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How can you get the readers so interested as to make them want to share your post?

Back links to a resource serve as an important factor for increasing the site’s credibility and promoting it in search results. They are a source of organic traffic and a signal to search engines that the visitors like the site and its content, it has some practical benefit and deserves a high rate in the ranking. For an SEO-specialist, natural links are seen as one of the correct ways to increase the link mass and improve the behavioral characteristics of users.

But it’s not that easy to achieve this outcome. Every day, a huge amount of content appears on the Web, and it has an approximately equal quality. Therefore, people’s attention gets scattered. After analyzing a million posts that were selected randomly, Moz and BuzzSumo have found that 75% of content didn’t get any external link. This means that content intended for sharing should be specially created.

What is Link Bait?

Link Bait is content that your target audience, media, and opinion leaders are willing to share. In fact, this is any post that will help you stand out in the information space and collect a large number of links.

The promotion strategy incorporating Link Bait is based on attracting the attention of an audience, addressing people’s emotions, and providing readers with really useful information, which is unique or covers the topic as fully and accurately as possible.

Effective techniques for creating Link Bait:

  • visualization;
  • interactivity;
  • expert studies;
  • useful tips and step-by-step instructions;
  • participation of influential and authoritative people and brands.

These are universal formats that people take well.

To achieve the desired success and to get many backlinks, it is important to combine visual appeal and content when preparing a post. The distribution strategy should be based on the knowledge of the audience’s psychology and users’ needs. Behavioral triggers, which are well-known thanks to popular books about the psychology of influence and marketing, still have an impact on a mass audience.

Users will share a piece of info if:

  • the information confirms their own point of view and allows showing themselves from the positive side;
  • the post evokes an emotional response (fun, surprise, admiration, fear, indignation);
  • the post has practical utility and provides an effective algorithm of actions in life and work situations;
  • the message gives some new and important information that determines the place of your site in the information agenda;
  • the post has already been shared by a large number of people.

Practical Insights

How to make your post work and get a large number of people to share it?

Create Really Useful Content

With almost any information available across the Web, it’s a difficult task. Therefore, you should focus on the narrow segments of your niche, where you are really better than your competitors and provided with unique information.

The key to success is a nice, ordered and easy-to-perceive design. The most popular formats are:

  • step-by-step guides,
  • segmented lists,
  • statistical data,
  • research results,
  • market leaders survey findings.

This covers any concrete information of practical benefit from an information product user’s point of view. In other words, help your audience learn and understand complex things breezily. Talk about new and under-explored topics that interest people. Simple, clear, and the most complete information on a topic collected in one place is what users share with each other. That’s why they like lists and other well-structured posts. Resources publishing such content become trusted sources of information. They are frequently cited by the users.

Elicit Emotions

Don’t be too serious. People tend to share the information that is funny from their point of view and makes them smile and laugh. A good joke on a hot topic discussed on the Internet quickly becomes a meme and collects a lot of links. Even if the content of your page is professional, it will be appropriate to alternate it with humor and give the topic an attention-grabbing twist.

Materials that cause any emotional response from the audience get a large number of links as well. The information will be shared if it causes admiration, surprise, excitement, indignation, and other strong feelings.

Visualize Information

Seeing once is better than hearing twice. When you find an interesting expert article, visualize its content graphically. Clear and attractive infographics draw attention and make people want to share it with their social circle or save this interesting content. Exploring this content format is quick and easy, and visual effects facilitate this process and make it enjoyable. This is why a user wants to show this type of posts to others.

Only a well-visualized infographic will deliver such an effect. To create it, you should involve professional designers and use specialized programs.

Use Interactivity

Photo and video materials, interactive maps and animated graphics are among the most attractive formats for users. Include photos and videos to illustrate your texts or publish them as separate posts.

The audience willingly responds to contests, quizzes, logic problems, surveys, and tests as well. Many people like to compare their results with the results of friends –that’s why they share such posts.

Post announcements about your initiatives on social media. People are willing to respond to engaging events and want to tell about the activities they participated in.

Create virtual rewards, premium stickers, and other signs with your logo for users to place on their pages to confirm their victory. Provide winners or randomly selected participants with memorable prizes, which they might want to show to their social setting.

Show Respect

Arrange a survey of consumers, clients, suppliers, contractors, or other public related to your business. Ask questions about their preferences, wishes, existing problems, or success factors. After analyzing the results, show the identified trends and received information to your audience. Many people may want to share the outcomes, seeing the reflection of their own ideas. People like to feel that their opinion is important and respected. They are willing to share the confirmation of this fact and the evidence of their own significance in the public space.

Follow Trends and Create Newsworthy Information

It is crucial to wisely pick a topic to write about. Choose among the hottest topics. Keep an eye on the events in your field and respond to what is currently happening in the world around you. Pay particular attention to what directly or indirectly affects the situation in your niche. In this regard, tell regularly about your achievements and initiatives within the trending news on your website and on social media. Organize a new study, a charity or volunteer event and tell the visitors about it in your news column. Prepare a press release about a major event and send the information directly to the media that publishes materials in the relevant area.

Get Ideas from Leaders

There is no shame in learning from successful competitors. Study what the high-flyer companies cited by people post and in what manner they do it. If it works for them, it should work for you. Ahrefs will help you find pages related to leaders in your niche. After entering your competitors’ domain in the service, you will see the best linkbyte examples. Based on this, you can plan information campaigns, which will appeal to your audience. By improving and expanding the content of topics discussed in your segment, you will be able to find new readers and widen the circle of your followers.

Involve Figures of Authority

Expert comments and opinions of influential people who recommend your page give additional value to the resource and arouse the interest of the audience. Make a list of experts in your niche and tell about their work in the field or its segment. Prepare some posts that pay tribute to their achievements and publish them on your page. Analytical infographics with reference to authoritative speakers, ratings of the best figures and companies in their field, instituting awards to determine the most outstanding achievements ring the bell with the online audience. Make sure that people or representatives of the brands cited by you will learn about your post. If they like your product, they and their followers will be glad to tell about the post and share a link to the primary source, and your page will get links from high-quality sources that carry weight in search engines.

Share in One Click

Sharing a post should be as easy as possible – just in one click. Don’t make the site users wonder how to share a post they like. Most likely, they won’t tinker with it and will forget about the page as soon as they leave it. A button for one-click sharing should be well visible; so, provide a technical capability for it. Integrate social media sharing into your page by setting icons for popular platforms to attract the networks’ users and promote your resource through them.

5 Steps to Get a Link from Popular People

  • Identify those who are interested in your field of activity and have already mentioned some companies from your segment.
  • Make ratings of authoritative experts, bloggers, and media.
  • Publish material specifying the persons or companies included in it. Mention the name of the blog, and the resource notification system will notify the owner of your post.
  • Use link exchange services in social networks for notifications about the posts.
  • Tell the people connected with the post about it via personal emails sent to them and ask them for sharing it.