The Fine Art of Saying “No.” Series:
How to Refuse a Link
Photography by Zesmerelda
Maya Norton, who maintains a blog about Jewish philanthropy, asked for my suggestions on a situation every blogger and webmaster has struggled with at some point.
Have you ever been approached by someone who has, to borrow Maya’s words, “a little too much chutzpah or asks things of you which do not honor the integrity of your blog content?”
In a series of four posts, with a staggered release over the next few weeks, I’ll be providing suggestions for dealing with a number of sticky situations:
- You’re asked to link to content you don’t want to link to.
- You’re asked to add a site to your blogroll/links you don’t want to.
- You need to refuse a request for advice, or a favor, or a review.
- You receive a guest-post submission that doesn’t fit with your blog.
In this post, I want to deal with the first scenario: how to refuse an unsolicited link or a reciprocal link offer without putting a reader offside.
Scenario:
#1
Someone contacts you out of the blue suggesting that you link to something they’ve written. You don’t believe your audience will find value in the content.
#2
Someone contacts you to say they’ve linked to something you’ve written. They’d like you to do so in return, but you don’t think their content will be appreciated by your audience.
Solution:
#1
This doesn’t bother me so much, as it’s audacity in practice: unfortunately, the audacious person hasn’t been able to back up their courage with quality or well-targeted content.
Another important point to remember: anyone who has emailed you is, at least, a first-time visitor to your site. They may be a semi-regular reader. They could even be a loyal reader. Therefore, it’s always better to keep them onside, if you’re able.
Despite this, there is a strong reason why capitulating to their request is not in your interests. Your readers not only judge you by what you write but by what you recommend to them. Every link you drop is a recommendation, and a badly chosen link will waste their time and make it seem as if you have poor taste.
Your only option is refusal, but how to do so without putting the person offside? The problem can be even trickier if you operate within the same niche, meaning you’re likely to share a readership.
My advice: Because is a powerful word. Simply saying no will leave the other party feeling as if you’ve been unfair to them. As far as they’re concerned, there’s nothing wrong with the content. If they thought it wasn’t their best stuff, they wouldn’t have pitched it to you.
Politely explain why you’ve chosen not to link to the content. Approach this like a short review you’d give to someone who you didn’t know. Point out what you like and what could be improved. If the content isn’t well-targeted to your readership, explain why.
Don’t patronize them. Don’t let any annoyance you feel seep into what you write. If the content is not up to standard, keep in mind that the person is probably only learning how to blog. The language you write in may also not be their first language.
If you can provide them with constructive criticism, rather than a rejection out of hand, the exchange will be positive for both of you. The other person can’t blame you, because you’ve demonstrated why it is the content that is the sticking point.
A note: Many bloggers and webmasters are actually starved for help and advice. They read metablogs, but metablogs can only ever speak in general terms, and many readers of metablogs struggle to see how this general advice can be implemented on their own, unique site. They crave constructive advice and criticism tailored to them.
You might worry that you’ll offend the other person with your feedback. Instead, you may be pleasantly surprised when you receive a positive and thankful response.
#2
This scenario can seem a little manipulative, though it’s rarely intended to be. It reminds me of those who offer to clean your windshield at traffic lights for a fee. If you’re not interested, they’ll clean them anyway, and try to guilt you into payment afterward — for a service you never wanted in the first place!
I’m certain, though, that there are no bad intentions behind it: we’ve all made mistakes when trying to build our sites, and we may all have used tactics that we’ve come to regret later.
While a link, like a clean windshield, is nice, it’s unfair to be expected to repay this in some way, particularly when the link is not something you want to recommend to your readers.
My advice: In this case, I don’t think you need to talk about the content at all. Tell the other person that, while you appreciate the link, your own link policy is to link without ulterior motives. Tell them that you’ve decided not to participate in any reciprocal link exchanges, regardless of who approaches you, and that you’d give the same answer to anyone that asked.
I believe this approach works well because it, once again, depersonalizes the exchange. It’s not you vs. the link giver, it’s all potential link givers vs. your objective links policy. The link giver doesn’t feel singled out, nor do they feel you’ve rejected them on the basis of their content.
Skellie, good insight into this. I have written other bloggers before, just to ask a question of them, nothing long but a simple question.
Silence.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves. Just as you say, take the time to not criticize, but offer a nice explanation to them. Chances are they will at least be in a positive light that you responded.
Now, about that link back to that article on dog grooming… :)
A very nice read, although I must admit that I have never had either one of the problems, yet. I only re-launched my site two weeks ago and am slowly picking up the pace again.
One question that I do have—which is vaguely related to this post—is how you would decide on the frequency that you link to people. I tend to publish links in a sidebar blog (sidenotes) and they seem to fill in the time that I do not post regular blog posts.
However, these links essentially drive visitors away from my site and they cannot comment on them? So too many of them could possibly hurt your blog! Where do you think the balance lies?
What if there are links to your site that are of good quality, but are not the main theme for your site? My blog focuses on Blog Marketing, but I have a friend who is very valuable therapy work and has valuable information on her site for patients who may be at the last stage of cancer, and I am linking to her sites to create awareness.
