5 Clever Social Media Marketing Campaigns that Went Viral

 

Social media has provided marketers with some powerful new tools. They are global, potentially viral and free.

Businesses will often have entire teams dedicated to communicating with followers, and will spend a significant chunk of their budget acquiring new leads from the Internet.

From blogging to pay-per-click advertising, there are plenty of ways to establish a web presence. Most businesses will use multiple techniques in order to maximize results; however, as the years go by a new form of marketing has emerged; viral marketing.
We’ve all heard the term, “it went viral” when referring to heavily viewed YouTube videos, comedic memes and social media games. Businesses are now using this free technique to promote their products and services.
We have compiled 5 examples of social media marketing campaigns that went viral to prove just how powerful it can be.

1. Cadbury’s giant chocolate Facebook thumb

When Cadbury’s wanted to boost their Facebook likes they decided to construct a giant Facebook thumb out of their own signature Dairy Milk bars.  The idea started as a thank you gesture to fans for helping them reach one million likes, but quickly went viral and led to another 40,000 followers within a short space of time.  They even decided to stream a live real-time video to document the making of the thumb, which was watched by over 350,000 fans throughout the world.
Nothing draws the eye more than a mouth watering image; however, giant chocolate bars are certainly nothing new. Chocolate and Facebook are universally loved and by incorporating the thumb, Cadbury’s have cleverly managed to create an image that’s contemporary, unique and instantly recognizable.

2. WATERisLIFE’s first world complaints YouTube video

Non-profit organization WATERisLIFE created a controversial social media campaign that was inspired by humorous memes.  The company – who are dedicated to bringing clean water to the third world – produced a documentary complied of clips of the underprivileged alongside captions of common complaints from the privileged. Such examples include:

• “I hate it when my phone charge won’t reach my bed.”
• “When I go to the bathroom and I forget my phone.”
• “I hate when my leather seats aren’t heated.”
• “When my mint gum makes my ice waster taste cold.”

The video was a huge success and managed to amass over one million views within the first day. The ending caption, “First world problems… aren’t problems” significantly boosted interest in their Twitter feed as followers made their own captions and posted them on social networks along with the hashtag, ‘#firstworldproblems.’

3. Wilkinson Sword’s santa claus hostage video

During the build-up to Christmas 2013, Wilkinson Sword released a hostage video featuring three elves who are arguing about whether or not they should shave off Santa’s beard.
The video was promoted via the brand’s YouTube, Facebook and Twitter pages and received widespread attention throughout the UK. What’s genius about this social media campaign is that it was designed to get followers involved. The video was left on a cliff-hanger with the phrase, “CLICK TO #SAVESANTA” at the end.
Voters are now eagerly anticipating the follow-up video this year which will determine the fate of our truly beloved Saint Nicolas.

Aside from establishing a marketing campaign that gets the fans involved, Wilkinson Sword have created an on-going series which will bring voters back each year and remind them of their famous razors – which just so happen to be the perfect stocking filler.

4. Heinz’s “Which bean are you?” quiz

When Heinz launched their new Five Beanz product, they created a quiz on their Facebook page named, “Which bean are you?” Fans used this quiz to determine which bean they were based on questions about their personality.
In addition, Heinz gave participants who shared the quiz ten times on their Facebook page a goodie bag.
The facts and the results:

• The campaign lasted for two weeks
• Acquired 22,000 likes
• 10,000 shares
• Overall reach of 11 million

Everyone likes a personality quiz. They’re a great way to get fans actively involved with a marketing campaign without using too much obvious promotion. Television shows and film production companies have been using this promotional method for years; but until Heinz, the food industry hadn’t utilized it. Since the success of the Heinz’s quiz many other food companies have gone on to use the same marketing method with huge success.

5. Urban Hilton Weiner’s selfie coupon codes

Urban Hilton Weiner weren’t a particularly big name before their ‘pay with a selfie’ campaign, but now they’re one of the most talked about brands in fashion.
Their marketing campaign awarded those who posted a selfie wearing their clothes, along with the hashtag #urbanselfie, a $10 coupon.

 

This ingenious marketing technique accomplishes everything that any retailer would want from a social media campaign – it exposes people to specific items of clothing, encourages social sharing, and most importantly, gets people in stores and buying clothes they wouldn’t have otherwise purchased.

