A Blog Hop is a list of thumbnailed links (a linkup or a link party) shared between a group of bloggers so while people are “hopping” from blog to blog, they see the same list on each blog.

The way Blog Hops work is that it allows bloggers not only to create a substantial relationship with their own readers but also share readership with other bloggers in their niche.

That is why Blog Hops is a fabulous and fun way to increase your blog's traffic and establish a community around a brand.

How Blog Hops work?

Blog Hops are usually arranged by one blogger (aka the host) or several bloggers (the co-hosts).

They have a specific theme, date frame, rules.

A blog hop may be open to everyone or closed where only a pre-determined group of bloggers can participate.

The blog hop goes live on the host's and co-host's blogs at the exact same time.

How to start a Blog Hop?

1. Go to your InLinkz dashboard.

2. Create a new link party.

3. Set a theme. Blog hops are usually centered around particular themes.

4. Establish the rules that participants should follow. Some common rules are to start following the host and the co-hosts, visit some of the submitted links and leave comments below the posts, place the blog hop's button on their blog etc.)

5. Share your link party with your co-hosts by sending them your code.

6. Determine the time you will go live.

Enjoy the hop.

Wordpress.org is the site that produces and serves the code (the software) for the WordPress blog platform. You can freely get this code and install it to a server/ host of your choice and have a blog that is completely owned by you. This is a self-hosted blog where you set the rules of what works and what does not. And there, you have administrative privileges and install whatever you want.

On wordpress.com (eg myblog.wordpress.com) you have the free stuff without the hassle of setting up a server by yourself. The drawback is that their blog platform has some restrictions, one of which is that you cannot embed scripts or objects.

You have a team that judges your links and you have 300 links to choose from. It is a difficult job but you finally decide on your 5 favorites: 3,66,78,145,223. And then, the entrant that had inserted number 101, decides to delete it!!

If you have been in this position, you’ll love the ability InLinkz gives you to retain the numbering of links, even when someone deletes some links from the sequence.

So, if the user deletes number two, the third link still has number 3 and no team is confused.

Subsequent entries are numbered in such a way that no number two will appear again.

If the host of a link party asks for a backlink in order to be allowed to add your link to the party, you need to have a plain HTML link from your blog to the host's blog.

When the backlink option is enabled, the following message pops up on the linking page to notify you where exactly you have to link back.

If you are asked e.g. to backlink to fresh.inlinkz.blog.com, you should have a link that leads there somewhere in your blog post. This, in HTML looks something like this:
<A HREF=http://www.fresh.inlinkz.blog.com>Backlink to fresh.inlinkz.blog</A>

Usually, hosts that require a backlink, provide a way to grab easily the code from their site in the form of a button, so just grab their button and put it in your blog post.

InLinkz allows the entrants to share the links they like with their followers.

Once they hover over a link, they can easily pin, post on facebook or tweet the link they like by clicking on the relevant buttons.

Those pins/ posts/ tweets will contain both the liked link AND host's link party link!

So just share the talent!