The problem with link posts

Redesigning your website provides an opportunity to take stock and think about what you’re doing. You get to look at what works well and what doesn’t, and assess whether your approach is still appropriate.
As you know, I’ve just done all that. And after some highly scientific bonce-bending (thinking), I’ve decided to stop publishing link posts.

Now don’t get me wrong, I like link posts. I think that they’re a smashing way to make people aware of other great articles and writers on the web. By linking to and quoting someone else before adding my own commentary, I believed that for the most part, I was adding to a wider conversation. But alas, not always.

The flip side of link posts is that they can quickly become an easy way to publish regularly, but with little thought. If you don’t have time to consider a subject properly, you can simply post a link to someone else’s work, add a quick sentence or a couple of words of your own, and feel like you’ve gotten away with it.

But I’m not comfortable with that. It feels like a waste of everyone’s time. If I’ve got something to say, I should take the time to say it properly. And if that time isn’t available, I should wait until it is. So that’s what I’m going to do.

No more link posts, only proper articles. Some may be long, some may be short. But they’ll all have substance and that’s what matters.

There’s nothing wrong with short posts that function primarily to send your readers to information or opinions elsewhere. However, if that becomes the bulk of what you do with your website, I think that something may be wrong.

Because while responding to or commenting on other people’s work is great, it’s always better to be the first with something to say.