How do you view linking? Do you view it as a means to an end, scarcely giving a second thought to your strategies, or do you really try and understand how link baiting can in itself define you or your company?

Link baiting can be a multifaceted and somewhat confusing marketing initiative and one that is all too often approached incorrectly with the aim of creating viral buzz or cementing social acceptance. As with any marketing tool, link baiting requires you to have a plan. Far too many people do this incorrectly or worse, misuse the platform through out and out spamming, that you risk getting a bad reputation if you’re not careful.

Due to the relative infancy of social media and the emergence of Web 2.0 techniques to pass that message, many practitioners opt for what can only be described as a shotgun approach. They reason that they should just shout as loud and as long as they can, through as many channels as they can and this will create a certain stickiness.

If you don’t have a goal then how can you compose a plan? Define exactly what you’re trying to achieve with your content before you promote it. It is generally wise to build things up gradually and an increasing number of relevant, quality links will certainly help to improve your search engine rankings. Yelling too much about something in the hope of getting an immediate short-term benefit is unlikely to cut it.

Assuming that you have now got a plan, how are you going to know if it succeeds? You need to be able to measure performance, to see how many tweets, comments, links, bookmarks, votes, downloads, reviews and so on that you achieve. You must have appropriately tagged your content so that your analytic efforts can see what is coming home to roost and how effective your efforts are.

It is quite likely that the people who are distributing your social media are not the same people as your target audience. Once again, everything has to be very relevant. Your content must be original, thought-provoking and likely to be of interest to your initiators. You can’t expect anyone to do anything for nothing, but if your content has a sufficient angle to interest the initiator and more importantly his or her audience, then you have a good chance of it being passed along. A number of “clubs” are now forming, offering a reciprocal linking and tagging network of sorts and it will be interesting to see how these automated systems pan out in our emerging world.

Know your audience! You must tailor your content and your marketing strategy accordingly. Do you know what your objectives really are? Do not be afraid to adjust the tactics accordingly.

Wherever you share your content, make it easy and as Steve Krug would say – don’t make me think. Sharing should be intuitive and not require anyone to jump through hoops. The easier you make it, the more likely you will score a result.

Remember, produce quality, be relevant, be selective, be measurable and above all – be realistic.

How do you approach Link Baiting?

Matthew Toren