Whatever your stance, I think it’s easy to agree that gaining links from trusted authorities is desirable for any site — but that doesn’t mean the rise of social shouldn’t affect our outreach methods.

We’ll start with the obvious: social sites allow you to network and build relationships with industry players and authorities. Someone who’s gotten to know you over social media is going to be more receptive to a link request than someone receiving a random email from an outside party.

Further, social media offers a quick way to see that you’re a legitimate source with an active interest in the field — you’re not just out to spam any email address or Twitter account you can get your hands on.

However, social media also offers an ideal way to find and target industry users for specific linkbuilding outreach campaigns, too. Of course, before you can start targeting, you’ve got to identify who you’re trying to reach.

Courtesy of Hubspot.com

Identifying Your Target Audience

There are three main strategies for choosing your linkbuilding targets:

1. Industry Players: These are the active, trusted people who rank well in your industry and can give your site a hefty SEO boost.
2. Audience Platforms: Reaching out to larger platforms can give you access to your target demographics (a mommy blog with a strong following in your demographic, for example).
3. Natural Sharers/Curators: These are the people who’ve amassed an audience based on carefully selecting and sharing content from outside sources (MariaPopova from Brainpicker is one example). You may find them more receptive to linkbuilding campaigns since they have a strong interest in finding high-quality links.

Iron Out Your Persona

If you’re building links for an outside site (a client’s site, for example), you’ll need to build an appropriate online persona to match. Obviously you won’t do well reaching out to a fashion blogger with your SEO Twitter account. No matter what social site you’re using (Twitter, Delicious, etc.), your account should match the industry you’re reaching out to.

If you’re trying to build links for your own website, you’re the primary source and voice of your linkbuilding efforts. There’s no need to build a separate persona: just use the social media accounts you already have.

Only Use High-Quality Content

Choose the highest-quality content you have for your linkbuilding efforts. You’ll get better results by promoting informative content (an infographic, a comprehensive case study, etc.), not your homepage link.

The content you choose should be highly original and offer real value to your target audience — something that’s exciting, something they haven’t seen before.

Here’s a look at the various outreach methods for social networking and bookmarking sites.

Search Twitter Directories & Search Engines To Find Applicable Users

Aside from searching Twitter for relevant keywords or hashtags, several sites make it easier for linkbuilders to find and analyze relevant users:

• Directories: Twitter directories such as Twellow and WeFollow are perhaps the easiest way to find relevant Twitter users. Search by relevant tag (“writers,” “SEO”) or user location. Twellow also has “Twellowhood,” a searchable map which lets users find Twitter users near them.
• Search tools:  Sites like Listorious and Followerwonk allow you to search Twitter bios for desired keywords. Followerwonk also lets users analyze a Twitter user’s followers, so if you find one applicable target, you can easily search the other accounts that target is following.

Search Klout For Industry Influencers

Klout lets you easily search influencers by category (“SEO,” “bloggers,” etc.). Better still, Klout lets users connect their profile to a variety of other accounts, including their WordPress site — meaning minimal research for linkbuilders is required. Keep in mind that you’ll need a Klout account in order to access the site’s search services, however.

Search Delicious For Like-Minded Users

Delicious requires more legwork than Twitter or Klout, but it’s a unique way of finding users already prone to sharing. There are three main ways to search Delicious:

• By tag: Enter in your keyword and you’ll the most popular links from that category, or “tag.”

• By site: Enter in a competitor’s URL to see the users who’ve bookmarked it in the past. Alternatively, use tools like Quantcast.com to find out your site demographics — Quantcast has a section to see which other sites rank well with your site traffic (Wall Street Journal readers also tend to read Smart Money, for example).

• By related article: Find an article that’s relevant to your content? Search that article on Delicious and peruse the users who’ve saved it.

Most professional users will have their website clearly listed on their profile. For better luck, try investigating the users who enter in a unique description for the site you’re bookmarking — you’ll have a higher probability of finding the serious users over the casual ones.

Stumble Categories For Guest Posting On StumbleUpon

If you’re sick of paging through “Write for Us” Google results, StumbleUpon offers an attractive way to quickly discover new blogs. Simply enter in your targeted topic and you’ll be able to click through relevant stumbled blogs in a matter of seconds. You can also comment, network, and discover new ideas for content while you’re stumbling.

Search Newsroom Leaders On Digg

Digg currently has a beta feature called “Newsrooms” that collect the most influential topics and users by category. If your subject falls under one of Digg’s Newsroom categories, you can browse through the Newsroom’s “Leaders” (the top Digg users in that particular category).

Search Google+ For Relevant Users

As Google+’s role  in Google search increases, it’s doubly important to start courting major players on the network. Find PeopleonPlus.com is a useful G+ directory, but don’t forget you can also search the site through a simple “site:plus.google.com” search.

Search & Analyze LinkedIn Profiles, Groups And Answers

A networking powerhouse, LinkedIn contains three fantastic ways of finding relevant targets:

1. Advanced Search: Search member profiles by keyword via LinkedIn’s Advanced Search feature (located in the top righthand corner of your profile). You can tweak your searches to include only certain industries or groups as well.
2. Answers: Check out the Answers section to browse through LinkedIn’s “Top Experts” or “Category Experts.” For a more tailored response, search for applicable questions that relate to your industry and target relevant responders.
3. Groups: Searching for relevant groups or looking for leads in group forums can often pull up some terrific targets.

The Golden Rules Of Linkbuilding Outreach Campaigns

No matter how you choose to contact your newfound targets, always remember the following four “golden rules” of linkbuilding:

1. Have a purpose. Whyare you contacting that specific person? Tell your target exactly why you’re reaching out to him.
2. Tell them how you found them. Showing your research helps showcase why you chose that particular target.
3. Keep it short and sweet. Your targets are busy people — get to the point quickly or risk wasting their time.
4. Call them by name. The quickest way to get your message deleted is to lead with a “Dear Sir or Madam.” Do your research and learn your target’s name. It’s the simplest rule, but it makes a huge difference.

