Do you do Back Scratch Marketing?

Today I was training someone on how to stand out better on the web. He was shocked when I told him to drive traffic from his site by linking to other people. Just did not make sense to him. Here is how I explained it. Nearly everyone on the web is promoting something. Themselves, a book, a service, something. People appreciate it when you help them by linking to them and saying something nice about what they are doing. Many times they will link back to you, if not that day, eventually. This seems to be especially true with authors. Authors of one book rarely feel competitive with one another, because if someone reads one marketing book, chances are they are going to go out and read another. So if an author lists other author’s books they like, they are creating a valuable resource center and not necessarily hurting long term sales, although that day it may seem like it. This is Back Scratch Marketing. Embrace the fact that you are promoting something and so are other people. Link to them, email them and let them know you linked to them, and watch some of them link back. It is a win-win-win. Your visitors benefit from a more diverse resource, other resources benefit from the links, and you benefit from more people finding you through the links back.