The social media stream is seen as the most competent judge of what is credible, useful, interesting and informative. The more links you get from real people, the more followers you have, the more feted you are by the social stream, the better it is for you. Search engines and human users both put a lot of store by the opinion of social media pages, using their opinion to help rank the most appropriate search query returns for a given set of key words or phrases.

We’re living in a brave new world at the moment, where social links are quietly destabilising the “authority” of the links we’re all used to farming, purchasing and going after by fair means or foul. Don’t be surprised to see link building as you know it fall, like ancient Rome, while the social link goes from strength to strength.

Want to stay up with the times? Here’s a little guide on social linking, and making the most of the linkers you hook up with:

Starting From First Principles

To build real links in the real world of social media, you need two things: content that is worthy of linking to (separate from your home page); and a set of social platforms already populated by leading influences in your industry.

To do it properly I would suggest that you first locate and research the social platforms you will be using. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are your primary targets, each for a different purpose: Twitter to research the influential figures in your industry and get close to them; Facebook to interact with your consumers; and LinkedIn to set up business based social networks. 

Understanding the Platforms

There are of course other places to look for linkers – like Delicious, which has the advantage of splitting stuff into tagged streams so you can find exactly what you need without any analytical tools. Delicious is looking at comments made by people in the social stream about things specific to your industry (when you select the right tags of course) – so it spans more than just Twitter, which means you can see a broader spectrum of conversations.

Every platform has its own way of working – and there are of course analytical tools available to examine all of them. You can get free analytics for social media platforms by Googling “social media analytics”. 

Finding Your Linkers

Your potential linkers are the people who have bookmarked, Liked or commented on content that is relevant to your industry. You need to research each one individually, which can be done manually or using software. You’re looking for a website or anything that has a set of contact details on it. Collate all names and contact details – this is your contact list. 

Getting Ready to Pitch

Now, you are ready to make contact. With a clear, simple pitch that explains who you are and how you found the person you are speaking with. You’re going to send a link to your own content (this is why you are not using your home page) and suggest that it might be of interest.

That’s it. No exhortations to link. No instructions for linking. Simply “Hello, I saw your link to x recently and thought you might be interested in my post on y. All the best, me,” 

Back to Your Content

And that, of course, is why you need killer content in the first place. If you don’t have something genuine to say your efforts will be entirely in vain. See, told you I was going to mention the King Content (or Queen Content if you prefer) again. This is the new world, where your targets want to know why they should be linking to you: and when your content is good you don’t need to persuade, or exhort, or spend money. You just make new friends and influence people. Happy hunting!  

Roxanne P. is a mobile phone enthusiast and an expert in SEO for a cheap SEO Agency. She has an in depth knowledge about the latest features and updates in this field. She provides informative articles and blogs to her readers about social media and SEO activities.