The Anatomy of a Link Building Hack Day
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Posted by Rob Toledo
The “hack day” is a popular and effective practice used by developers and designers alike to quickly ship new products with minimal administrative overhead. These events have consistently proven fruitful by the likes of Google, TechCrunch Disrupt, a variety of startups, and even the US Government in allowing creativity to turn ideas into reality much quicker than a traditional release cycle. Subscribing to the Facebook philosophy of “move fast and break things,” hack days are not about releasing a perfect product with signoff and approval from every boss in the building, but rather quickly developing and acting on great ideas.
In early 2012, Distilled held an internal hack day of our own. There were 40+ of us in the same room, and we were given the green light to run with any thoughts we had on how to make Distilled better. With little instruction, teams were formed, ideas were hashed out, a lot of coffee was consumed, and at the end of the day, we ended up with 70+ new ideas going live. Ranging from improving how we track data, fine-tuning a daily process, or somehow producing 57 SEO protip videos for our clients and blog readers, the main benefit from this day was how motivating it was to see the collective effort of a team creatively coming together to improve things for everyone.
Seeing the success of this effort, our Outreach team now applies this hack day concept once a month to a rotating list of projects. We typically pause other work and, as a team, pour all of our focus and resources into one client for eight hours straight. Thus far, this collective effort has quickly revealed itself as successful and most certainly worth the resources.
Below I will outline what a typical hack day looks like for our outreach team here at Distilled, which is to act as merely a skeleton of what could work for you. Things might be completely different for you and your team, and that is perfectly fine. There are very few rules as to what makes for a successful hack day, but we do recommend every team, whether you are in-house, agency, or even freelance, give it a try.
Under each section, you will find italicized text referencing the specifics of our most recent hack day for those hoping to briefly peek into daily operations here on the Distilled Outreach team.
But first, three key things to keep in mind:
- Get creative: No strategy should be off the table here as this is a great opportunity to try new tactics and see what sort of results they may yield. Nothing should be counted as a failure, even low success rates. Editing a Thomas Edison a bit here, "I have not failed a thousand times at building links. I have successfully discovered a thousand ways to NOT build a link!"
- Set lofty goals: This should be a great time to prove that your team working together is when it is at its strongest.
- Have FUN: This should be a break from daily routine, and is a great opportunity to enjoy some time with the team. Keep the fridge filled with snacks and soda, put on some music, and enjoy!
Second, a brief introduction to our main cast -- feel free to reach out to any of us and ask any questions you may have:
Adria “Jersey” Saracino (follow on Twitter): Head of outreach
James “Jamazing” Daughtery (follow on Twitter): Outreach coordinator
Alyssa “Unofficial Distilled Rapper” Ennis (follow on Twitter): Junior outreach coordinator
Kyra “Dirty Look” Kuik (follow on Twitter): Content writer, editor
Luke “Tuts” Clum (follow on Twitter): Creative designer, content creator
And myself, Rob Toledo (follow on Twitter): Outreach coordinator
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8:00 AM – Prepare a ton of coffee:
This goes without saying.
I like to show up early to settle in a bit. There is a growing internal competition between myself and several others to see who can be the one to arrive early enough to unlock the door and get first shot at the Aeropress (soon to be replaced by an espresso machine).
8:15AM – Create a collective workspace:
Getting away from your desk can be one of the easiest ways to create almost instant productivity. Breaking daily routine will immediately foster outside the box thinking, which is exactly what leads to the most success during a hackathon.
It is also beneficial to have the team in the same room. If this is not possible with people working from various locations, consider setting up an all-day webcam for easy and quick communication. We also use a shared Google doc to track our progress throughout the day (feel free to copy our template here).
Consider offering your clients (or managers if you are working in-house) the opportunity to sit in for as long as they want. The enthusiasm that comes out during a hack day is very contagious.
We have a (relativey) cozy conference room here at Distilled Seattle, which makes for a great work environment for such collaboration. Adria will typically project the shared gdoc onto the wall so we can all watch in real-time as we make progress throughout the day.
8:30AM – Preliminary strategy and goal setting:
This will vary greatly depending on the project. When looking to promote existing content, we might discuss what types of sites would be interested in the piece, what previous contacts would want to help, what benefits the content provides to niche communities, etc.
If it is more of a freestyle project, the strategy extends well beyond that. What creative work can we throw together? What sort of design can we get done in a day? Do we have time to start at square one and put out feelers to see what kind of content bloggers are interested in hosting, and then immediately turn around and provide that content?
Nothing is off-limits here. This time should be used for hyper focus on one project, figuring out what expectations you can set, and making a plan to achieve your goals all within a limited one-day period.
Looking for a few ideas to get the ball rolling? The only one Paddy Moogan gave an epic presentation on 35 ways to get links at MozCon 2012 with plenty of great ideas.
Our most recent hack day featured the Small Business Guide to WordPress. We tend to focus these monthly efforts on clients who have taken a chapter out of Wil Reynolds #RCS Bible (did you see their RCS Money project?) in order to not only maximize success, but to encourage more of this type of behavior.
We broke down this specific project into several areas of potential interest: small business blogs, web designers, social media influencers, and tutorial sites. We discussed what our pitches would look like, how we would reach the most people, and in what ways we could quickly turn around and provide the content we were hoping to deliver.
We agreed that the time would be best spent for the first few hours with James and I focusing on outreach to our previous contacts, Alyssa and Luke outreaching to new contacts, and Kyra prospecting at first then transitioning into writing once we started receiving positive responses.
