In today’s post-modern environment of social media, email, instant message, app notifications and the like, communications move at warp speed. Much like Andy Warhol’s famous “15 minutes of fame” future prediction, your communications and posts are often relegated to 15 seconds of attention (or less). This is despite the fact the recipients of your outreach may have a genuine interest in what you have to say/share.
This third article in our 3-part Link-Building Strategies series offers a few ideas on how to keep your content alive and gathering eyeballs — long after its original publication on your website and initial postings via your social media channels.
Re-contact your contributors.
A long-held axiom in Marketing 101 is that following up is a critical part of the promotional continuum. People to whom you’ve reached out actually expect it. If you do it unobtrusively, they’ll even welcome it. Once your post is live, follow up with your participant(s) to let them know. Invite them to share your content on their own sites and social media channels — and to link to it in their own content.
Solicit additional interesting stories.
Once you’ve published a piece of shareworthy content with the help of an influencer, resource and/or associate, they get to see how you’ve crafted it in an intelligent and engaging way. Ask if they know of additional people who may be willing to share specialized knowledge and interesting stories with you, in order to produce more mutually-beneficial content.Offer to do a followup interview.
If you’re getting good feedback and response to an interview type post, and the relevance/depth of the subject warrants it, see if the original interviewee is amenable to doing a followup. Chances are, an interviewee will be eager to comply. Particularly if the feedback/response has also been good on his/her end.Suggest having a introductory phone conversation.
As efficient as today’s digital communications channels can be for networking, there’s still no substitute for a one-on-one conversation via phone, Skype or any number of collaboration tools with screen sharing capabilities. Once you’ve established the foundation of a mutual interest and/or a personal connection, a live conversation can advance a relationship by leaps and bounds within a relatively short period of time. Going forward, the tactile nature of that one-on-one conversation will benefit each interaction you have — giving both of you the ability to associate a face and a persona across the expanse of your future communications.Other Articles in our Link-Building Strategies Series
Initiating Valuable Link-Building Relationships
Building Content That Influencers Want to Share