Bunk Beds & Dinosaurs: Great Linkbait
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While site stumbling today I came across a web page that offered fun 30 second diversion, that is what StumbleUpon is for, by the way.
The page was titled: How Long Could You Survive Chained to a Bunk Bed with a Velociraptor? Silly? Yes. Smart? Even more so. After I took the test (I could survive 60 seconds, btw), and I looked at the URL, I could see it was a site promoting bunk beds and is selling advertising for kids’ furniture.
To my point, I was very impressed with the creativity of the page and applaud BunkBeds.net for a great linkbait idea. Imaginative, fun, viral and themed well for the target audience of children. So, take a visit and see how you would do against a Raptor and even more important let this be a good example in creative link building.
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16 Responses to “Bunk Beds & Dinosaurs: Great Linkbait”
By Hayden Dell on Sep 16, 2008 | Reply
Love Stumble! Addictive.
By Scott on Sep 17, 2008 | Reply
Any idea where I could make an interactive quiz like this and host it on my site? I don’t know the first thing about creating something like this.
By Elizabeth Rainwater on Sep 17, 2008 | Reply
1 minute 13 seconds! This is a great viral marketing campaign!
By Maya on Sep 22, 2008 | Reply
“Congratulations! You could survive for 1 minute, 3 seconds!”
I guess that’s descent the 3 seconds would do me some good. haha. This is great, thanks for posting this.
Cheers,
Maya
By Samreen Soomro on Sep 22, 2008 | Reply
Great marketing tactic. Thanks for sharing
By debra mastaler on Sep 23, 2008 | Reply
I love widgetbait and this piece was definitely creative but have to wonder - if this was done to generate links (as your post indicates by calling it linkbait), where is the incentive to link? Again, cute but if this is to help sell bunkbeds, how does it help when the link sits on your site? Yes I understand the concept of link quantity, but we also know the engines have devalued off topic links in the past. Again, love the creativity, love the concept, am puzzled by the execution.
By Shell Harris on Sep 24, 2008 | Reply
Hi, Debra. Great to have you on the site. Long time, no chat.
Good point and I have to agree with you. And that has also been a point I have debated internally. How useful is linkbait that ultimately doesn’t convert your traffic? Or that is off topic from what your site sells or service you provide.
I assume the word bunk beds is part of the link to the site and the owner is hoping that massive amounts of links to this page with the term bunk bed will help raise the overall site’s ranking.
As of today 9/2/08 there were 74 backlinks according to Yahoo. But no ranking in the top 100 for the term bunk beds in Google. Time will tell if this is good strategy.
By SEO Manchester on Oct 7, 2008 | Reply
Awesome marketing campaign- I got 1 minute, 6 seconds, great for building links!
By Henrik on Oct 8, 2008 | Reply
1m 9s - not too shabby - and it is a great viral marketing idea. I’d perhaps have done it in Flash so it was a little more interactive and immersive.
By Cole on Oct 11, 2008 | Reply
It was cool, It kept me on their site for awhile. I assumed there was going to be some type of cartoon at the end or something ha ha, but I guess that wouldn’t be the best marketing move for kid’s bunk beds. One thing I think they should of provided at the end of the test is a “take the test again” link. Overall, this was an affective form of link bait which probably took very little time to create.
By Tracy on Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
That is some very creative work to get links to your site!
By the way I am only 32 sec!
By Bwise on Oct 14, 2008 | Reply
Definitely a cool method of advertising, it got you to blog about it and all these commenters to visit it, but how many bought a bunk bed?
By Myron Tay on Oct 14, 2008 | Reply
74 backlinks… Hmm I wonder how much time it took the agency to create this microsite.
By Bradley Robb on Oct 21, 2008 | Reply
Huh, I lasted nearly a minute longer than you, boss. Guess all that Army training actually would pay off. I don’t really need this bunk bed, however.
By dean on Oct 30, 2008 | Reply
Did you happen to see the idea got ripped off?
http://digg.com/tech_news/Blatant_Rip_Off_of_Inman_s_Idea
By GeorgeMcCumiskey on Nov 21, 2008 | Reply
The word Dinosaur caught my eye, (you can tell who I hang out with) and what a clever advertising link. What potential bunk bed buyer could resist this one.