Building Linkbait? Do Your Homework - Getting Social
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Now let’s turn to where you’re going to spread word of your linkbait. Remember what I said at the end of the second section of this article? Linkbait must serve the purposes of your target audience. Well, if you’re spreading the word about your linkbait in social media, and what you create isn’t truly original, useful, and/or entertaining, you will get feedback about it – and you won’t like it at all. That’s why it’s so important to know your audience.
Going back to Eric Lander’s article in Search Engine Journal, he noted that you can learn a lot from your target audience by reading the threads and such where they hang out. Using the example of Digg, he said that active members of that community “dislike search marketers and SEO as well as poker and related topics.” Know what sets off your audience, and avoid it, lest they turn their ire upon you.
But you can also talk about your audience in your linkbait, even linking to other people (remember that one of the ideas I listed for linkbait was linking to five blogs that are good resources for your field). Say good things about people and they’ll want to link to you. A certain amount of narcissism is normal – and in this case, feeding it will help you get more links and more traffic.
I’d like to finish up with two thoughts for when you’re ready to spread the word about your linkbait. First, check your linkbait before you spread it to make sure that you’re giving away something that is “deep, useful, targeted content that appeals to your audience,” to quote Gabriel Goldenberg, writing for Pandia. And second – to quote Eric Lander again – “be sure that you are already a contributing member to the greater community. If you show up as the new kid on the block and appear as though you are there to just push content on everyone else, you will have a hard time befriending others in the community.”
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