How to Take Your Link Building Into Your Local Community by @annaleacrowe
It’s hard to separate community engagement from link building.
Instead of prescribing to traditional marketing rules, I strive to integrate community engagement with my link building campaigns.
Community engagement bridges the gap between offline and online marketing. Break down the idea that link building is only online.
My approach to link building is an egalitarian one — I believe that all marketing channels, social networks, events, and emails can lend themselves to interesting and creative link building campaigns.
The idea that link building is only meant to be done online is really getting to be outdated. And, that’s cool.
Offline link building is community engagement with real people in the real world.
I’ve done this by hosting a blogger focus group for a new menu. And, afterwards the bloggers shared articles on their sites and on social about our new menu. They also became long-term influencers that continued to work with the brand for months.
Here are some simple ways to take your link building into your local community:
- Host an event.
- Sponsor an event.
- Sponsor local bloggers to host an event for you.
- Give away cool swag.
- Add your swag to another event gift bag.
- Request to speak at a local event.
- Volunteer at a local charity.
- Write an ah-mazing article about a recent industry event.
When you’re all done, don’t forget to pitch local news outlets. They are craving local interesting content so it never hurts to ask.
Summary
Timeframe: Month 7, then ongoing monthly.
Results detected: 4-12 months
Average links per month: 1
Tools
- Manual research for industry and local events.
Benefits:
- Community engagement allows you to build relationships with your local community that can be a real benefit down the road.
- Community engagement lets you leverage local opportunities to create good content.
