Using your content as armour for your link building campaign is a sure way to win the battle given that outreaching webmasters with the intent of providing your own content for free could increase your email response rates and in the future, earn links/mentions for your brand.
The success of your content-based link building campaign would depend on how creative your content is, its added value to the community and the behaviour of your target audience you’re trying to reach out. There are a lot more other factors you need to consider in this campaign but the things I mentioned are the most important (in my opinion).
To understand how this campaign works, I listed down 10 ideas that you can try to build links to your site/brand.
Let’s get started..
1. Quote/Tip
There are several insights from experts you can find on the web that are relevant to your topic and are good opportunities to be turned into visuals.
This tactic could help you connect with your influences as you could use the ego to get on the radar of your target audience. The moment they saw your visual (with their tip/quote in it), they’ll be more likely to share it to their peers/friends.
One example of this tactic is the meme quote of Jason Acidre.
The more creative your content is, the higher is your chance to get in front of your audience. The reason is that creative visuals could easily catch the interest of the prospect (blogger/influencer) you’re reaching out.
To find the best quotes/tips that you could turn into visuals, list down first the blogs of your influencers. Obviously, the best insights of your influencers could be seen on their blogs so you have to be updated with their latest blog posts to know their good tips!
Use QuickMeme to create your own visuals. You can also use your photo editing software to make your visual more creative.
After you’ve finished with your meme, it’s time for you to reach out to your influencer. In this case, you don’t have to be pushy with your content just to get a link from him. Remember that relationships could be turned into links if you properly build its foundation. You may not even get the link today, but in the future, you can.
2. Newsletter Contribution
Newsletters are not only being used for promotion but the way you approach email marketing could possibly lead to link building opportunities.
There’s no magic formula for this one. You only have to find newsletters that are relevant to your theme and have large subscribers to whom you could expect links/mentions.
By just submitting your content to newsletter publishers, you could get some exposure for your brand (if it had been approved by the publisher to be included in the newsletter). This is much better than just getting a link from one website (brand exposure to 10,000 active subscribers > one single link from a mid-level blog).
Use this search query: “weekly newsletter” + “your niche” or “monthly newsletter” + “your niche” to find industry-related sites that have regular newsletters. The reason you want to look for weekly/monthly newsletters is that they are less bombarded with emails from bloggers who are hoping to include their content in the newsletter. Compared to daily newsletter, a weekly/monthly newsletter open doors to non-members of the site/blog who’d like to contribute content to prospect’s newsletter.
You want also to ensure that you’re getting the most value from your newsletter contribution. Here are some tips that you may want to consider:
Filter out newsletters that don’t include content from other sites/blogs. You could identify this by taking a look at the newsletter page.
If you want to make sure that the newsletter has a decent number of subscribers, you simply need to look at the sidebar and see if the site got good amount of subscribers. You might not find any visible number of subscribers in the sidebar, but in the social profiles of the site, you could see the number of followers you’re targeting for.
Additionally, there are several sites that have both offline and online newsletters and allow content contribution from other webmasters. Most of the time, these sites are large brands/organizations trying to cover a specific topic with their newsletters and have a long reviewing process to place your content in their newsletter. Though this sounds too difficult in the eyes of SEOs trying to get massive links from different sites, the good thing with successfully contributing your content to newsletters is that you’re able to place your brand in the minds of people (mindshare) who could visit your link from the newsletter.
Often times, we take for granted doing guest post on someone else’s blog. This if done continuously, could adversely affect your branding given that a low quality guest post could give impression that your brand/site has low quality offerings (product/services). Take note: Whatever you place on other blogs (especially if that is a guest post) reflects the core values of your brand.
I published a guest post on Search Engine Journal few months ago and it got some traction from influencers which gave me an insight that the post I made was good. Few weeks after I published that article, I received an email asking if I could give her a permission to post the same in an offline newsletter.
Here is the actual email she sent to me.
And here’s the newsletter…
The brand that has both offline and online newsletter has a decent number of members and/or followers. This gave my site exposure to one of my target audience (Americans) – they comprised the most active visitors of my blog.
Imagine if you could place your content on different newsletters near your location and in other countries, it would be easy for you to reach out to your customers who’re already familiar with your brand (increase response/sales/leads rate from your target audience).
3. Slide Presentations
Slide presentations are useful both for branding and for link building given that it shows your genuine personality/voice as a brand and your skill/expertise on a specific topic.
You probably come across a page that has no visuals in it. This is where you will put your slide presentation. Now you have to be picky with the page where you would want to place your slide deck. Blog posts are not easy to make changes with it so it is one type of page that you need to filter out.
You want to look for a page where you could easily add a slide presentation in it or go over a group of bloggers who attended the event where you’d been a speaker. This would increase the chances of getting a response from them as they already know who you are and your expertise.
Search for bloggers who want to put your slide presentation on their blog or create a new post discussing their “key takeways” from the event. There’s a high chance of getting links from this tactic since you’re able to provide value to your prospects.
4. TagCloud or WordCloud
There is at least one website in your industry that covers a list of industry-related terms or acronyms which people in your community are not familiar with it.
Here’s what you can do to build links with that idea.
Create a list of all industry-related terms and head over to Wordle. Craft a good visual using that tool or your photo editing software.
When you’re done with the visual, you can use it as an angle for your outreach. You would want to pitch the content publisher who created the “list of terms” page. He’ll be more likely to link to you since you have something to offer to him.
To maximize the linking potential of the tagcloud/wordcloud, you should reach out to bloggers who might be interested to link to it or at least share it to their followers.
A good email template like this will be effective for your outreach:
Hey [Webmaster],
I was looking for [tips] today and I stumbled upon your resource page about [topic]. I find it useful given that it listed down useful links about [topic].
I wonder if you could see this slide presentation that I made few weeks ago about [topic]. I know that this would be a great resource for your site.
Please let me know your thoughts about this.
Kindest regards,
Venchito
This kind of tactic would not be much effective than other link building tactic. However, this is easy to do and less costly than other tactics so it is something you want to scale for your link building campaign. It’s a good tactic if you want to get on the radar of the influencers in your field.
There you have it! The 4 content-based link building tactics that you can try and test for your own brand or site.