Conclusion

Remember, like any part of linkbuilding, social linkbuilding research takes time. These methods may give you new and original ways to find targets, but they don’t cut any corners. The same rules apply: build your networks. Build trust. Start communicating and sharing relevant content.

Do the legwork, assemble your contact list. The links will come — but it’s going to take some real and serious effort on your part.

In the world of Internet spam, scams, and shams, we’ve learned to be wary of what we find online.

Search engines are no different. Too often we forget that search engines aren’t just a tool to help us find news articles or guacamole recipes. Search engines are running a business—a business whose success relies on providing you legitimate, relevant results.

Fail to give their searchers what they want, and they’re fast on their way to joining Dogpile and Ask Jeeves in the search engine graveyard.

Naturally, Google, Bing, and Yahoo all want to ensure they’re only returning trustworthy and legitimate search results to their users. To ensure quality, the engines work to determine a site’s credibility.

Theoretically, the more you please and earn trust from your past visitors, the more likely you’ll please and earn trust from new visitors. But how do the searchbots measure an abstract human concept like credibility?

Factors To Improve Upon & Measure Your Site’s Credibility

The search engines evaluate a variety of factors when determining your site’s legitimacy. We’ve known about certain tried-and-true factors that can boost your site’s credibility for years, including:

• In-Links: The search engines see in-links (links leading to your website from external sites) as signs of your trustworthiness. In-links are the virtual equivalent of someone “vouching” for your site. The more successful and credible the other site, the better you look to Bing and Google.
• Out-links: Contrary to in-links, out-links are the links on your site that link to external sites. If your links are broken or the external site is irrelevant or outdated, your search rankings can take a hit.
• A clean, error-free site: Broken/missing images, spelling mistakes, or 404 errors are all poor signs of a site’s credibility.
• Traffic: Theoretically, the more traffic you get, the more relevant you are to searchers.
• An easy-to-navigate website: A site that’s easy to navigate can reassure new visitors that your site contains the information they need. If your site is difficult or confusing to navigate, your site’s bounce rate (the percentage of users who immediately leave your site) will be higher— indicating to the search engines that your site wasn’t a successful match for those search queries.
• An XML sitemap: Just like your site must be easy to navigate for humans, it should be similarly easy to navigate for the search spiders, too. An XML sitemap acts as a “road map” that leads bots down each interconnected page of your site, allowing them to index your page more quickly and accurately. Most websites have two sitemaps: a text-based list of pages within the sites and an .xml file for the spiders.

Social: The New Factor That’s Increasingly Affecting Your Credibility

For a long time, SEO and social were two entirely separate departments. A successful company had a social team and an SEO team and the two rarely mingled. It made sense: SEO was all about being found, and social media was about keeping those who’ve already found your brand. SEO set the bait and social kept ‘em on the hook.

Today, SEO and social are inseparable. Customers can just as easily find a company through Twitter as they can Google — and those social media links are busy boosting a company’s SEO signals.

As Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz noted, social now has the ability to affect your search results — meaning that all that traditional SEO legwork you put in could be displaced because a searcher’s Aunt Myrtle shared a related link.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, however—after all, if Aunt Myrtle shares your link, it might be your own site that gets a free pass to the top of the search rankings.

Social Puts The Human Back In Search

Incorporating social into search has one huge benefit for users: it lets humans, not algorithms and search spiders, have a say in search results.

Generally speaking, which link would you rather click: one chosen for you based on keyword density, or one deemed relevant by 10,000 other users?

Hence, the Google +1 button: it gives any user with a Google account the opportunity to publicly vouch for a link. The same applies for social media: before Twitter and Facebook, only content creators and site owners had the power to send in-links to other sites; today, anyone with a social media account can share (and thus “vote” for) any link.

Naturally, now that Google and Bing are bringing social to the SEO party, users now have a variety of social factors to play with when attempting to boost site or brand credibility.

Granted, social SEO is still a new concept, but it’s assuredly the direction where search is heading. Below you’ll find some of the emerging social factors that can boost your site or your brand’s credibility.

Author / Social Authority

The search engines have recently started evaluating a social media user’s credibility just like they evaluate a site’s credibility. Google and Bing have both admitted to considering an author’s authority when incorporating social signals into search results.

Take it from Bing, in a Search Engine Land interview with Danny Sullivan from December 2010:

“We do look at the social authority of a user. We look at how many people you follow, how many follow you, and this can add a little weight to a listing in regular search results. It carries much more weight in Bing Social Search, where tweets from more authoritative people will flow to the top when best match relevancy is used.”

Google also considers a user’s authority when ranking search results. In the below screenshot, a Google search for “blogging” reveals an article by ProBlogger’s Darren Rowse—along with Darren’s Google+ profile picture and the number of G+ Circles Darren appears in.

To make a quick (if imperfect) analogy, author authority is similar to Klout. On Twitter, for example, the search engines might consider such factors as:

• Follower to following ratio
• Number of postings a day
• Number of lists the user appears on
• Number of @mentions a day

The Retweet Factor

Retweets from a power Twitter user can affect your search rankings just like in-links from an authoritative, established source.

As Jennifer Lopez revealed in her case study on SEOmoz, a retweet from the power user Smash Magazine about the SEOmoz Beginner’s Guide to SEO led to the site receiving significant traffic for the search term “beginner’s guide”—a term that had never brought the site traffic prior to the Smashing Magazine RT. The SEOmoz guide still ranks #2 in the Google search rankings for “Beginner’s Guide” to this day.

Search engines can also consider a tweet’s retweet rate. If a link tweeted to 1000 followers gets 100 retweets, it’s got a 10% retweet rate—and that link may do better in search rankings than a link with a 3% retweet rate.

Network, Network, Network

It’s not what you know, it’s who you know—or rather, who you’re engaging with on social media. Interacting with Twitter power users boosts your own credibility.

