Are you tweeting a lot and feel guilty of spending your time chatting instead of working? Here's the idea for you: build those links while chatting!
Here are a few best working (to me personally) ideas for you:
1. Monitor Who Discusses Your Competitors
Finding your competitors' promoters is the key to better understanding your niche as well as building the community of your own brand advocates. Twitter search works great for that (don't forget to search for recent tweets, not "top" ones).
Besides, with Twitter advanced search operators, you can filter out all the clutter and only hear what you need:
[COMPETITOR NAME -@from:COMPETITOR-USERNAME -RT]: This search will allow you to track your competitor mentions while filtering out retweets as well as your competitor's own tweets:
2. Find Journalists to Be Cited
Here's a post I did on building PR and media contacts through social media as well as this article on Twitter bio search tips.
In short, the process is as follows:
- Find (your local) niche-specific journalists on Twitter;
- Create a separate list for them to follow them closely;
- Build relationships with them and maintain active contact to share your news and get cited!
3. Monitor Guest Blogging Opportunities
Like Ethan (be sure to check out his Twitter link building tips as well!), I often manage to score quite a few great guest blogging opportunities on Twitter!
The only correction to his tip would be filtering out RTs, because they tend to interfere with important results.
- ["guest post" OR "guest author" -RT] => to get a lot of results daily
- ["write for us" OR "guest bloggers" -RT] => more focused on the actual and straightforward calls for guest bloggers.
For active guest bloggers, consider tracking these opps using a separate columns in Tweetdeck.
4. Answer Questions
Another really awesome tip and one that has won our My Blog Guest quite a few powerful mentions (including one from SEOmoz, but that wasn't really me answering Rand's question on Twitter but one of our greatest users): be there to ask bloggers' questions.
Twitter search is there to help again! There's an Advanced Search option for that:
[YOUR KEYWORD ? -filter:links]
(Don't miss the space before the question mark)
-filter:links is the genius way to exclude any links from tweets leaving out only real questions (in case you want to remain focused. I am not filtering out RTs here because they help me identify how popular the question is on Twitter!)
For example, for me that would be:
"link building" OR "guest blogging" ? -filter:links
5. Build Links with Your Twitter Profile
Here's a great resource listing about 15 Twitter services and directories that not only give you some Twitter exposure but also build links to your site => double win!
Need more inspiration? Check out Rand's video for various ideas on building links while tweeting!
cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by orangeacid
Awesome list Ann….and thanks…
Thanks, Leo! I am happy to hear it can be useful! Cheers!
Great post Ann! I can definitely vouch for #4 – filtering out links takes out a lot of the noise!
Thanks, Eric! Social media is very cluttered, so the key is really in filtering out and finding what matters!
Great post Ann!
I would also add with #2 & #3 to “think outside the box” a little bit. I have received a couple citations for unrelated industries where they were talking about how search marketing works for their specific niche.
You can still find some relevant and topical opportunities outside of your own field. Fortunately, search marketing can be relevant to most people. 🙂
Great suggestion, Jeff! Can you share some tips on tracking those opportunities outside your niche?
Sure Ann!
With local niche journalists it really comes down to following journalists in different niches, interacting with them and paying attention to what they are asking. While I wouldn’t recommend following every local journalist in every niche in your area, follow people and fields you find interesting. I’ve had a couple different citations from the fashion industry because I knew them personally and they were doing stories on social media or SEO and needed an “expert” opinion. I was also cited in a story with a military slant because I used to be i the Marine Corps.
It really comes down to interactions and relationship building – if they see that you know your industry AND you have an interest in their work you have a pretty good chance of having those things pop up.
As far as searching for opportunities, you can narrow that search even more by utilizing the “AND” qualifier. Search [“guest post” AND “(niche field)” -RT].
The most important thing is to have the patience to filter through the static to find those opportunities.
Hope that helps!
Awesome! Thanks, Jeff!