About a month ago, I met with someone over coffee who was gung ho about blogging, podcasting and all walks of social media. I loved his enthusiasm, gave him some advice and within a week, he got his blog up and running.

I was quite pleased that he grasped things so quickly and equally pleased that he got a few posts up. He even ran a contest to get his clients, prospects and those in his network to read his blog. A very clever to build traffic.

Then, it took a turn for the worst.

He wrote up an article about podcasting, mentioned me and then started to email me at least twice a week for a return link to his blog.

This has now been going on for about 3 weeks.

I shared with him that I could mention his blog, but I had to figure out how mentioning his blog on mine would be of benefit to my readers. He gave me some ideas on how I could position his blog on my own, but I didn’t like any of his ideas. They were just too self-serving for my taste.

I asked the Twitterverse how I should handle this and here’s a list of replies:

Thank you ladies! Much appreciated.

My advice to new bloggers? Don’t become a link hound. Just because you mention someone on your blog doesn’t mean you can bug the person to death to return a link to you. It just doesn’t work that way.

If I enjoyed what I read and it fits into the theme and content of my own blog, I’ll link back. That’s why it’s called love. Linking is supposed to be an enjoyable experience.

I wonder if The Blog Squad could weigh in with some resources on blogging etiquette, specifically surrounding the issue of reciprocal links?