Successful link and brand mention building is strongly about overcoming skepticism and building relationships with the people behind the websites that you want to acquire a link or brand mention from. It can be as simple as showing what you have in common or inspiring a sense of goodwill towards your site.
Overcoming Skepticism: Try Non-Link Brand Building
One of the biggest barriers to acquiring a link, particularly a free link, is skepticism. For example, I recall that one of my campaigns repeatedly received rejections from non-profit type organizations and associations because the client site was commercial in nature, even though this particular client site lacked the overt signals of commercial intent like ads or products, associations and organizations were resistant.
This is how I discovered there are other opportunities for building top of mind brand awareness with brand mentions. Although these organizations were skeptical about linking to commercial client sites they were way okay with accepting contributions to their email newsletters and magazines that were sent out every month to thousands of potential customers.
Lessons To Learn From The Broken Link Outreach
The broken link outreach is an old approach that works (Hi, I saw you have a broken link on your page/And btw would you consider adding example.com?). One thing that doesn’t get discussed is why it works.
The reason why broken link building works is instructional on crafting an outreach with a high conversion rate. Ever see a supermarket shopper drop a few boxes and subsequently be assisted by a stranger? Most people typically welcome help. Most people generally smile. Why is that? How do you feel when someone helps you?
I feel good and believe most others do, too. Not only that, there is a temporary bond between us in the form of a good feeling. That’s called goodwill. Goodwill is a general feeling of kindness and friendliness to someone else. When someone does something kind to someone else, the other person thinks, “Oh, this is a nice person.” That’s goodwill.
I believe that is the reason why the broken link outreach works so well. The normal skeptical distance is temporarily bridged by an amount of goodwill that is earned by helping someone else out. The approach bridges the skeptical distance between strangers.
Knowing this, don’t limit yourself to broken links. The approach should be renamed from Broken Links Outreach to simply the Goodwill Outreach because it works for anything that is broken on a site and leads to building goodwill.
For example:
- Typos
- Broken code
- Spam comments
- Hacked web pages
- A dangerously out of date CMS installation
During the course of your free link campaign, keep your approach flexible by keeping an eye out for hidden opportunities for bridging the distance of skepticism. This means having the flexibility to alter your approach to fit the typo, broken code, out of date CMS installation, etc. This is the challenge facing those who are scaling up or outsourcing to a third party, they simply cannot pivot to acting on an unexpected opportunity.
For example, you might review a site and discover that they have a resources page or you might discover that they have a monthly newsletter that goes out to ten thousand potential customers. Being flexible to brand building or alternative helpful approaches helps to create a better sense of authenticity and build goodwill that can turn into a link or a valuable brand mention.
Social Affinity
Social Affinity is a subtle signal that works. Like it or not, people still tend to think in tribal terms. They feel better about you if they know you share the same values and interests. Sharing work, geographic, and social similarities work to bridge the distance between you and the site publisher handing out links.
Doing this can be as simple as having a badge on your site that shows you donate to a specific charity or that you’re a member of an organization. A powerful way to signal social affinity is to mention that you’ve published an article in a sister-chapter of an organization or association.
This can be an aspect of the outreach persona. The word persona literally means a mask, it has etymological roots in the Latin word persōna, which meant a mask that was used in a theatrical production. I’ll discuss outreach persona at another time. For the time being, it’s just how you represent yourself in your outreach through subtle cues.
For example, many years ago I was working on a client’s free link campaign and noticed that success rate went up when there was a geographical/regional affinity between the outreach persona and the link acquisition target. What this means is that the success rate went up when the outreach came from a domain where a state or city name in the outreach domain was geographically close to the organization or association that I was outreaching to.
This is similarly true with my personal link campaigns, where my persona shares a topical affinity, especially when there is a shared hobby or vocation. It’s an “Oh, they’re a part of my tribe” type of reaction. They can be trusted. These are social signals that can be useful for overcoming inherent skepticism.
Social signals when applied in the right context can help overcome skepticism and build that bridge by presenting evidence in your outreach or website of your social membership. For example, if your outreach is related to the outdoors, then being a member, sponsor, or contributor to wildlife conservation groups can help bridge the skeptical distance with the publishers you are contacting for a link.
Link Building Is About Goodwill And Social Affinity
A great deal of link building is built on the premise of scale where people send out tens of thousands of emails (spray) and then “pray” that a small percentage of respondents will convert and provide a link. In my experience, being careful, planning ahead for social affinity and being aware of opportunities to be helpful can open doors of opportunities for both brand mention and link building.
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Roman Samborskyi