Of course, that doesn’t mean a food blogger should start tweeting Lady Gaga or Anderson Cooper. Relevance matters: if that food blogger starts a Twitter conversation with Wolfgang Puck or Anthony Bourdain, the blog’s credibility as an authoritative source for recipes may get a huge bump.

Build Your Links and Your Social Presence at the Same Time

Why do companies launch linkbuilding campaigns?

• To increase their visibility and credibility.

What do shared links on social media do?

• Increase visibility and credibility.

In-links (via BOTH social media sites and “traditional” external links from sites) are incredibly valuable to search engines, since they prove a user found it useful, not a searchbot.

The more shares you get, the more people are “voting” for your site. As I wrote previously, going viral can boost both your SEO signals and your credibility.

Encourage Sharing (& Trick Out Your Sharing Options)

If you want people to share your content (and thus boost your credibility), you’ve got to ask for it. A simple “If you found this content useful, share it!” can do a world of sharing good for a website.

Likewise, the more sharing options you include on your website, the easier it’ll be for users to share your site. It’s much easier for readers to click one link and instantly share your content than to go to individual social media sites.

The Obvious Downside of Social Credibility

In theory, credibility works the same way in the virtual world as it does in the real world. Before search engines will list your site or bump you up in the search rankings, they’ve got to trust you—similarly, your customers have got to trust you before they’ll buy from you.

The bright side of building your social credibility is that you’re building trust with both the search engines and your future customers at the same time.

However, in the real world, no one will instantly trust your brick-and-mortar business: you’ve got to earn your customers’ trust through quality customer service, word of mouth, and good publicity (staying in business for a long period of time helps, too). Online credibility is built in the same slow, eventual way.

Establishing your credibility takes time. There’s no shortcut. There’s no get-trust-quick scheme. Do good work over a long period of time and you’ll establish credibility. It’s as simple—and as difficult—as that.

As search engines pay more and more attention to social signals, going viral is rapidly becoming one of the best ways to build links, attract attention, and establish authority and legitimacy in your field.

How Social & SEO Are Linked

Let’s start with the obvious: social media builds links. In fact, viral content serves the same purpose as a link building campaign: gathering endorsements that establish authority and legitimacy in your field.

If one site is getting thousands of social shares, it sends three clear messages about your site to search engines:

• Your site is active
• Your site is current
• Your site is invested in the needs of your audience

Search engines boil down to one basic concept: helping users find what they’re looking for. Large amounts of social shares indicate that a mass amount of people not only found what they were looking for on your site, but also liked your site enough to share it with others.

Viral content is like the mass endorsement of the public; a giant thumbs-up formed from thousands of hands.

Viral Content = Valuable Content

By gaining a massive amount of social shares, you’re not just boosting your SEO signals—you’re also creating content with value for your customer base. Viral content is a win-win for both your brand and your search rankings. Like anything else in life, however, value takes time and talent to create.

Viral content is quality content. It’s passionate, it’s well-written, it’s eloquent, or it’s hilarious. If you want the thousands of shares, you’re going to have to put into the hours to make something with real value for your audience.

These 21 viral ideas are fantastic ways to attract tons of shares—but if you’re not willing to put in the time to put out something good, don’t bother. Fluff does not go viral.

Image Source: Will Lion via Flickr

21 Types of Successful Viral Content

1.)  The Manifesto

The Manifesto is the viral equivalent of preaching to the choir. Write a passionate, eloquent, or well-researched argument that your niche will wholeheartedly agree with. Since you’ve already got an army of believers who agree with you, they’re already primed and ready to share your argument.

Example: Why I’m a Vegetarian, Dammit, an essay on a vegetarian recipe blog,  received over 14,000 shares on StumbleUpon alone.

2.)  The Controversy

The opposite of the Manifesto, the Controversy is all about stirring up some dissent in your niche. Write a well-written rebuttal to another argument, challenge a popular opinion, or spark a controversial discussion and watch the reader comments fly.

Example: Stop Coddling the Super-Rich, Warren Buffet’s August 2011 op-ed in the New York Times, straddles the line between a manifesto and controversy: it went against everything we expect the super-rich to argue, true, but it was also something the general public agreed with. As a result, the controversial-but-popular article landed the NYT a ton of coverage and shares.

3.)  The Promise

Give your readers a timeline or promise for improvement: “Seven Days to a Better Body,” for example, or “23 Tips That Will Make You a Better Photographer.”

Example: 31 Days to an Organized Home received an overwhelming amount of shares on Pinterest since it offered a target audience (primarily crafty, DIY-minded women) a step-by-step walkthrough to achieve a desired result (an organized home).

4.)  The Urgent Attention-Grabber

Create a “must-read factor” in your headlines that implies readers will miss out on important information if they don’t read, such as “13 Mistakes That Are Ruining Your Blog.” Time-sensitive material like “Five Events in 2012 You Don’t Want to Miss” is another fantastic way of attracting shares, since they imply a “before it’s too late” sense of urgency.

Example: A Box You Want to Uncheck on LinkedIn had a title that made readers curious (what does the box do?) along with valuable information that users felt compelled to share with others (I should warn my friends about this).

5.)  The Epic

Why do a top 10 list when you can do a top 100? Go for gold and craft a mega-list relevant to your industry. Examples of epic titles include “50 Must-Have Firefox Add-ons,” or “101 Tips for Increasing Productivity.”

Example: Magazines have been doing this for years: just look at the Time 100 or women’s magazines with covers like 341 Budget Beauty Secrets Inside This Issue.

6.)  The Ranked List

Ranked lists (Top Ten, Best 50, Greatest 100, etc.) have the benefit of being both controversial and interactive. Every ranking sparks an internal discussion within your readers: is #28 truly greater than #26? Does the #1 ranking really deserve the top spot? And how on earth did ________ not make the list?

