be looking at an entirely new and far more complex game for SEO's and traditional "link builders".

While this change, if it occurs at all, is still six months out, now is the time to start considering the implications of this shift and how it will affect ranking strategies. I can think of a few things we're likely to see the day after this shift in the algo is made public:

+TLA Feeds - "Publishers rent out your RSS subscriptions"

+PayPerTraffic - "Rent regular traffic by users with active Google Toolbars"

+Accessibility becomes a more central component in SE rankings as having your site render properly in obscure browsers means more feed subscribers.

+Under the table RSS subscription rings replacing Social Media voting rings

+Every Webmaster switches their RSS feed to Feedburner

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but as I see it, those of us that make a living off of ranking well are about to have to step up our game.

Reading Ahmed's recent blog reboot reminded me of something I've wanted to do for a while. From here on out, I'll be highlighting one of the many timeless Performancing articles from founders such as Nick Wilson and Chris Garrett.

The post that first drew me in as a Performancing reader was Nick Wilson's The Art of Linkbaiting. Nick's main point in the article is that if you want to succeed at linkbait, you need a hook.

The fact is, if you want to succeed on the web with white hat principles, you need to give people what they want. Not only do individual linkbaits need hooks, but your entire site needs a hook. You should always aim to differentiate your site and offer something interesting or useful to your site visitors; something they can't get anywhere else.

At the end of the day, hooks only work when they are original, interesting, substantial or useful. Top 100 lists work better than top 4 lists. But a top 100 list that borrows 98 items from another list just doesn't cut it.

Be the first to get the scoop on the Barack Obama Sex Scandal and you're golden, but tell me that Bush is the worst president in American history....well, I agree, but I'm snoozing.

Give me a simple but extremely useful web app that works 99% of the time and I'll use it, but give me a powerful but bloated web app that only works 25% of the time, and I'll go somewhere else.

So what's your hook? How does your site differentiate itself and get people's attention?

And that, is why you wont here me say "linkbait" on this blog anymore. A term invented way back in 2004 to describe really cool, linkable content has become synonymous with "dirty tactics" -- bugger that, time to kill this term dead.

Well said Loren.

Brian is holding a vote on the term linkbait. Despite being largely credited with inventing that term, I have to agree with Brian, and others that it absolutely sucks in terms of image. It gives all the wrong impressions and as I recenlty wrote in my article for Danny Sullivans SearchEngineLand: 2007 Guide to Linkbaiting the SEO industry in general needs to step up to the plate and stop continually sabotaging any chance it might ever have of a good reputation.

Get over to Brian's and vote it down!