One of the hottest topics at the SES Conference in New York was the concept of “linkbaiting”. Content producers have always known that hot news items attract visitors in droves. Providing viral tools such as “E-mail to a friend” can help encourage that. But in the last couple years, viral marketing has acquired a new infrastructure of its own, one that advertisers can leverage to promote their products.
Social media sites such as Digg, del.icio.us, and YouTube have very different business models and functions, but they share the same “killer app.” They provide an environment where people with similar interests can easily share links to sites they like. If you are a Red Sox fan, like me, we no longer have to e-mail game highlights to each other. I can simply bookmark the highlight for myself on del.icio.us, and the sharing happens automatically.
These sites remove all friction from the viral process, which makes them immensely popular - and also immensely powerful for marketers. In the past, only news and content companies could “break news”, because they had the brand equity and infrastructure to attract a large, quick-to-respond audience. But with the advent and widespread adoption of social media sites, the audience itself provides the mechanism for getting the word out. It’s mob rule - but in a good way.
What types of content are these crowds looking for? The demographics vary widely, and so does the subject matter. YouTube favors entertainment videos; MySpace is great for music; Digg, technology and scientific topics. These all sound like niche markets, and if your company doesn’t fit those niches you may be wondering how you can get attention.
But with a little creativity, any company can find some aspect of their product or service that is unique, newsworthy, and innovative. Not “innovative” from a shareholder-value standpoint, but from a popular standpoint. We’ll explore some specific ideas for linkbait in upcoming posts.
What are the payoffs from linkbaiting? First, a popular story can generate a large quantities of traffic for a brief period of time - this is the “sugar rush” aspect of linkbating. The secondary effect is much more significant: bloggers will tend to write posts about hot topics, providing a permanent set of links to your site. This is the “protein” portion of linkbaiting, and the true payoff for marketers. Those links translate into permanent equity for your site, leading to continuing traffic and stronger search engine rankings.