Example: Few sites embrace lists like Time.com, which goes so far as to release a massive “Top Ten of Everything” series every year, featuring everything from the “Top Ten Tweets” to the “Top Ten Oddball News Stories.”

7.)  The Man of the Year

Instead of creating a ranked list, cut to the chase and just announce your #1 selection.  Take a stand with your own niche: App of the Month, Best Industry Site of 2011, Blog of the Year, etc.

Example: People’s Sexiest Man Alive, Oprah’s Book of the Month, Time’s Person of the Year, Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year…

8.)  The Directory

Why make readers sift through mounds of data when you can do it for them? Collect the best links from around the internet and share them with your readers. Gather the best advice for your niche, the top news stories, the leading Twitter accounts in your field, or a simple collection of interesting information.

Example: The Most Interesting 50 Articles on Wikipedia combed through a massive directory of interesting Wiki articles to present only the most interesting stories.

9.)  The Quiz

Quizzes are popular for several reasons: they’re interactive, they’re fun, and they’re user-focused. They can also start a discussion (I got this result! Which one did you get?). Example: There are three main types of quizzes: user-focused (Which Superhero are You?), test-your-knowledge (Name All 50 State Capitals in 10 Minutes), and just-for-fun (Rapper or McDonald’s Menu Item?).

10.) The Pop Culture Tie-In

When you embrace the latest craze sweeping the Internet, be it a meme, video, trend, or movie, you’re capitalizing on the thing-of-the-moment. Create your own meme or tie a post into something current (the Muppet movie, Herman Cain’s political debacles, etc.). Just make sure you’re not posting something that’s already oversaturated (the world does not need another Charlie Sheen joke).

Example: A current example is the Pepper Spraying Cop Meme.

11.)  The Expert In viral content and in life, it’s not what you know, but who you know. Name recognition is a powerful thing. When Mark Zuckerberg talks about Facebook or Mario Batali talks about food, people listen. For even more viral impact, gather a group of experts: “15 Published Authors on Writing,” for example.

Example:  The previous Warren Buffet example made headlines because it wasn’t an average Joe writing his opinions for the NYT…it was a mega-rich celebrity.

12.) The Viral Video

From Snakes on a Plane to the Old Spice Man, the road to viral marketing has been paved with viral videos.  Make a trailer for an upcoming product, film a demonstration, or create something downright goofy. Just make it original or make it good—Internet users have no shame about stopping a boring video 15 seconds after it starts.

Example: Evolution of Dance, any video by OK Go, etc.

13.)  The Visual Aid

Visual representations of mass amounts of data are easy-to-digest while still containing a lot of “meaty” content. Infographics aren’t the only example of this—think graphs, informational videos, or interactive maps, too.

Example: Visualizing the World’s Food Consumption

14.) The Tutorial

From simple articles to complex ones, step-by-step instructions and how-to articles are always popular. Craft larger tutorials like “Beginner’s Guide to…” or a “Complete Guide to…” or keep it simple with a basic how-to article.

Example: It doesn’t have to be complicated: 37 Ways to Tie a Scarf received over 43,000 shares on StumbleUpon alone.

15.)  The Freebie

Create something of significant value and give it away for free– and encourage sharing. You’re positioning yourself as an authoritative brand, someone a reader will return to for more information in the future.

Example: Seth Godin’s free eBook “Unleashing the Ideavirus” is the perfect example of a successful viral freebie: it was packed with information, completely free, and Godin encouraged people to share.

16.)  The Create-Your-Own Activity

Like a cross between the freebie and the quiz, the Create-Your-Own is all about letting a web visitor create something unique, personalized, and (generally) brand-related.

Example: MadMenYourself.Com, South Park Studio, or OfficeMax’s Elf Yourself.

17.)  The Collaboration

Sometimes it takes a village to make something go viral. Collaborative content feels like a group effort—or, in the case of memes, like a virtual flash mob. As an added benefit, you’ve got a head start on the viral sharing snowball effect: users naturally want to share and promote content they’ve helped make.

Example: Submit-your-own memes like Paula Deen Riding Things, submit-your-own-picture blogs like Cake Wrecks, and serious posts like 21 Readers Tell What They Wish They’d Known About Photography are all collaborative examples

18.)  The Incredible Story

The Incredible Story reflects all those human interest news stories we all love to share: the dog who traveled 30 miles to return home, the man who pulled someone from the subway tracks. These stories impress us; we feel compelled to share them with others.

Example: Christian the Lion video or the massive response to the “Force is with Katie” story.

19.)  The Knee-Jerk Reaction

Why has a video of a baby panda sneezing gained over 124 million hits? Because it’s short, simple, and straightforward: a baby panda sneezes, and it’s cute. As Seth Godin writes, “Nietzche is hard to understand and risky to spread, so it moves slowly among people willing to invest the time. Numa Numa, on the other hand, spread like a toxic waste spill because it was so transparent, reasonably funny, and easy to share.”

Example: The aforementioned Sneezing Panda; Dramatic Chipmunk.

20.)  The Ridiculous

It’s bizarre, it’s off-the-wall, it’s never been seen before, and it’s hilarious. Content that catches your audience by surprise and then makes them laugh is some of the most successful viral content out there.

Example: Old Spice’s The Man Your Man Could Smell Like or (more recently) Guy on a Buffalo.

21.)  The Hybrid

Hybrids combine several different aspects of the other types for one superpowered piece of viral content.

Example: Boston.com’s 50 Scariest Movies of All Time was a ranked list (#6), invited the audience to share their own opinions (#17) and let users create their own top 50 list in an interactive game (#16).

Conclusion

I’d argue that creating your own hybrid trumps every other type on this list. You’re creating a strategy that’s uniquely targeted to your own brand and audience—and you’ll be doing what “going viral” is all about: doing something remarkably different from everyone else.

