Link Building Strategies: Down with Link Baiting

Crush made a post the other day asking if the hype about link baiting was ove. Greg Hartnett of Best of the Web in his blog asked, to put words in his mouth, if the hype over Digg was over. Both posts are related because the link bait technique is used on Digg, and link bait has become synonymous with Digg.

Link Baiting has been around longer than the phrase Link Bait
Until that phrase was coined, many link dev people didn't really understand it that much. After it was coined everyone jumped on board. Over the last couple years it's evolved to a narrow definition involving social media, specifically Digg.

Is there anything more tiresome than another blog post about how to link bait?
Often when someone asks how to create inbound links for their sites there is one peanut in the gallery who steps up and says, Link Bait, usually without examples of how link bait can fit the context of a particular niche. Even worse are the compilations of how to link bait. Quite frankly, I am sick of hearing about link bait and I apologize for adding to the noise but I hope the sound you hear is that of a nail penetrating the lid of a coffin.

Link Bait does not mean gaming social media
Link baiting has been around longer than Digg. But in the mind of many people it's closely tied to Digg and to many link baiting is another phrase for gaming digg. It's incredibly annoying to see bloggers doing that.

Many websites, including a few of my own, feature the Digg, Furl, Reddit, etc. links but not one tell a friend script. Tap, tap. Tell a friend is the rawest form of a social recommendation engine. Why aren't more people doing that?