<p>When devising the strategy for your social media campaign, it is important to understand that there are two main types of social media sites, networking sites and link building sites, and each category has it&rsquo;s own rules and best practices.&nbsp; In my <a href="../members/lauren-candito/articles" title="my articles">past articles</a> I have discussed <a href="../members/lauren-candito/articles">how to effectively use social networking sites</a> to <a href="../members/lauren-candito/articles">increase your brand awareness and promote your products/services</a>, so in the next few posts I want to discuss the link building side of social media, and teach you a few tricks of the trade.&nbsp; In this article, I will discuss what link building is and why you should engage in it, and I will share with you some link building tips to help you begin implementing your strategy.</p> <p>First of all, lets start at the begining.&nbsp; Link Building is the process of creating inbound links to ones own website. This can be done by reciprocal links, being listed in e-zines, newsletters, directories, search engines, etc.&nbsp; Link building is one of the best ways to increase your search rankings and drive traffic to your website, but if you expect to see results, you must learn how to build links correctly, and place them on the right link building sites.&nbsp; Social Marketing expert <a href="http://www.michellemacphearson.com/">Michelle MacPhearson</a> explains, &ldquo;link building sites are typically social bookmarking sites, sites where you can add your articles (and link to your site within the article) and sites where users submit content or links to content and other users vote that content up or down.&rdquo;</p> <p>Some of the most popular link building social media Web sites include:</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.squidoo.com/">Squidoo</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.digg.com/">Digg</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.propeller.com/">Propeller</a></li> <li><a href="http://delicious.com/">Del.icio.us</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.weebly.com/">Weebly</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/">StumbleUpon</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.reddit.com/">Reddit</a></li> </ul> <p>I know this may seem like a lot of Web sites to submit your links to, but think of it this way&hellip; If you submit 1 link a day to 4 social bookmarking Web sites, every day for a month, you will have over 120+ links linking back to your website.</p> <p>To make things even better, there are several bookmark aggregator sites out there that will allow you to streamline your submission process and help you organize your submission process.&nbsp; One of my favorites is <a href="http://socialposter.com/">Social Poster</a>, a social bookmarketing aggregator that allows you to submit your posts to multiple bookmarking Web sites with one click.&nbsp; This tool has rapidly decreased the amount of time I am spending bookmarking my submissions, and offers over 70+ social bookmarking sites for you to submit to.</p> <p>Now that you understand what link bulding is, and why you should engage in a link building strategy, take a little time to think about which social bookmarking platforms will work best for your campaign.&nbsp; Each network targets a different type of content, and each site has a different audience that you will be reaching, so it is important for you to understand where you want to target your campaign to see the best results.</p> <p>As I said above, Link building is one of the best ways to increase your search engine rankings and drive traffic to your website, but if you expect to see results, you must learn how to build links correctly, and place them on the right link building sites.&nbsp; Here are some of the tips that you can use for better link building:</p> <p><strong>Tip: </strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>Try to obtain as many </strong><strong>one way links as you can.</strong></span></p> <p>One way links are considered to be one of the most difficult type of link to be achieved because you are not returning any link to the site that links to you. One of the only ways to get this type of link is to have stellar content on your website, blog, or sit e you are promoting.&nbsp; So to get this sort of one way trusted links, the content of your website has to be too good. One way links can come from a variety of services, including:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Blogs</strong> -&nbsp; The more backlinks you have from bloggers to your site, the better off you site will be.&nbsp; When looking for bloggers to comment on your site, try finding knowledgeable bloggers that can write intelligently about your website, remember they now represent your brand.</li> <li><strong>Press Releases -</strong> In order to increase your website&rsquo;s visiblity, distribute your own news through various online press release services. Online press releases can generate and direct unbelievable traffic towards your site and eventually it helps in better ranking too.</li> <li><strong>Social Videos - </strong>One of the easiest ways to develop on way links is posting your own videos on various video social sites, which will provide links back to your site.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Tip: Utilize Social Media Bookmarking Web Sites</strong></p> <p>Brian Clark of <a href="http://www.copyblogger.com/link-building-strategies-that-work/">CopyBlogger</a> writes &ldquo;The quickest way for an exceptional piece of content to get a lot of attention that results in secondary links is to make the home page of <a href="http://digg.com/">Digg</a> or <a href="http://del.icio.us/popular/">Delicious Popular</a>. There are scores of similar sites that can drive quality traffic as well, such as <a href="http://reddit.com/">Reddit</a>, <a href="http://www.techmeme.com/">TechMeme</a>, and <a href="http://ma.gnolia.com/">Magnolia</a>. For more offbeat content, <a href="http://www.fark.com/">Fark</a> will shake your server. Plus there are dozens of aggregator sites such as <a href="http://popurls.com/">PopURLS</a> that also drive traffic based on your inclusion at the primary site.&nbsp; If you&rsquo;ve done a great job with your headline, it should magnetically draw people in. However, you need to understand the audience of each social media site. What works as a headline for Digg often won&rsquo;t work for Reddit. Tweak accordingly, but try to retain your <a href="http://www.copyblogger.com/the-5-essential-elements-of-search-engine-keyword-research/">keywords</a> in the title if at all possible, because most of the resulting links will simply regurgitate that title.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>Tip: Link OUT</strong></p> <p>This one may be a little surpirsing, but linking <em>out</em> can actually attract links back to your site.&nbsp; By linking out, you are generating a conversation with another blogger, and if you provide meaningful comments and feedback, there is an extremely good chance that they will return the favor for you.</p> <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p> <p>I hope you now have a better understanding of what link bulding is, why you should engage in a link building strategy, and how to begin.&nbsp; Before you dive right in, remember to analyze which platforms will work best for your campaign.&nbsp; Each network targets a different type of content, and each site has a different audience that you will be reaching, so it is important for you to understand where you want to target your campaign to see the best results.</p> <p>And remember, &ldquo;the words you put on a web page have no life of their own until they get read.&rdquo; - Brian Clark</p> 2009-02-10T17:51:42Z -11.0135 321 3136 true 15 24005 social-media-optimization-link-building-101 1 2009-02-12T22:58:57Z 2009-02-12T22:58:57Z

In this article, I will discuss what link building is, why you should make sure it is a part of your social media strategy, and then I will share with you some link building tips to help you begin campaign.

0 2009-02-24T09:49:16Z