While the $10 coupon may seem excessive and put many companies off taking such a bold move, it’s a small price to pay for such widespread and effective exposure.

Wrapping it up

The power of social media marketing cannot be denied. Real-time marketing has become the “it” thing in advertising and nowadays all one has to do is login to a social network and within seconds they will be exposed to some form of advert; no matter how discreet it may look.
Internet marketers are now placing an increasing amount of emphasis on building communities via social networks and are integrating each platform to deliver a constant stream of exposure. In fact, acquiring a ‘Like’ on Facebook or new follower on Twitter is held in higher regard than unique website traffic. However, what’s most appealing about social media is that unlike other forms of online marketing – such as PPC and SEO – it’s completely free.
Guest Author:  James is a self-employed blogger and wannabe entrepreneur and works with Distinctly Digital. His passion is in SAAS tech and innovation. You will find James at many of the leading technology conferences across the UK and Europe.

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Best 5 Step Guide To Using Social Media in Crisis Management

June 25, 2014/0 Comments/in Click Prefect /by Click Prefect

 

One of the benefits of social media is undoubtedly its immediacy and its timeliness. It gives the user a way to be present with their audience in almost any situation, sharing continuous information from wherever they are and enjoying ongoing discussions that can’t always be limited to a contained period.

It is this very reason that social media is one of the most widely-used ways that brands and organisations connect with their audiences, particularly in times of crisis. When hit by complications; difficulties, and perhaps even blind panic, brands need a way to cut through the fog of spectacle and reach out to their customers; taking decisive responsibility for the matter at hand and issuing a clear plan of action.
So how can brands go about doing this? Here is a five step guide to using social media in crisis management.

1. Timing is everything

Social media is all about timing.
Brands should waste no time diving into the conversation the moment a crisis strikes, and silence should NOT be an option. The sooner you can prove to customers that you are present and dedicated to addressing an issue, you will earn your customers’ trust.
If possible, making customers aware of a service disruption or impending blunder before it has even happened is highly advised. Not only will this show transparency and garner more respect for your brand; it will also give you a chance to offer instructions to customers and allow them to make appropriate preparations for the storm.

 

During any crisis, the frequency of updates is key. Social media consultancy firm Frishling advises issuing a new update every ten minutes in the immediate aftermath, even if there is nothing new to report. You may be able to leave more time between updates in the days and weeks that follow of course, and this is natural.

However, it is important to keep the pressure turned up until your brand and your customers are out of the danger zone. This is when all customer questions have been answered; the situation has been or is being addressed, and when there is no longer anyone at risk.

2. Own the conversation

In times of negativity, social media will often be the first place customers head to – not just for information, but to give their own insight and perhaps even bash your brand in the process.
Don’t let the conversation get out of control – decide on an appropriate hashtag for the events to follow and use this as a symbol across all your platforms for all trustworthy, reliable and honest information surrounding the crisis. Doing this from the very beginning will not only inhibit people from devising their own illegitimate hashtags (that can mislead customers and lead to some bad press); it will also make sure your brand is the leading, go-to source of information for everything to do with the crisis.

[Note how Southwest Airlines maintains the same hashtag for each of its social media platforms for clarity.]

One marvelous example of this was South West Airlines. Following the July 2013 crash of its Flight 345, the airline issued an official hashtag by which all news about the emergency could be traced, and was found engaging with Twitter followers barely half an hour after the incident had taken place.
This swiftness of response and boldness to step into the social media limelight garnered the company considerable admiration and respect not just from customers, but from the media and social media analysts too.

3. Stick to a designated source

It is advisable that brands limit the number of places that people feel they need to look to find dedicated information regarding a crisis. Otherwise, information can become scattered and misinterpreted; and focus can be lost.
Choose one platform on which all of the detailed information will be posted – whether it is a specific blog or RSS feed built for the purpose, or your most affluent social platform like Twitter or Tumblr. Use your other platforms to direct the flow of user traffic towards your primary source. Imagine it like a funnel, where several streams all point back to one reliable outlet.

