Linkbaiting Can Assist You With Potential Clients (Part 2)

Research

It’s also about identifying those who link, what kind of content do they link to. The market defines the content. You may have come up with a great idea, but the truth of the matter is that your readers will ultimately decide what exactly you publish and that your ideas will come from research. If you haven’t spent enough time researching the niche you are going to publish in then you will fail.

Distribution

You then need to ensure that the content is shown to as many potential linkers as is possible, and the nature of social media marketing can assist you with this but a powerful online network is of paramount importance. This is a brick wall to those who have no access. This can be resolved by taking the time to build up a network, or buy the very people who have built that particular network.
It’s vitally important that when considering adding linkbaiting to your marketing strategy it takes a particular skill to create something worthwhile. Linkbait which is successful usually has a degree of simplicity that makes its creation seem effortless. But the reality is that creating something which appears simple is actually quite a complicated process.

The process of creating linkbait should follow this three step process:

1. Find who links
2. Discover what they link to
3. Show the linkers the content

Successful linkbait must contain the following elements:

1. Attention grabbing
2.It’s important to entice the reader to consume the content
3. Instil a reason for the reader to share content

Linkbait is not a sales message whose intention is to get you to buy a particular product. The whole purpose of linkbaiting is simply to get you to link by using emotional triggers. Many times it has been said that we do not buy rationally, but that we buy emotionally. Linking is no different, it must reach the linker and trigger the correct emotional triggers.

If you have defined your online marketing problem as too few links then employing linkbait as an element of your whole strategy may be the solution to your problem. It has to mesh with your other online marketing elements such as PPC, Search Engine Optimisation, link buying, blogging, article writing, social media, etc. Of course having a brilliant website in the first place will help and if you get your web design just right, it’s a good beginning.

It is vital that it should in no way be detrimental to your branding plan of action. The tone of the linkbait should not harm in any way the way your brand is perceived. So if you are a bank and you want to create a piece like, “Great Gadgets Bankers Buy with their Bonus”. In the current climate it doesn’t sound like a good plan at the moment. Even though I am confident that this will get the banks links, linkbait should never really be about gaining links at any cost.