I have linked to what must be millions of things. I share a lot of links from here on my blog. I have linked to hundreds of artists from The Watercolor Gallery. And on social media I have linked to and retweeted countless times. I take linking very seriously.
I have a sort of link prioritization process I go through when I am trying to determine where a link should go.
Linking to | First | Second | Third |
A person | Their personal URL | Other social network | |
An app | The app’s URL | The developer’s URL for the app | App Store URL |
A news story | The original breaker of the news | A position piece related to the news | |
A product | The manufacture/creator’s URL | The suggested retail URL | Amazon |
A piece of art | The artist’s personal URL | The artist’s main social network post for the piece | A third-party showcasing the work |
A podcast/episode | The podcast’s domain URL for the show/episode | The podcast host web URL (E.g. Podbean) | A podcatcher URL (E.g. Pocket Casts) |
You get the idea.
In addition to the prioritization of where a link should go I also make great effort to include real full names and all credit possible to the appropriate parties. It is sometimes very hard or impossible. There have been times that I have chosen not to link to a piece of art because I simply could not find the original artist.
I don’t know why I wrote this down.