Before we get into Part 3, I wanted to let you know we're going to be talking about Traffic Kahuna, which Jason Potash and
company are releasing today.
In the previous parts of this series, we focused on the idea that as internet marketers, we need to:
Stop building links, and start building connections.
We talked about how through creating connections between ideas, and developing relationships with site owners and bloggers, we can essentially take on a shepherd role in our niche markets. We can steer the tribes we target by helping them develop their niche interest.
If we use this strategy wisely and ethically, we can practically use OTHER people’s web properties as part of our own lead generating funnel.
We are no longer perceived as an outside force – like a door-to-door salesman imposing on their community.
We instead become a valued member of that community, associated not with marketing messages, but rather with being a valuable resource of information – as well as a provider of products and services.
Note: This is Part 2 of a series – click here to see Part 1.
So, last time we talked about how you need to rethink your linking strategy to focus on building real connections rather than just plastering links all over creation.
Here's a summary of how I think we can ethically and profitably build connections in our niches:
1. Identify "tribes" of people with common interests
that we want to target with our messaging.2. Find the bloggers in those tribes who have
readership and influence, and who regularly write about
your niche topics.3. Of those tribal blogs, identify the ones that will
also give you SEO benefit through linking (primarily,
blogs that don't add rel=nofollow to links in their
comments).
You read that subject line right.
Stop. Getting. Links.
Until you evolve your thinking about what "links" REALLY are, you risk wasting your precious time and resources on work that will lose its value in the long run.
Ever since Google invented Page Rank, human behavior has determined what websites were really "about" and which ones were more relevant than others.
Page Rank did this by giving webmasters and site owners the ability to "vote" for the sites they liked with their links.
But now, with things like social bookmarking and content tagging, EVERY web user gets to vote on the relevancy of content – not just webmasters and site owners. Anyone can Digg, anyone can StumbleUpon, anyone can blog.
And that's a great thing for marketers.
After all, it's the PEOPLE on the web that we really want to reach anyway. A spider program will crawl any and all links it finds, but it won't ever take out a credit card and BUY anything.