Related Links

• Freshness Update + Social Media = Happy Users
• Facebook Subscribe Button Announced, Will Be Launching “Soon”
• The Broken Follower Counts & Confusing Buttons Of Google+
• Zagg, Neiman Marcus & The LA Times Share Real Social Media Stories
• 7 Tips For Boosting SEO Of Your Facebook Page

I’ve written many times on using social media to promote linkbait-style content for traffic and virality and how to reap the benefits of that social media traffic. Sometimes you can do a social promotion, of a piece of content, and get a lot of traffic from social media but not a whole lot of benefit if social shares, links, pageviews, etc fall flat.

Fortunately, there’s a way to capitalize on that seemingly lost and sometimes perceived “useless” traffic.

Another conundrum I’ve run into is that clients want to work their sales pitches into linkbait so badly, as they fear the social promotion alone won’t reap enough benefit to them.

They sometimes have a hard time putting informational, resourceful, entertaining, or educational material out there without a direct tie-in to sales or leads. As it is free to users, it can be costly to a publisher or client to create and develop.

While there are many things wrong with that thought process, using remarketing can be the missing element a client is looking for from turning educational content into commercialized advertising.

Remarketing allows you to follow the visitors of your informational content with a transactional message across the Web with ads to attempt to bring back. It’s a way go beyond the benefits of traffic, brand recognition, links, social shares, CPM ad revenue, virality, etc and help contribute to bottom line a bit more by tapping into reciprocity a bit.

If you’ve provided someone a valuable resource they are bound to trust, you have become more of an authority in your vertical. And if you remind them of what you’ve provided them, while asking for a call-to-action, then the chances of them clicking through and paying attention are much higher.

The best way to demonstrate this concept is by an example. Here, I have a linkbait article on The Controversial History of Xvid (Xvid is video software). By setting up retargeting on this page, by cookie or pixel, any users coming to this page can then be followed across media partner networks with ads.

After a successful social media promotion, I now have a very large group of people that I know are interested in Xvid enough to read about it to target transactional ads to in attempt to get them to convert and download the Xvid software from the same site they read the linkbait on.

While this isn’t the perfect ad, to give you an idea, the ad might looks something like this:

Then for the results, hopefully the ad reminds them of the content and sparks their interest into checking it out from you. While this isn’t the best example this concept can be used many different ways.

Ultimately, the social media promotion provides you a large group of fairly targeted users, that have already broke the interest barrier, to advertise to. The obvious key here is making this profitable and not a large loss of ad spend. Have fun experimenting with this concept and let me know what kind of results you had in the comments here.

Like t-shirts from http://www.likebuttonshirt.com/

The Like button is now a recognizable symbol, and while it is used millions of times each day, the fact remains that the Like button cannot be used in every occasion.

Users need more variation in order to both adequately express how they feel about content posted on Facebook and why they are endorsing a specific product or piece of content via their Facebook profile.

For instance, multiple pages and groups are asking Facebook to add a “Dislike” button option (the biggest page has over 3.3 million fans, even though it is not updated).

Besides having the freedom to state a negative or positive opinion on Facebook, many users are hesitant to “like” a piece of content online in order to share it, as “liking” something implies they condone it.

For instance, if someone posts something horrific like an abuse story or an obituary, users are hesitant to “Like” or “thumbs up” that content, as nobody wants to “like” someone else’s death or tragedy.

However, they may want to share it with others, so the option to share a piece of content without having to say a person “likes” it may help increase exposure for all types of stories, not just ones that tend to be positive or garner likes (such as a humorous article about a dog who can water ski).

As mentioned in a previous Search Engine Land article on social rating, it is important to give people flexibility to share their true opinion, as not everything — especially when it comes to opinions on online news, products and content — can be answered with a simple yes or no, as the Boolean voting system requires. Options are crucial to allowing users to rate and share content more in accordance with how they really feel about it.

While promoting a piece of content by “liking” it may not be ideal in many users’ subconscious, because that is currently the only option available (since Facebook no longer supports the “share” action buttons as of February 2011), it is morally OK to hit “like” on content in order to share it.

Regular Facebook users and content readers understand that liking an external link doesn’t mean a person necessarily supports the actions of story, but instead wants to promote it or share it with friends via their Facebook profile.

Facebook most likely recognizes that only having the Like button as an option isn’t ideal, which is why it has been speculated they are going to release Facebook “Gestures,” which gives users choices on how they share and comment on internal and external content that is shared via the Facebook Like button. Users can show they “watched” or “read” a piece of content, instead of having to say that they “liked” it.

This is a crucial development in the social sharing space, as millions of websites and blogs are using the Like button to allow visitors to share content and products. As the online social experience continues to grow and evolve, users will continue to expect more intuitive and descriptive ways to share content, products and entertainment that is interesting or important to them.

While Facebook hasn’t announced “Gestures” yet as expected (as of press time), it is still a speculation that with the new navigational display changes and the upcoming Timeline profile layout, the way users will share content internally and externally via Facebook will have to change as well.

Stock image from Shutterstock, used under license.

However, several things are put into effect in order to make virality happen.

The content first must be well written, original, and be something that readers will want to share with others. While there is no set formula or guarantee that content (no matter how well it is written) will go viral, the following are some suggestions on how popular content gets its footing.

Outline The Benefits Or Incentives

One of the easiest ways to convince a reader that content is good enough to be shared is to let them know why it would be harmful not to follow its advice or instructions. Once the reader has decided to heed its suggestions, they will most likely also want to pass it on to as many people as possible.

Some title examples of using this method of writing include “How to Prevent a Company From Collapsing” or “The Best Ways to Keep All Your Data Safe”. Describing the problem and then explaining the solutions will not only educate the reader, but using this “crisis” perspective will make for more motivated readers.

Oftentimes, the word crisis is brought up with a negative connotation. However, these types of urgency-themed messages can also be utilized from a positive standpoint, such as “Want 50% Off The Social Media Week Tickets?” or “Clearance Sale Ends Tomorrow on These Products”.