Could I create a separate section of “other sites of interest” to separate her site from those focused on the topic of my theme?
During my early days of blogging, I was gung-ho about exchanging links. Nowadays, it depends on whether the links are relevant to my site. I do agree with your points above and we need to choose our words carefully when we are of the view that it is not in our interest to link to those who requested for it. One thing is for sure, there is no need to be rude.
By the way, I noticed your subscriber count at 945 today. I knew it’ll breach 1000 by year end :D
You are absolutely right that every blogger will eventually have to deal with this issue. Thanks for addressing it!
Great article, Skellie. Thanks. Many people run into big problems in their every day work - even away from working online - by being not able to just say “no” to other people dropping their work on ones desk.
I´ve been through several years before I learned to say no and have now written an article about it to share my experience. It´s here: Learning to Say No
Maybe, you like it.
I think sometimes we new bloggers don’t have the guts to say no because we are scared of making the visitors gone and never come back as traffic is really important for new blogs.
I guess providing tailor-made advises and consultation might help to make the reader come back and let him/her have the sense of kindness from you which will in turn make him/her come back for more.
Nice post on this issue, Skellie.
Thanks, Skellie. :)
Perhaps I’m accidentally offending people, but I don’t really see this as a problem. I link to people that I want to, if someone sends me an idea with a link and I want to take part then I do so, and if I don’t want to link to them, then I don’t. I try to think about what I would want to hear, sometimes I ignore people, but I generally check out what they are proposing first.
Great idea for a series Skellie. I never was good at saying “no,” but I’m learning that I have to.
There is one situation that I’d really love your advice on:
Someone emailed me about translating my articles into Russian. On the one hand, opening up the advice to a whole new group of readers is great.
On the other hand, he was doing it all on a separate blog, and monetizing it. The only work he was doing was doing was translating…. (And I’m suspicious that he just used a free translator, because the links were still in English. But I don’t speak Russian, so I can’t prove it. xD )
And to top it all off, I’m not sure that he listened to my reply any ways…
Those are some great tips Skellie, although apparently simple saying “no” to someone can be a bit of a hassle. Although it’s at your discretion to choose what content and links go and what doesn’t, a good blogger has to know how to politely refuse. I always try to keep my negative responses as motivating as possible :D.
Is not replying at all a good thing? I’d like to know your input.
Skellie, I am serious, not long and Feedburner will have to widen their FeedCount boxes because of you. Seems I have become a loyal reader now, if I would not dislike the word I would say I am a fan of your blog.
Thanks, I am sure I am not the only one to say, your writing is brilliant and the content has real valuevalue, not only for blogging bloggers but for anybody who runs a website.
Bernhard
What about when they blatently copy and paste your blog post on their blog?
So many opportunities to say no…
I have a standard response to link requests: I’m sorry, but I don’t do link exchanges. However, I’m always happy to discover a new blog!
Then I go visit the blog, and often (usually) leave a comment.
Then I decide whether to add it to one of my blogrolls. Or not.
I *like* sending folks to other places, so that’s not a problem for me — but I want to send them to other *good* places.
[...] The Fine Art of Saying “No.” Series: How to Refuse a Link - Skelliewag [...]
What I think that I would do if I wanted big people like you to link to me/add me is this:
Hey, I admire your work, love your blog. I want to know if–when you get time–you could take a few moments to look at these;
http://genuinechris.com/2007/11/09/pouring-my-heart-into-itan-open-letter-to-starbucks/
and tell me what I need to do to raise them to the quality of people you link to voluntarily. I’m a new blogger/writer…
That IMPLIES asking for a link, but it gives us what’s more valuable: feedback from people that are doing a great job.
I’ve added you from progblogger, and away we go.
[...] The Fine Art Of Saying “No.” Series: How To Refuse A Link [...]
I have been blogging for a while. I’ve been asked and I’ve posted those blogs or sites - if I’m not offended. You can see at epaper.hubspot.com . I’m thinking that folks spend too much time trying to be responsible and respectful. I’m not saying that’s over-rated; however, goodness, there are hundreds of thousands of readers on the internet. I don’t lose too much sleep if I didn’t get a response. I would hope the person requesting won’t as well.
Here, I’ll ask, I won’t be offended if you don’t have to respond: Will you post a link to http://www.epaper.hubspot.com ? Thanks in advance.
Great post, Skellie — as usual! I can attest that your policy works.
I co-run a “library” website (ManagingWholes.com) with several hundred online articles in a targeted range of topics. (It’s not a blog.) Our policy is what you recommend — we don’t do link exchanges. If someone asks for one, we explain that we link not to websites, but to individual articles of interest to our readers. We ask the person to submit URLs of individual articles on their site that they think will be of interest to our audience.
Most people we’ve asked to do this never get back to us with relevant articles. (Which is too bad, because we’re ALWAYS looking for good, relevant content to link to.) And since our basic message is “We WANT good content from you; please submit some!”, nobody feels slighted. We often get replies along the lines of “Okay, we’re just getting our site up and will get back to you when we have some relevant content.”