You Can't Build Relationships if You Always Interrupt...

I've explained in the past how much link building resembles relationship building. It's also fairly obvious that all forms of social media marketing require some level of relationship building. But what happens if your idea of relationship building is interrupting someone else's relationship building? Matt Bailey explains.

Matt goes on to share some examples of blog comments that include links.

It sounds simple enough, but links in blog comments can be a lot like the three examples above. Often the comments are left as nothing more than an excuse to link back to the commenter's own site.

That's fine, if the link really adds to the conversation, or if the commenter knows the original poster well enough to drop the link...but it shuts down conversation and turns off readers when the link drop harms the flow of conversation.

I've experienced this exact thing myself in the last week or two. There's a certain competitive web site that has been visiting one of my blogs and dropping links to their site. The unfortunate thing is that I was already linking to this site and had planned to feature more of their content down the road because I find it valuable. Unfortunately, the constant link dropping comes across as pushy and makes me hesitant to link to them.

Their pushy nature has damaged what could have been a strong relationships and a steady source of traffic and links.

So how are you doing when it comes to building relationships through blog comments? Are you the person that adds to the conversation, or have you become the "interrupter" in your eagerness to gain new links?