For the most part, positive crisis spins are shorter because there aren’t necessarily any problems to solve that take time to explain.

Be Controversial Or Interesting

Saying something that isn’t the popular opinion, or bringing up topics in a new light that hasn’t been mentioned before is one of the easiest ways to become viral. However, it is usually the most time-consuming because it takes a lot of ingenuity to write a piece of content that is something no one else wants to bring up or has thought up in the exact way before.

Playing the devil’s advocate will always stir up interesting and traffic. It can also help drive discussion in the blog comment area. Constructive criticism and discussion can help drive viral content just as much as the original piece of content.

Oftentimes, it helps to write down an idea for a blog post or piece of content right when they are thought of, instead of promising to write it later. Having an original thought about a topic is often hard to remember later. If a piece of paper is not handy, send an email with the idea or save it in a spreadsheet.

Appeal To The Ego

It is human nature– people love to talk about themselves. So directing a blog post’s title and content towards the reader can generate interest and make the reader personally invested.

Good examples of involving the reader by using the 2nd person include, “How to Download Your Photos From Facebook” or “10 Ways to Tell if You’re an Entrepreneur” instead of “Facebook Photo Download Instructions” or “Signs of an Entrepreneur.” Simply using the word, “you” can make a title standout and garner interest.

Make It Easy To Share

Even if a piece of content is original, strong, and has great points, if it isn’t easy to share, it isn’t going anywhere. Use sharing widgets like AddtoAny or many of the WordPress plugins (for self-hosted WordPress blogs) will help readers share and distribute content.

Normally, having share buttons at the top and bottom (or along the side, if they scroll with the content) allow readers to click “Share” at almost any place they are in the article.

In addition to sharing options for the top social networking and bookmarking sites (like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and Google+), there should also be options for printing and emailing the blog post.

Get Established

In a true “cart before the horse” metaphor, it helps to be an established blog or website in order for content to go viral. If someone is respected in their field, their content is much more likely to be shared often and regularly. But without well written (and usually viral content), a writer won’t become respected or well-known in their field.

There are ways about this, such as guest blog posting on other more popular blogs can help drive traffic to the author’s website and to get name exposure.

Additionally, consistently providing high-quality and thought-provoking content will make even the newest blogger more popular with every piece of content they publish. Keep in mind, consistently updated blogs are also more likely to be picked up and indexed by search engines.

In conclusion, even though the following guidelines don’t guarantee content going viral, it can help. Appealing to user’s needs, egos, and the desire to share and promote good content are all components of building a high-traffic blog with regular return traffic and email subscribers (of whom hopefully translate into customers).

Focusing on the quality of a piece, instead of its potential to go viral, will always help it more in the long run than any share buttons or mentions of “you” ever could.

These types of questions lead to the question of how much content is actually consumed versus how much of it is being shared. Sharing content to share it is a legitimate strategy for some — just look at Guy Kawasaki. As a co-founder of news aggregation website Alltop, he has become an Internet marketing legend, with over 364,000 followers on Twitter as of June 2011.

However, the line between becoming a credible news resource and one that simply spews links is sometimes a fine one. Guy Kawasaki does a great job of promoting appealing content that is interesting to most online users, but for social media users in a niche industry, it becomes harder and hard to attract a bigger, loyal following on links alone.

Blind Links

Blind Links are social media posts that are simply an article title and a URL:

While this seems like a relatively harmless way to share information (and the majority of Twitter users are likely guilty of it), blind link overload can lead to devalued credibility and social influence. This is because most tweets with shared links should include the opinion of the person tweeting it.

Of course, many article titles speak for themselves, but otherwise commentary (not always for businesses, more so when it’s on a user’s personal Twitter page) by the user provides their opinion and personal insight on the subject.

When it comes down to it, not all links need to include commentary, and blind links shouldn’t necessarily be avoided. It is too much of one thing that can generally cause users to ignore all tweets.

Personal tweets about experiences and events thrown in with tweets that share links and information is a good mixture of credibility and humanization—allowing readers to benefit from a user’s knowledge and what they’ve seen, while also allowing them to see the user’s personal life.

Perils Of Blind Re-Tweets

Another type of blind sharing, called blind re-tweets, occur when a user re-tweets a link/tweet without actually reading the article that the link goes to.

A Mashable article from April 2011 by David Spark discusses this phenomenon and even provides a graph of data showing the discrepancy between actual visits to a blog or webpage versus the number of times the URL was shared via Facebook/Twitter/Etc.

But how can a blind re-tweet affect a user’s online credibility? Actually, in a number of ways. For starters, if a user shares a link that they hadn’t checked, it may turn out to be a spammy link that doesn’t go to the information the title alluded to.

Questionable Sources

Besides sharing spammy links, the users that are being re-tweeted (and in turn @ mentioned) themselves may also pose a credibility risk to the user who is re-tweeting. If a user is flagged for spam or has posted a lot of spammy links in the past, a person who is reading a re-tweet may click on the @ mentioned user’s name and see their profile and recent tweets.

If some are questionable, this may cause them to unfollow the person who was re-tweeting the information. In these instances, sources are just as important as the links and information they are claiming to provide.

Is A Good Balance Possible?

What seems like information overload to some may seem like just the right amount to others. Many blogs and articles have discussed under-posting on Twitter and Facebook (as well as over-posting), but for those that want to have an active social media presence without spending all day searching for content share, sometimes scheduled tweets and blind links are a must.

A steady stream of information is sometimes the most consistent approach rather than 10 tweets between 8-8:30 am with nothing else said throughout the day. A few tweets each day, varying between personal commentary, links with insight, and blind links may be the best approach to produce a well-rounded Twitter account.

The way that people associate words and phrases and let them influence his or her decisions is something that is related to both prototype theory and the types of information sharing discussed in Colleen Roller’s well-written article, How Anchoring, Ordering, Framing, and Loss Aversion Affect Decision Making.

