Building links through social media is a tool that many companies are taking advantage of. The purpose of using social media to build links is to develop effective business relationships. Builders monitor different social networks for different content and construct relationships with influencers. Link building often requires using media that is already out there.
When link building, it is important to choose the right search phrases. Consider the target audience and the type of search phrases that they will use. Think of words that will appear in a blog or twitter post. For example, the sales trainers will use “your clients” or “your customers.” A search this narrow will weed out useless posts. You can also use Google Blog Search to find blogs that fit your criteria. Try to limit searches to blog entries posted recently, for example within a month or a year.
News archives are another source for discovering blogs. Most journalists have their own blog sites. If you find a writer who is an expert on your topic, search for his or her blog site using the name in quotation marks. Blog directories are useful and can be searched using broad category key words. Once you narrow down a list of blogs, use a custom search engine with specific search phrases to find the best influencers.
Using influence metrics to monitor social media saves time and energy. Social Mention and Google Reader are free searches that monitor RSS feeds. These programs add the metrics to Google reader. Page Rank and mozRank also display results of monitoring the link build. These programs, however, are not free.
The most effective program may be PostRank extension. This tool works with Firefox and Chrome, and it routinely scores different results of monitoring when they are viewed. This filters out low quality publications, and better focus attention on more useful links. To help keep track of the information that these tools provide, use a spreadsheet. If a spreadsheet takes up too much time, use a social bookmarking tool to track and tag different bookmarks and catch metrics that are useful for link building.
