Myself and three others (Play Dough & Popsicles, Raising Little Superheroes, Books and Giggles) recently launched our first blog link party, Made for Kids, and had great turnout our first week!
I have had a few people ask me what we did to have a successful launch, so I thought I would spill our secrets here for making our link party launch successful and maintaining that momentum.
First off, I want to thank all the bloggers, who link up and make the link party successful. We have so many wonderful bloggers linking up fantastic projects. It makes it difficult to choose a feature each week.
Launching a successful link party can be done, but it takes a lot of work and time. We chose to put in the extra time and effort in order to start off with a good momentum.
1. Choose a good topic.
We chose a topic that was not heavily saturated with link parties already, but had broad appeal. Made for Kids is a place for bloggers to link up kid friendly crafts, activities, and recipes. It is a topic we are all passionate about and relates to our blogs.
2. Make a “coming soon” graphic.
Play Dough and Popsicles designed a “coming soon” graphic. You can see it here.
3. Write a post announcing the link party and share across social media.
A couple of us wrote blog posts announcing to our readers that we were launching a link party two weeks before the launch date. The biggest benefit of this post is that it gave us a link to attach to the image when we promoted it across social media. Included in the post was a box to sign up for an email reminder on the day the party would go live.
4. Post the “coming soon” graphic in Facebook groups.
We posted the announcement in Facebook groups for bloggers. We are all part of several Facebook groups. There are two Facebook group specifically for link parties: Inspired BN Promos! Link ups! and More! and Blog Hops and Link Parties . We post in these two each week. We also posted the announcement in several other groups by asking bloggers, who run successful link parties to give us tips. Not only were we promoting our party, but we also gathered great feedback. Finally some of our groups have weekly threads dedicated to link parties and we make sure to get our information on those threads.
5. Post in Facebook groups again when the party is launched.
The night of the launch, we announced the party again in all of our blogging related Facebook groups. We continue to share it weekly in the two groups mentioned in #4 and in link party Facebook threads.
6. Tweet links from the party inviting others to link up.
Our party goes live at 10pm Est every Sunday night, so later that night or on Monday morning, we choose some favorites from the party and tweet the link up straight from the inlinkz link up tagging the person who linked up the project. We continue to do this until the party ends. We use our hashtag #made4kids so people can easily find us and we can retweet each other’s tweets.
7. Link up the party at other link parties.
We link up the party at our link parties. Most do not allow you to link up other link parties, but there are some that do not have any rules about link parties. Be sure to read through the link party’s rules.
8. Comment on other blogs inviting them to the party.
We visit other link parties and link up our posts. After we link up our posts, we identify linked up posts that would work for our party and visit their blogs. We leave a genuine comment about their post and invite them to link up at our party. W
9. Share linked up posts on Instagram and Facebook.
We each chose one linked up post and share it on Instagram and/or Facebook with a link back to the party, tagging the person who linked it up.
10. Send an email reminder.
We send out an email reminder to everyone, who linked up previously when the party goes live each Sunday.
11. Send a tweet inviting bloggers to the link party.
Books and Giggles created a spreadsheet to record the twitter handles of all who link up. We divide these handles and send out a reminder tweet once the party goes live.
12. Create a Pinterest board.
We created a Pinterest board and pin several favorites each week from the party. We have a direct link to that board on the link party post making it easier for bloggers and readers to follow the board.
If you have a link party resource page, we would love for you to add our text link or button.
