How to Join a Link Party

One of our readers asked a great question, how do link parties work? How can you join them and why? So we’re covering that question today. If you have any questions feel free to email us or ask on Facebook or Twitter and we will do our best to help you out!

Back to the questions at hand. First, the importance of link parties. I’ve talked about it before when we discussed how to boost your stats, but we can explain more in detail now. Link parties are hosted on blogs, usually on a specific day of the week (for example I host one every Saturday) usually once a week, but sometimes once a month or less frequently.

They allow other bloggers to add links to content from their blogs and share them with the audience of the host blog as well as all of the other bloggers who join in the linky party. It’s a great way to connect with other bloggers and grow your reach! Many parties have specific themes like “homemaking” or “recipes” or “crafts” and some are for anything and everything!

Most link parties have rules specific to the party, so make sure you read the full post before you link up so that you are following all the rules. Typically they ask that you put a link to their party somewhere on your blog and click on one of the other links to leave a comment on another person’s blog. This is one of the ways that link parties drives traffic to every one, because every one is visiting other bloggers from the link up! In fact, I met two of my closest blogging friends through a link party we both participated in last year!

The easiest way to keep track of the parties you enjoy is to make a page for them on your blog. On my personal blog I’ve organized them by day of the week. You can see my link party list here. I don’t hit all of those parties each week, but those are the ones I visit when I have something to share from my blog.

But how exactly do you link up? It’s really pretty simple. Scroll down on the party post to where it says something like “add your link”. Click that button and it will take you to a new screen OR it will reveal more options on your current page.

There will be space for you to enter “name”, here you type the name of the post you are wanting to share like “personalized coloring sheets DIY” or “pizza pasta recipe”, NOT your name.

Next, it will ask for the URL for the post. Copy/paste this from your browser to the URL/link line on the page. Many of the parties will ask for your email address or personal name as well. Provide this information and then click done/submit/next (depending on the linky platform the blogger is using).

From there it will ask you to select a photo. You can choose one from the post, upload one from your computer or use a simple avatar from the link widget. If you need help making fun photos for your post to use (stunning photography always helps people want to click on YOUR link from a party), check out our post with photo editing tips for beginners.

After that you can submit your link! You can then go back and add another link to the same party or explore the links that other’s have shared. Then you can move on to the next party!

Linking up a lot can get tedious, so it’s good to choose only the parties that bring you the most traffic. Don’t let it consume all your time, although it can be a fantastic tool for bloggers when done correctly!

Any more questions about link parties? Or another topic? We’d love to help!!! What is YOUR favorite link party? Share in the comments!