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Social media has long been one of the most effective business marketing tools to increase growth, improve customer retention and drive sales.
However, marketers are now integrating their social media accounts with expert link building strategies – and with great success.
Therefore, if you haven’t been using social media as part of your link building strategy, this article will help you get started.
The Value Of Social Media In Your Link Building Strategy
There are over 4.2 billion active social media users around the globe, making social media the perfect online space to connect with the people you want to reach.
Unlike in-person networking events where you hand out your business cards and pitch your services to strangers, online you can cultivate relationships that could be beneficial to your business over the long term.
Social media is a way of introducing yourself to others and getting involved in conversations that add real value to your business’s visibility and growth. Social media can be used to improve your link building strategy through:
- Outreach
- Content promotion
- Content ideation
- Link prospecting
- Relationship building with big brands
- Making connections in your industry
If you want to be effective at your link building strategy, social media is an excellent marketing tool you need to support those relationships that are key for successful link building.
Connect With Brands, Journalists And Influencers Online
Social media is one of the best spaces to connect with people online and grow your brand. Platforms like Twitter and Instagram, for example, let you connect with brands, journalists, and influencers who could help further your link building strategy.
Online engagement through social media and online platforms like HARO (Help a Reporter Out) helps pave the way for new connections and opens the door for new link building opportunities. It provides the opportunity to connect with journalists and influencers organically instead of the ‘cold pitch’ approach.
Over time, as you connect with brands, websites, and bloggers via social media you will be in a good position to provide valuable guest posts, content mentions, and exchanges that help further the reach and success of your business.
Utilise The Power Of Hashtags
If you are on Twitter, hashtags are one of the best ways to get your content seen by the right people. In fact, research shows that Tweets with hashtags (immediately followed by the subject or keyword related to the Tweet) can increase engagement almost 100% (2x) for individuals and 50% (1.5x) for brands. Twitter has an unlimited number of hashtags that help you make those all-important connections and gain those valuable link building opportunities.
For link building strategy discoverability, some of the most popular hashtags include #journorequest, #PRrequests, #bloggerrequest, #writingcommunity. These hashtags are a great way to connect with reporters, journalists, and bloggers you could potentially build relationships with in the future.
Use High-Quality Images Alongside Links
If you want to generate higher rates of engagement and better click-through rates on your content, consider using high-quality images.
Social media posts with quality images get nearly twice the engagement than those without. To put it simply, using images for social sharing drastically increases your chances of posts being seen, promotes better engagement, and increases clicks and shares. So, if you aren’t using images alongside your links already, you should be.
Join Blogger Groups
The most successful businesses network and learn from other people. And, through social media, there are thousands of blogger groups that can be a gold mine as a link building strategy.
These online writing communities let you expand your network and provide a list of connections for those valuable link building opportunities. But, of course, anything worth getting takes a lot of time and effort.
Like any social groups, you can’t just join and make demands – it will take time and commitment. You will need to get involved in the conversations, be active on your accounts, and build those relationships before you ask for opportunities.
You should soon find that the most beneficial connections will be those that have been cemented from a strong bond at the start.
Start Using Pinterest
Content is no longer just about words. More companies than ever before are focusing their efforts on producing high-quality visual content, such as infographics, to increase online engagement and promote social sharing.
Pinterest is a great way to promote the visual content you offer. Consumers love great images and eye-catching infographics, and Pinterest lets you show off what you can do.
Not only will Pinterest help bring referral traffic to your website, but it can be a great site to pick up those natural backlinks. What’s more, according to Heidi Cohen – a well-regarded digital marketer:
“Pinterest expands your audience reach while enabling a social media conversation.”
Generate Traffic Through Social Shares
Social media has become one of the key distribution channels for great content. The more traffic you gain to your website, the more your content gets seen, and the more potential you have of gaining links from other websites. Therefore, by sharing every piece of content you create and staying active on social media, you’ll be able to watch those social shares quickly climb.
As Lori Highby – CEO of Keystone Click – writes: “Social shares lead to increased page views, more activity on your website, comments on your blog, and more frequent mentions of your brand – all of these indirectly increase rankings.”
Develop Long-Term Relationships
As we have mentioned above, social media is a great place to build long-term relationships with journalists, bloggers, and influencers.
Over the long term, these relationships help build links to your website, directly improving your rankings. But getting to this point can take time – which is why a lot of marketers don’t tend to bother.
We recommend taking part in conversations online, answering questions, sharing your content and other peoples, commenting on posts, and just generally interacting with others online. This will help build your online presence, familiarise people with your brand, and encourage engagement.
Good links will only come from contacts that trust you. So, by putting in the extra effort at the start, you will see better results in the end.
Create Viral Content
Creating content that goes viral is one of the fastest (but often hardest) ways to earn quality links to your website. Viral content is the dream for many marketers, but not many are able to achieve it.
One of the best ways to create viral content is to react to whatever is already trending on social media. To do this, you will need to spend plenty of time scrolling through your social accounts to keep your eyes peeled for potential opportunities.
If you don’t already have a social media scheduler to help you with your social media management, then there are options for every niche in every business, agency, or franchise sector.
Shorten URLs To Boost Engagement
Considering your social media marketing strategy, posting URLs on social media can either drive people towards your content or away from it. Shortened URLs are best for use on social media because they take up less room and are easier to share.
To make your URLs extra snazzy you can even consider using branded links – these are short URLs that include your brand name. A shortened URL with your brand name helps promote brand awareness and helps your content look more trustworthy.
Final Thoughts…
Link building on social media is an extremely effective strategy, but can take a lot of time and effort. As such, despite the numerous link building opportunities that social media can offer, many of these are often indirect, making them a relatively low priority for marketers.
However, this is a mistake. By taking the time to promote your brand on social media and connect with other companies, journalists, and influencers online, you should soon your company overtake the rest of your competition.
For more insightful content on social media marketing and social media management be sure to check out eclincher’s blog.
eclincher is the only social media and brand management tool that allows you to manage all major social media accounts, grow your brand reputation, respond in real time tackling one brand or many, allowing for collaboration with your clients or teams from one place, at a price that doesn’t break the bank, without the red tape, 24/7. Period.
They offer a FREE 14-day trial and recommend a personal live demo.
