Social Media & Link Bait – It’s Still About Content
While you can and should run some special promotions on your social network accounts, you also won’t keep anyone’s attention if that’s all you post. What you need is link bait – the kind of pieces that people will want to share with their friends by sending them the link.
Short, informative pieces related to your business that addresses a real problem in people’s lives. Back to your dog-washing business – an article about “How to Clip Your Dog’s Claws in 3 Easy Steps” would be an excellent post.
Post something controversial that will get people’s attention. You don’t even have to take a stand if that would turn a segment of your customers off. “Should People with Small Apartments Keep Large Dogs?” gives you an opportunity to share both sides of an issue – and generate the kind of controversy that in turn generates real buzz.
People love list articles like the one mentioned in the first example above. “5 Reasons You Should Walk Your Dog Daily” will get more attention than “Why You Should Walk Your Dog.”
Post an article about yourself. It can be humorous or be a list article – make it something that gives people an insight to who you are and how you do business, or else something that will further your personal brand.
Humor is also a great link bait hook. If you happen to have a dog washing service, the possibilities for humor are endless. But you can find humor in just about anything if you try.
Another way to look at it is that your goal is to turn your social media accounts into real community resources. If you give value, you will get friends. They will spread the word about you to their friends. Your communities will grow, and so will your search engine rankings.
Of course, social networking is all well and good if you have a business with a national market. What about if you’re local? That’s easy as well – just be sure to list your location in bold (where bold is possible) in the body of every article you post. Search engines pay attention to this information too, and they pay particular attention to text that’s written in bold font.