Leveraging Social Media Links To Drive Traffic Part 2

May 17, 2010

Hi all!

Here is the long-awaited continuation of my first post about driving traffic through social media links.

I had covered all this theory about the differences between social media link building and traditional link building, and now I’m going to move onto specific strategies!

Specific Social Media Link Building Strategies

Social Media Linking Building Strategies

Strategy #1: The Retweet

Ah, the Retweet, most coveted of all Twitter responses. Getting retweeted means that someone sees what you said and retweets it, sharing it with their list of followers, thus giving your tweet (and the link that you included in it) much more exposure.

The first step is finding those that are most likely to retweet your tweets. One way to do this is to go to twitter and type “rt + keyword” (where keyword is whatever it is that you’re promoting.) The result is that you see the abbreviation rt, short for retweet, as well as the keyword that you’re interested in which shows everyone who has retweeted tweets with the same keyword. Those who retweet your friends are your friends. You just don’t know them yet.

Another method that is useful to find retweeters is using Twitter Grader to find tweeters in your area. This is especially helpful if you’re a local store or chain promoting something that is geo-specific.

Keeping your tweets under 120 characters is important. “But the limit is 140 characters!” you say. Well, you’re right, it is. However, if you keep your tweet to less than 120 characters, it gives people a chance to retweet it without editing it. Remember, every time it gets retweeted, Twitter ads a few characters. Often, the first thing to get edited out of an interesting tweet is the link that you put in it. Bad deal.

You can use Bit.ly to help you find popular Tweeters. I could write an entire blog article about this step alone, but fortunately Jim did it for me. Check it out. He is the Bit.ly master.

Last but not least, do unto others as you would have them do unto you! If you want to be retweeted, retweet your target tweeters tweets! (If you REALLY want retweets, take a video of yourself trying to say that last sentence 5 times fast and post it to Youtube. Don’t forget to tweet the links.)

What To Do When You’ve Targeted Your Tweeter!

Now that you’ve targeted your Tweeter, here’s some tips on how to ensure they’ll actually want to retweet you:

Stalk the target: No, not in the creepy way. Just monitor them on Tweetdeck or Twhirl or your favorite Twitter app and pay attention to what they retweet. Is it funny stories? News articles? Products? Learn about their activities and their preferences so that you can figure out what it is that they’ll likely retweet.

Now, instead of bombarding them with links in an obvious ploy to hock your wares, start a conversation with them. Tell them how interested you were in their last retweet. Follow them (gasp!) Yes, I said follow them. If they’re retweeting stuff that is similar to what you have, they obviously are closely related enough to your interests to follow them.

When they mention something that relates to your site or your promotion or your sense of humor or whatever, THEN you plug your link. If you’ve already begun a relationship with them, they’ll be more likely to care enough about your tweet to retweet it to their followers.

When they do, make sure to thank them! Gratitude goes a long way to ensuring that you’ll have help from them in the future.

Strategy #2: The Scavenger Hunt!

This slide is really self explanatory, so I’m not going to go through it step by step. If you want good examples, check out ModCloth. They do a scavenger hunt on their site every Thursday. I know about it because of researching Social Media techniques. Not because I followed them as soon as I found out about them or because I sit on their site for hours on end deciding how to spend my paycheck. Really. Also, RavenSEO tools does an amazing job.

The secret behind this is to offer a prize worth having. Take Henne Jewelers for example. They’re about to run a real life scavenger hunt using Social Media and text messaging clues in Pittsburgh next weekend. Their prize? A $15,000 diamond ring. Totally worth the trouble and I’m sure it’s paid for itself in free advertising already.

Strategy#3: The Promotion

Couldn’t be easier. Figure out a promotion that’s worth having, create a promo code and then just syndicate the heck out of it over all platforms. Also, check out the handy list of promo sites. They are sites that basically just list promo codes, and are great for sending tons of short-term targeted traffic to your site.

Secondary Links

Secondary links, for the purposes of this post, are the links that you’d be going after during a traditional link building campaign: High PR trusted sites that will send a lot of targeted traffic your way. Even though garnering these types of links should not be the primary goal of a social media campaign (in my opinion) they are the icing on the cake when they happen. If the content that you’re promoting is viral enough, they will certainly happen. If you’re promoting a product page, it’s less likely, but still possible. You get the picture.

Social Media Tactics to Avoid

Would it be lazy of me to say “Don’t be annoying” and leave it at that? Probably. Seriously, though, anything that annoys you will probably annoy the people that you’re trying to reach out to. Not to mention ruin your social credibility (see item one on that list.)

Hopefully this has been helpful to you. I know it’s been helpful to me to write it all out. If anyone out there wants to share their favorite social media strategy, I’d love to see it!