Anchoring, Ordering, Framing, and Loss Aversion all affect the e-commerce behavior of Internet users around the world. The choices presented to social users and customers can influence how, when and to the extent that they spend money.

Anchoring

Anchoring is the best way to set a reference point for the person consuming the information. A good example here is displaying a “average donation amount” on the Facebook page or landing page.

The average donation amount will mostly likely be higher than the “last amount donated”, which in turn should lead to overall larger donation amounts from new donors. Because donors see what others are giving on average, they feel compelled to donate an amount of money in the same price range.

However, anchoring may also backfire. If a user logs goes to Facebook or your page with $1,500 in mind to donate, he or she may see the average donation amount of $100 as “low” and thus may lower their own donation.

Additionally, what a person considers a “generous donation” compared to a “small donation” is extremely relative dependent on their individual experiences. This is another example of how prototype theory relates to decision making.

Ordering

Courtesy of Inter-Studios.com

The order of listed items is a good way to set price point expectations—placing the most expensive items first makes it seem that the items at the bottom of the list are priced reasonably in comparison.

Ordering can also come in handy on e-commerce websites. When searching a particular product category, listing the items most expensive to least expensive by default may have the same effect.

The same goes for product packages and services offered on social media. Listing the most expensive (yet also most extensive) package at the top of a page may help sell more product packages overall, as users don’t experience sticker shock when they reach the bottom of the page.

Instead, a users will read from top to bottom, with more affordable packages being introduced as he or she scrolls down.

Framing

Framing deals with how things are presented to the customer or user. Greg Beddor, web marketing expert, provides an example: “If a product is promoted as having an average ’20% refund rate’ versus a product that has a ’80% satisfaction rate’, which is seems to be a better choice?”

Most customers would choose the product with the “80% satisfaction rate, even though they are the same statistic (just presented in different ways). The “20% refund rate” automatically frames the product negatively in the customer’s mind.

Even though the “80% satisfaction rate” clearly isn’t as great as a 95% satisfaction rate would be, it is still placing the word “satisfaction” in front of the customer which again, produces a positive connotation.

Loss Aversion

By giving concrete numbers for how a customer is going to be losing money, they may become more likely to buy a product. For example, telling a customer that they lose about $80 a month from vampire power versus suggesting they can “save money by buying a power strip!” is much more motivating.

Concrete numbers give a real-life example that customers can relate to. Several companies use loss aversion in their marketing campaigns by telling customers how much money they will save per month by switching from a competitor.

Summary

Anchoring, ordering, framing, and loss aversion (in addition to prototype theory) are all ways to present choices to users that can affect what choices they make when using social media for shopping and purchasing.

Placing products in a positive light while comparing its strengths to the competitor’s assets isn’t necessarily a new strategy, but the consideration of the psychological plays listed above would benefit most.

Catering your information towards your target audience and where they share it most is crucial to producing content that spreads like wildfire online. Linkbait tactics would be without effectiveness if it wasn’t for the social media networks that make it irresistible to share.

Even though some linkbait-crafted content spreads fast without preference to a certain social network, it is a fairly common fact that different social media networks are used for different purposes.

For example, LinkedIn is for professionals, so the articles and various pieces of content shared there is geared towards working professionals in an individual’s network.

However, even though Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are usually called the “bigwigs” of social media, they aren’t the only social networks that are experiencing large and consistent growth. Websites like StumbleUpon have shown large growth in traffic, especially after their redesign in 2009.

Get Information Out Quickly On Twitter

If you had to describe Twitter in one word, it would be F-A-S-T. Twitter is literally an up-to-the-second account of current events happening around the world.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo told the crowd at the 2011 Mobile World Conference in Barcelona that “40% of Twitter users connect via mobile devices, and half use multiple methods of connecting to the service.” He also stated that “Twitter provides a social framework around television, forcing people to watch shows as they air to get the full TV-watching experience.” Twitter traffic increases during popular TV shows and events like Glee, allowing for users to share their thoughts on live events.

Twitter was also a crucial measuring tool when it came to the recent protests against the government in Egypt because it allowed users all over the world to get updates on the situation using unique hash tags and actual protesters in Egypt used Twitter to share meeting places, videos, photos, and information.

(Celebration after Egyptian President Steps Down, Courtesy of Reuters TV)

Participate in conversations and offer same-hour responses to questions posed about your product(s) and services on Twitter using a custom hash tag. Customers learn to trust businesses who have a consistent and engaging presence on social media networks. Content that is usually shared on Twitter has an engaging title, is easy/fast to read, and is usually newly published.

Even though Twitter doesn’t have a business-minded segment of its network like Facebook does, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a viable marketing tool. It just means that it can be used differently.

More Options For Businesses On Facebook

With the ability to customize tabs and add unique applications, Facebook offers a better overall engagement platform with their Pages for Businesses. They have even stepped it up a notch in 2010 by introducing Facebook Insights, which gives page administrators valuable information, including demographics, visibility and percentage of interaction. This percentage (the ratio of clicks/interactions to impressions) is valuable to marketers who want to see which of their content is shared and commented on the most.

Because users see Facebook as a community (and Twitter as more of a way to share and comment on information), it is best to treat it as such. Contests, trivia questions, and unique page features are the best ways to drive up content engagement. However, most of the content that is shared on user’s personal profiles is blog articles from outside websites.

To see what content in all of Facebook has been shared the most, check out All Now and Its Trending. Videos are popular to share on Facebook, as are news stories about current events. Photos usually aren’t shared from a website but rather are usually personal photos uploaded by the user themselves.

The Stupendous Growth Of StumbleUpon

According to a January 2011 article published on TechCrunch, “According to Statcounter, StumbleUpon is now responsible for 43% of all major social media site (StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Myspace and Digg) traffic on the 15 billion pageviews that the analytics service tracks. Facebook is at 38%.” Their growth seems to have increased since August 2010.

