Like, Share, Crowd! How Shareable Content Works For Your Link Profile

Sharing content is the leading communication method nowadays. People share texts, images, and videos, mostly for emotional reasons. However, we can make the shareable content work for us and make it a part of the crowd-marketing strategy.

Crowd Marketing: Basic Definitions

Crowd marketing  —this is what I have done for many years. If you read this blog from time, you know something about it, but let me briefly describe what crowd marketing is for newcomers.

Imagine that you want to buy any product on the Internet. You type the search query in your browser and click a button. A search engine — Google, as a rule — provides a list of relevant sites where you can purchase the product. Stats say, 70% of users do not go on the second page of Google's top, and only 5% check the third page further.

Thus, most of the orders go to the sites in Google's top-10. All commercial websites want to appear in Google's top-10 search results for relevant search queries.

Starting with SEO – search engine optimization – we face the necessity of creating, nurturing, and developing a link profile for the site. As you know, the link profile is a combination of the outbound and inbound links on the website.

The number of inbound links and their quality is not the only factor that defines site ranking in search engines, but it is essential. Placing the outbound links on the site is easy. A more complex task is to convince other webmasters to add your link and increase the number of inbound links for you.

We know and successfully use several methods of link profile development. For example, in some previous articles, we discussed outreach marketing — guest articles or paid posts on popular blogs and pages. Also, I described Private Blog Networks, their benefits, and their advantages.

And, of course, pure crowd marketing — inbound links from the forums, review sites, and other popular resources.

How to build a crowd marketing strategy

I sincerely believe in balance — say, a balance between work and personal life can make your life better. A well-balanced crowd-marketing strategy can also add some happiness to your life.

If you use various internet resources, check the site’s quality, and make regular audits and profile updates, your site’s link profile will improve day by day. Earlier, I mentioned the popular link-building techniques. My experience tells me that no method is perfect enough for solo performance. Buying links from popular blogs and sites will cost you a fortune. The blog author can also add a “nofollow” attribute to the link and cut traffic.

Purchasing links from PBNs is too risky: when search engines find such a network, they ban it with all the links. Placing natural links on the forums and sites is the safest option, but it works better with other techniques.

So, to build a well-balanced crowd-marketing strategy, you should follow these steps:

• Make an audit of your link profile;
• Evaluate the balance and diversity;
• Plan the number of links you need to add in this iteration.

At last, I can move on to the main idea of this article. Shareable content can be a good source of inbound links for your site. If you are lucky enough to create a viral video, catchy text, or funny image, add the link to your site and let people do the rest. Let’s discuss.

What Shareable Content is

Shareable content is content people want and can share. Thanks, Captain Obvious. People dispense useful and interesting information that can be helpful or funny for others. We are social beings, and sharing content is the most natural thing for us. The psychologists defined four main features of shareable content. It should be:

• Trendy. The content should be related to a hot or popular topic.
• Emotional. Each piece of shareable content makes people feel something.
• Useful. It can provide a portion of helpful advice or contain valuable information.
• Tied to identity. People should feel like they belong to a specific social group.

The shareable content speaks to people’s interest in the same language. A bright and attractive image or even video increases the chance of sharing. You probably know that the proportion of video on the Internet continually grows.

By the way, have you already created an account on TikTok? However, do not disregard the good old texts. The reading audience is smaller than the watching audience, but the number of decision-makers is higher in the first group.

For example, at the end of 2020, all the most popular social media posts will discuss the COVID-19 vaccination. Topics related to the most dangerous virus of the сentury arouse the strongest feeling: fear.

People feel their involvement in the global community of people who want to stop the pandemic. It is worth saying that people share both useful information and fake information. When it comes to a fair, emotions dominate over common sense.

So, if you want to get a number of good crown links, write a text for social media about COVID-19, add some facts about vaccination, a good supporting image, and do not forget to put the link.

If you do everything right, people will share your post and increase the number of incoming links for your site.

How to collect shares of the content

When almost all companies try to launch shareable content, you have to invest some effort to get your portion of links. Among the numerous ways of getting shares, I prefer four.

1. Create viral content. People do not like advertising, but they share content when they feel strong emotions. For example, this nice video can get thousands of reposts, and people even do not notice they share the VW leasing ad.
2. Offer something valuable. I mean a coupon, gift, a prize for the contest, anything. It is unnecessary to use expensive products – many people love the chance to win more than the prize. I am not a fan of giveaways; the lovers of free staff rarely convert to your clients. However, it does not mean you should offer nothing for free.
3. Collaborate with the influencers. People are more willing to buy the products after the recommendations of their favorite bloggers. Find some media people who can create a piece of unique shareable content, and add the link to your site. Don’t be surprised by the costs: in times of pandemic influence, marketing is at the peak of demand.
4. Open the discussions on the forums. Do not be afraid to start topics but make sure the topic is relevant to the forum theme, otherwise, you can face a ban.

A hint: motivate your users to generate content. Of course, user-generated content is not always of perfect quality, but it is unique, and people value it.

How to Track Mentions of Your Brand or Content

To evaluate the work, you should see the results. Investigate if people mention your brand more frequently after your viral content campaign. Tracking of the brand mentions on the Internet is called social listening. The market offers various social listening tools, and I’d recommend trying several solutions before sticking with the chosen one.

The first useful tool is Google service Google Alerts. It creates a specialized news feed containing all mentions of your brand online. It helps to find new backlinks, notice black SEO attacks, track competitors, and always stay in touch with your brand.

Mention is one more useful tool. It is paid, but you can start with a free trial. Mention started as a tool for social listening, but now it offers a wide range of functions.

You can generate reports and share alerts. For me, the most exciting feature in Mention is the influencer rating. You do not want to miss the comment from Elon Musk, don’t you?

Mention shows you the rating of the commenter to help you notice the famous names. Hootsuite is a multifunctional solution for social media marketing. Among all, it offers the simple multichannel method of social listening. The basic account is free. Hootsuite allows teamwork, so I’d recommend it for corporate use. Awario is a new tool for social media and web monitoring. Free trials and an affordable monthly plan make it suitable for most businesses. Of course, it can monitor the web for brand mentions. However, this new generation tool can find you new leads, predicting which people will look for a product like yours.

This is how an artificial intellect works for marketing. This list can be endless. The market is full of fantastic monitoring solutions; pick up one, and start.

Most of them are worth buying. Manual brand monitoring is a time-consuming process. This time costs more than $30 per month.

Conclusive thought

A good deal is a win-win deal. In the crowd-marketing, increasing the link profile with shareable content is a perfect win-win. People get something useful they can dispense, and your site gets an improved link profile.

However, remember the balance and combine these techniques with other crowd marketing tools available in Natural Links.

Erik Ivanov

Co-Founder in Natural Links

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