For some time now, it’s been about content of one form or another. Every mention of social media elicits responses of nodding heads that say, “we know.” In the same breath, if one talked about link building, it results in sending shivers down the spines of even those who played on the Internet playground as babies.

The reason for this scare is the rumors that were all over the place since 2012. People wrote about SEO being dead. They said social PR is the way to go but without SEO. Really?

The Fact About Link Building

In reality, SEO and link building are more alive than ever. True, social media wasn’t on our radar about five years ago. But today things have changed for us. The breadth of knowledge we should all possess is greater now than it’s ever been.

Google now gives importance to content and “natural” links, instead of weak content and “unnatural” link building. By natural I mean the kind of links that “still work.”

Unlike before, you don’t have to spend hours on end trying to get links. Your job is to concentrate on creating strong content that takes on a life of its own and attracts links organically.

All About Social Link Building

Even today, links drive traffic to your sites, but all those people who talked about “link building” being dead were talking of the old-school link methodologies they’re so used to – comment spam, buying links or unrelated low-quality directories.

Today, social is the focal point for link builders. But it does take an understanding. Let’s get down to some details and tips on social link building.

Find Targets For Interactions

We’ve talked about social media engagement and interaction quite a bit in our other posts. We know that posting great shareable information is a wonderful way to get social links. For more see my article on The Secret Sauce to Social Media Success.  

Another very popular way of social link building is to engage on social media with influential people in your niche or related to your niche on their home ground, and hope these interactions lead to links to your site.

Make a list of popular sites with a very strong social presence of thousands of followers and friends. Visit them on social networking sites and see what they’re talking about. Pay attention!

Be the first. If they have such a large audience, they’re bound to post often. There are several tools to help you keep track of when their posts happen. Comment on their posts on social pages and it helps to be one of the first to respond.

Social link building tip: Be seen right at the top whenever they make a blog post: on Google +, on their Facebook fan page, tweets, new video on Youtube etc. It helps to catch their attention and the attention of others who visit them.

Through this interaction, you should add value. You should come across as a person people would want to know more about. If you just post, “I learn a great deal from your posts, thank you” or something like that, you’re looked at as yet another follower who’s there to learn. This defeats the purpose of trying to gain respect as an authority in your area.

On the other hand, if you post information that’s relevant to the post and from which people can learn something, people start paying attention. It doesn’t happen overnight, you have to be a regular. When you keep posting valuable responses, the editors as well as the visitors would be curious to know who you are. They will then click on your link to visit your site and if they find exceptional content on your site, you’ll have a boost of links to your site.

Help people: It may not be your domain, but who’s stopping you from helping with the questions being asked? You can jump in with a couple of answers here and there, without overdoing it. You don’t want to create a negative feeling with the owners/editors that you’re trying to attract their audience. Just be subtle.

Do it without being asked. People who manage to succeed in this are those who offer important information without being asked. If there’s a post you think can be made better by adding some information, you can ask, “Here’s some additional important info.” Imagine how impressive that is. They will be tempted to acknowledge you. Think about the comments left on your own blog. Don’t you love it when people engage with you and offer some more insights? I know I do.

Make People Fall In Love With Your Information

Even with thousands of marketers creating content and going social, high-value content is hard to come by. Make a difference with yours. Make it so very valuable that people you target won’t just want to repost or retweet, but they want to link and be associated with it. Do what it takes – data, research studies, infographics, videos anything at all that people would want to post on their sites and even reference in their content. Be highly relevant and provide them exactly what they’re looking for. Do you see the value in this? It’s pure gold for your social link building efforts.

Finally You Reach A Stage…. Where everything you post is being shared, posted and referenced. When you tweet, people retweet. When you pin, you get re-pinned. Your Facebook content goes viral and people on Tumblr just can’t let go – they reblog. Everything you post gets talked about. There are lots of sites that pick up popular social content and republish it. At that stage, every single word that comes out of your pen (keyboard?) leads to links. You have reached the promised land of being an influential leader in your niche and are now a social link building master!

How about some serious and planned social link building?