4. Give a call to action

If there’s one thing that customers hate more than a service crisis, it’s being left hanging with no instruction or advice on what to do next. It doesn’t matter that you can’t provide an explanation for the crisis just yet – people don’t like to be kept waiting with time on their hands, so it’s important to give explicit calls to action in your updates. These can be as simple as directing customers towards external sources of advice, or giving practical tips on what they could do to minimise the impact of the emergency.
In all of your updates, you should aim for this formula:

“update/description + what is currently being done to fix it  +  call to action”

5. Don’t lash out

There will indeed be cases where illegitimate feeds of information will somehow seep into the airwaves, giving false information or unsourced explanations surrounding the crisis. While it’s tempting to react aggressively towards these feeds by attempts to censor the information or threaten legal action, it is advisable that you don’t. Doing so could further chink the integrity of your brand and lead users to thinking you have something to hide.

One such example of this behaviour comes from payday lending firm Wonga. In early 2014, the firm reacted strongly to a piece of satirical artwork created by a Twitter user which reflected negatively on the Wonga brand.  The user was sent a threatening legal notice which promised court action if the image was not removed from Twitter. Although it cited copyright infringement as its reason, neither the media or the Twitter world were impressed, and contacted Wonga with a tirade of backlash for trying to censor the user and banish creative freedom.

Leave it lie

If you’ve correctly took charge of the conversation with an appropriate hashtag as mentioned earlier, all other illegitimate information should just be left to lie. If it is necessary, warn your audience against such sources and remind them that for all official updates on the matter, you’re the one to turn to.
All that’s left then is to deliver a trustworthy, responsible and genuinely useful stream of updates that your customers can truly depend on.
Guest author: Adele Halsall is a researcher and writer for Customer Service Guru. She is passionate about consumer trends and is particularly experienced in marketing and customer engagement & loves contributing to debates related to best business practices, start-up culture and customer relations. Contact her at @gurucustomers

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Everything I Needed To Know About Social Media I Learned From Star Trek

I am a Trekkie! Literally watched every single episode of Star Trek in every series, plus the movies as well. From the time that I first heard James T. Kirk utter those famous words I was hooked. After 25 plus years of Star Trek fanaticism I have come to an important conclusion.
If you do nothing else in your life, but base your business decisions on those famous lines, business would be off the charts awesome!

Star Trek mantra

Think about the original mantra from James T. Kirk. While it has been changed often over the years, the message remains the same.

Space, the final frontier. 

These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its continuing 5 year mission is to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilization.

To boldly go where no man has gone before.

Yowzer, that is awesome!

How to be a Social Media Trekkie

Have you ever noticed how most intelligent business owners look at social media as if it were from outer space? Watching them writhe at the edge of their seat in discomfort over words like Facebook and Twitter makes you think there is a Trebble outbreak or they were transported into the vacuum of space.
That does not need to be the case.
Once you are done, you will gladly don the four pips of Picard, Kirk, Janeway, Archer, and Sisko. Note: Four pips is a reference to the captain rank. Oh captain, my captain!

Voyages of discovery start with “action”

First, consider the idea of the voyages of the starship Enterprise. No one ever talks about the lurking Enterprise. In fact, the poorest rated show out of the bunch was Deep Space 9. I guess no one wants to watch a space drama where people do not move around that much.
However, throw Janeway in the Delta quadrant, and you have a runaway winner. Maybe it was the fact that she boldly declared that even though they were 70,000 light years away from home, they would never forget their Federation principles (More on the federation principles later). Then she told Tom Parris Warp 6, let’s go home.
Wow! Your entire life got turned upside down thanks to the Caretaker and your main concern is taking bold action to get your crew safely home.
Taking action, and deciding upon doing something with your business on social media fires your passion. It is this “action” that allows you to boldly go where no man has gone before.
Pioneers in business are so called, because they took action before everyone else.

Missions are your plan of action

Do you think that Captain Kirk or Picard would just aimlessly wander space until they found weird aliens that would always be eliminated in 60 minutes or less? Heck no! Kirk had a 5 year mission to explore strange new worlds. But of course, you must be saying. That is why he had more first contacts than any other star ship commander in history. It was his job. No scratch that! It was his mission in life for 5 years.
Can you imagine a Vulcan like Spock hanging around in the Federation if they did not have a plan of action? Of course not, that would not be logical.
You need to have a little bit of green blood in you, so you can sit down and work out what strategies and tactics will work best for your business.
Research the different social networks. Ask your current clients and prospects what social networks they frequent most. Then determine the best course of action for your business.