In addition to large overall growth, TechCrunch also states that “The site also gains around 500-600K new registered users monthly on average and boasts a 40% daily active user rate.”

StumbleUpon officials state that its growth has increased dramatically because of more interactive social features that make it easier to share content. StumbleUpon set a record of 320 sites shared (aka “stumbled”) every second in one day on January 2011.

What content is shared on social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon and Digg? DailyBlogTips states that “News posts tend to perform better on Digg than on StumbleUpon” and linkbait web pages and blog posts do better on StumbleUpon. Web pages get more visibility the more they are “dugg” or voted up on StumbleUpon.

An AddThis infographic published ReadWriteWeb shows that traffic to Gmail and StumbleUpon outpaced Facebook in 2010. Surprisingly, email is a great way to share content, even though it may not be thought of as a “social network”.

Utilizing Email aAs A Sharing Network

AddToAny, another sharing widget similar to AddThis claims that almost 14% of shares go through email. Unlike StumbleUpon which can share entire webpages, most of these are singular news articles or blog posts. The best way to tackle email is to combine it into your social strategy.

ConstantContact mentions the effectiveness of social email marketing and highlights how some strategies on how to make it work for your business- by view social media as “more than just buttons” and to not “forget how to listen”.

Content that is shared by email is usually only sent to one person, so the overall saturation of an email ‘share’ would definitely be lower than a person that tweets a link to an article and has 2000 followers. However, 14% is a large (and growing) number and the option to send content by email should never be forgotten.

Small businesses may automatically be thought of as the “underdogs” when compared to large brands and multi-million dollar companies. But when it comes to social media, this isn’t always the case. Many small businesses have used their size as an advantage to create an innovative and successful online social media marketing strategy.

On the other hand, large businesses have used their influence and history to extend their heavy brand presence into the digital forum. As with anything, there are advantages and disadvantages for both small and large businesses when it comes to social media.

The Innovation Brewing In Small Businesses

Small businesses become successful by either thinking of the ideas that no one else has before or taking an established norm and doing it better in their community and for their customers. Small business owners and employees are more likely to work harder because they have more invested into the business and they are affected dramatically when it succeeds or fails.

This connectivity to the lifeblood of the business can certain be to its advantage, as employees may be more eager to do their job in a new and innovative way. Because small businesses inherently have fewer employees than bigger companies, they also have less “red tape” to move through when they are posting content on Twitter or completing a custom tab on Facebook.

These types of tasks may be checked by 4-5 different employees at a large company, whereas a social media coordinator at a small business may only need to ask the owner or an office manager for approval, if anyone at all. This may lead to better ideas being approved and live on social networking profiles more quickly.

Another social media immersion tactic that small businesses can utilize faster than big companies or nationwide brands is their presence on new social networking websites. For instance, it would be much easier for a single ice cream parlor with one location to sign up for FourSquare and begin creating check-in deals than it would for a nationwide chain like Baskin Robbins, who even if a single owner is a franchiser of the chain, may need to get approval from their corporate headquarters before beginning a sponsored FourSquare deal.

Even though the ability to try new networks and marketing tactics faster and to be more innovative, there can be great stressors placed on a small business that big companies may not have as much trouble with.

For instance, if a boutique marketing agency only has one social media coordinator for both their clients and themselves, if that employee decides to use his/her paid vacation and go to Italy for a week, the agency may have trouble finding someone to take over their work, especially if there isn’t anyone else with as much experience.

Small businesses can be proactive about occasional employee absences by making sure all employees are cross-trained and vacation is scheduled out enough in advance to make sure all work is covered.

Another major issue a small business may face when facing a big business competitor is long-established brand exposure and history, as well as overall market saturation. For instance, Frito Lay set the Guinness World record for most Facebook Likes in 24 hours with over 1.5 million likes. They did this by offering those who “liked” the page a coupon for a free bag of chips, worth about $4.

If a potato chip manufacturer that only distributed to a few cities or states attempted the same campaign, they would likely receive a growth in likes, but no where near the amount that Frito Lay experienced. This is because Frito Lay is already an established nationwide brand who has customers that know them buy name.

Small businesses may combat this by focusing on their core demographic area to increase local brand loyalty– many customers may chose a smaller brand once they know it is created in or around the city or state they are living in.

The Power Of Big Businesses

A company’s success and the methods it used to get there may also occasionally be its downfall. For instance, a company that starts out with 5 employees and grows to over 200 in a span of 3 years may not have the manpower or education to keep up with product demand; and as a result innovation and further product developments may suffer.

However, with power and success comes large marketing budgets which may allow for an entire internal social media department (like Dell or McDonald’s), which gives the company the financial backing to produce the level of campaigns, contests, and specials to grow loyal fan bases and online communities.

Because a company the size of McDonald’s or Frito Lay requires more manpower to run its social media presence, there are a lot more steps to take when it comes to producing content and messages. Even though their budgets may be larger, the time it takes to create, approve, and publish social media tweets, posts, etc., may take much more time than a small business has to spend.

Many contests or messages may need approval from the legal department and upper level executives may need to approve new campaigns before they can go live. This may take several days or weeks at a time. The upside to this is that big companies may feel more prepared because they took so much time to approve any campaigns, which will make the effort more streamlined overall.

Another benefit of big company social media strategy is the ability to tie in social media with print, television, or radio advertising. Combining traditional and social media marketing techniques can lead to crossover, leading to more sales overall. For instance, many companies are now placing QR codes on their print products to get customers to visit their website for special offers.

Nationwide companies have the ability to saturate all media channels with their marketing campaigns, which small businesses may not have the luxury to do.

Even though big and small businesses each have their own advantages and disadvantages, the fact remains that with a solid social media strategy, any business can be successful in building engaging communities online. All it takes is knowing the target market and the “ideal” customer. The rest is up to solid customer service and knowledgeable employees who can carry it off without a hitch.