Link building through social media is incredibly effective and can be a lot less time consuming than the traditional link building techniques.
“One update through Social Media which can take about a minute of your time can instantly reach thousands of people with the potential to be shared to their followers, and so on.”
Compare this to your traditional link building techniques which can eat up a lot of your time for link requests that may not even be approved or accepted.
Sharing a link on social media outlets like Facebook provide the opportunity for your link to be shared thousands of times by your social media followers- with certain followers also possibly extending the reach and exposure of your post by linking your posts to their networks. Many people do not realise that an update through social media has the potential to reach more than just their own followers and can have the potential to go viral.
But how can you effectively do this?
Create Great, Shareable Content
Creating great interesting content through your social media platform is the most effective way to get links shared and create links back to your website. You can create great content through interesting blogs, infographics, memes, videos, images – essentially valuable information that your followers will find interesting and will be encouraged to share or link to.
There are certain tactics you can use to create great content that will stand out and provoke your follows to interact with the post. Common tactics with content set out to shock the reader and provoke a reaction. Content can be humorous, shocking, thought provoking, philosophical in order to stand out from the rest in a very over-saturated market. The most stunning thing you can do, though, is provide specifics.
Statistics, facts and actionable advice are all things that people genuinely need. They might want pretty graphics and they might want hilarious, engaging writing, but what they need is information. So give it to them!
“Providing the follower with a solution and something they can take away to use is very effective compared to your standard post.”
Asking questions of your reader at the end of your post is also a great way to encourage your followers to interact and discuss. If you ask something thought-provoking and valuable, it is more likely to get shared and build links successfully.
Use Multiple Social Media Profiles
Creating multiple social media profiles is a great way to build links to your website. There are hundreds of social media outlets outside the main most recognisable websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Tumblr, etc. There is a vast range of industry specific networks tailored to specific followers and communities, so it should not be hard to find the appropriate audience for your social media pages.
“Setting up multiple Social Media pages will allow you to build links between the communities and encourage a diverse and natural array of links back to your website.”
You should of course regularly update your social media sites to remain current, interesting, and comment on recent news that is relevant towards your industry because it will interest your social media audience.
One simple way to do this is using social media’s own ‘search’ buttons to look for news on relevant topics, most obviously on Tumblr and Twitter. You can also use trend-monitoring sites like Trendsmap to give you an extra edge if necessary.
Across your multiple social media profiles you want to attract followers that will be interested in your updates and relative to your specific industry. To do this you can follow and interact with people, communities, and bloggers within your industry that may link to you within their posts.
Interacting with communities and followers enables you to reach more people through them and successfully link build. The content you generate then has to be new and different to encourage excitement and relatable to your followers and social media audience.
Many people will offer the option of managing your social media accounts for you, making it even easier to build a dedicated, link-happy following!
Added Benefits
On top of link building there are many added benefits to have one or multiple social media profiles. Social media is also great for an online brand presence to interact with potential customers and your target market. You can use social media to build relationships with your audience which is also beneficial for link building to gain repeated shares from your followers to create a loyalty to your site and business.
Plus you can update your social media audience about your business as well as new or existing products/services. Social media also provides you with a rich source of market research with your target market’s demographics, profiles, their interests to keep your business on top of any changes to the needs of your customers.
Your Link Building Plan
Your link building can all be boiled down to a very simple three step plan:
- Set up highly-focused accounts across multiple social media channels.
- Engage with specific individuals who can give you links while keeping up a stream of interesting and relevant news and views.
- Provide specifics and actionable data in your own content, in order to generate the coverage and publicity required to get links.
Once you’re all set up, you can repeat steps 1, 2, or 3 in any particular order until your site is full of awesome content and great insights, your follower list is full of key influencers in your field, and your social media accounts are generating endless inbound links to your awesome content.
Do you have anything to add? Let me know in the comments!
[Main image: Photo by Dziana Hasanbekava from Pexels]
James Duval is an IT expert who was once convinced he contracted a virus from working too closely with Windows Vista. He currently writes blogs for Connetu.
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