Using Social Networks is a great way to connect with your customers, spread the word about your brand and maintain conversations with the people that matter in your industry. Social Media platforms are also a great place to help you get more links to your site.

Good quality links to your site are still an important part of Search Engine Optimisation. In very simple terms, if you can get links to your site from other relevant and well ranked sites (otherwise known as authority links), you will get your site higher on Google and the other search engines.

Thankfully, as well as being great for networking, Social Media can also help you get other people to link to you. It’s a question of finding these people – your linkerati - and giving them content that they will want to link to.

This simple 3-step guide covers how to get more links to your site by finding your linkerati, finding out what they want, and giving it to them!

How Do I Get Links to My Site Using Social Media?

Step 1: Find Your Linkerati

The first step is to find the influential people who could link to you – your linkerati. What we’re aiming to end up with here is a list of influential people and the places where they’re communicating – their blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook profiles, LinkedIn profiles etc…

So – where do you go to find ‘em?!

Google - Good old Google! Where else does anyone find anything these days?!

Use Google to search for relevant blogs – for instance if you’re trying to promote Project Management services try searching for “Top Project Management Blogs” - lo and behold there are a few sites that list the top 25 or 50 blogs – brilliant! Substitute ‘project management’ for whatever your business does or makes and see what you can find.

Google Blog Search – As well as normal Google searches, you can use Google’s specialist blog search tool to find blogs on any subject.

Technorati – Technorati is a blog catalogue – another useful place to search for relevant blogs.

Link Diagnosis - This is a great tool you can use to find out who is linking to your competitors! Simply enter  the URL of your main competitors’ sites for a list of the places that are linking to them. There may well be some blogs and other authority sites that link to them, and if your competitors are on there, you want to be on there too!

Twitter Search – Use Twitter Search to search for tweets on your subject, product or industry. Make a note of any hashtags that are commonly used (e.g. #socialmedia) as these will come in handy later! Keep a close eye out for anyone who’s posts are re-tweeted a lot – these are influential people!

Once you’ve found the best blogs and most influential people (tip: you can usually judge the most popular blogs by the amount of people who are commenting on them!), make a list of them (a spreadsheet will do, or create a folder of bookmarks in your browser).

As well as the blogs themselves, note the names of the authors. Find these people on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and anywhere else you can find them and add all of their accounts to your list too.

Great – you’ve got a big list of influential blogs and people from your industry who might link to you – let’s start sending them loads of stuff… right?

WRONG!

Step 2: Read, Listen and Comment

Before you jump in feet first and start sending any old stuff to your linkerati – you need to take time to understand what they want.

Spend a day reading these blogs and the comments on them, and following the authors’ on Twitter (an easy way to do this is to make a Twitter List).

Have a look at which groups they are  members of on LinkedIn. Join the groups and follow the discussions.

Before you start offering up your own content, comment on what’s already out there so people can see that you want to engage in the discussion (so when you do start offering your own content you won’t be judged as a spammer who’s come out of the woodwork from nowhere). So comment on blogs – follow people on Twitter and thank them for any tweets you find useful, or give your opinion on what they wrote.

By the end of a day out there in the blogoshphere reading, listening and commenting – you’ll start to get a good idea of what the hot topics are, what resources people find most valuable, and what people are most likely to want to share.

Step 3: Create Content and Give it Away

Now’s the time to put all of your hard research in to action, and put some great content out there. What works best will be specific to your industry, but as a rule of thumb, the following are likely to be pretty successful:

• How-to Guides
• A Top 5 / Top 10 List of something
• An opinion piece on an up-to-the-minute subject (if your piece is well written and expresses a slightly controversial opinion it’s likely to spark a discussion!)

Read our blog post on what to blog about for some inspiration.

The best place for this content is your blog (if you have one), or somewhere within your site. Get it published, and go forth and SHARE IT with your linkerati.

Places to share your content:

Twitter - Tweet about your post and include a link to it in the tweet (also use any of the relevant hashtags you noted earlier). Tweet it to the influential people on your list using @ tweets (or DM them if they’re following you). Don’t be afraid to ask for a re-tweet!

Other Blogs/Forums – Comment on the blogs in your list – e.g. “This is an interesting article – my viewpoint on it is this – here’s a link to my blog post”.

LinkedIn Groups – Add a link to your blog post in the news section of the relevant LinkedIn groups you found earlier – or use it to start a discussion thread.

E-Mail – If you know the e-mail addresses for some of your linkerati, mail them a link to your content and tell them why they might find it useful.

Syndicate Using Other Social Media Platforms
Share your content on Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Delicious - there’s a big list of ‘em in our Free Resources section here

It didn’t work – what should I do?

First – Don’t worry. Not everything you publish will be wildly popular, and you’ll have as many misses as you do hits.

Second - Write something else! Keep at it, and keep contributing. More importantly – keep up the conversations with people. Keep commenting and discussing relevant topics with your linkerati – this way you’ll become known and trusted, and people will want to share your content!

Good luck!

To learn more about marketing your business using Social Media you can attend our Social Media training or SEO Course.

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