Seek out new connections, fans, and followers

If your business only flies on impulse, then you will never meet anyone. You need to go to at least Warp speed in order to reach out to people. Warp technology is the sign that a civilization is ready to connect with other species. Otherwise, the prime directive is to leave a culture alone and allow them to grow at their own pace.
Most cultures in Star Trek have a policy similar to the United Federation of Planet’s Prime Directive. The Prime Directive is the directive that no interaction be made with pre-warp civilizations first. While I want to modify this a bit for our discussion, it plays a very important role here.
Most people are afraid to reach out. They have their own Prime Directive, which keeps them in their comfort zone. That is why it is so important for you to be proactive in reaching out to connections, fans, and followers.
If you do not take the first step, then you should not expect prospects to magically appear at your doorstep. I am come on! This is not Harry Potter or something like that. Ooh! That sounds like a great article for another day.
However, with warp civilizations, you can take the initiative, just like Jonathan Archer did when he helped form the coalition of the United Federation of Planets between Humans, Vulcans, Andorrians, and Tellarites. He took the first step in a move that would align these various groups together into a harmonious whole.

Boldly differentiate yourself from your competitors.

I am pretty sure, Star Trek would never have created a cult audience if they only explored the Wisconsin Dells. No offense to the Dells, but people want to be inspired about the future. To do that you have to boldly go where no man has gone before.
This idea captures your imagination.
Well, then imagine how bored your prospects will be when you rehash the same old ideas in the same way everyone else did. Give it a little bit of pizazz!
This article is a perfect example. If I wrote the 5 steps to improve your social media today you probably never would have opened this article.
Instead, I am telling you how everything I learned about social media came from Star Trek. What other nerd could possibly do that?

Even Captain Kirk had Spock, Dr. McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Chekov and Sulu

Social media is a team sport. If you go into thinking what is in it for me, then you will never be able to create the dynamic, engaging business you need to succeed online.
Social media is about team building. That means your own internal team to help you produce content and engage with fans, followers, and connection, along with partners who can spread your message across the social media universe.
To do this successfully, you must cultivate these relationships like you do with new prospective clients. It also means, you need to spend as much time on social media sharing other people’s information as your own.
While I will admit that it is not always possible, do your best to help others. The more value you bring to the relationship, the more you can get back in return.

Live long and prosper

As with all strategies on the web, when you continually apply yourself to improving not only your situation, but those around you magical things happen. That is why whatever you do, you need to be prepared for the long haul if you want to prosper from social media.
Otherwise, you are like a Harry Kim hopped up on speed hoping and wishing for a worm hole back to the Alpha Quadrant. Generally does not happen! That is, unless you have a time travelling captain with access to a Borg transwarp hub. Alas, we must travel back to reality.
So, create a plan of action that can help you build your presence on social media. Then take action and create the connections you need to find the targeted clients you want for your business. Deliver tons of value, so you can help your prospective clients get a feel for how you can help them.
In the meantime, I have to ask. If you were to characterize your social media, which character would you be? Kirk, Spock, Janeway, Picard, Sisko, Archer, Riker, etc? Let me know in the comment section below.

4 Key Steps the Pros Use to Get Traffic from Search Engines

Creating great content for your blog is one thing. Getting traffic to your blog posts is another, and it’s something a lot of bloggers do not account for or they are unaware that certain aspects of SEO are required to drive traffic to their site.
One of the biggest misconceptions I see with bloggers is this…..  They believe that if they add great content to their blog, then Google will eventually start to rank their articles!
Create great content and people will flock!! Well let me tell you, this simply is not the case and 99% of the time your great content will not be seen!
The second misconeception I see a lot with bloggers is that they think that if they add “regular” content to their blog, it will become an authority site and eventually pick up organic traffic naturally. Now although in most cases you will see a few more visitors to your blog, you won’t get anything that will justify the time and effort you have put into creating the content!
So it’s time to take some action and attract the traffic that your blog deserves!!
The third misconception I see a lot is that bloggers think that SEO is only required on their homepage!!
“Build backlinks to your main URL, your rankings will increase and everybody will see your great content“…. WRONG!!
You need to optimise every new post you publish and perform certain aspects of SEO to bring in an influx of targeted organic traffic!
Sound like a lot of extra work? Don’t worry……..
I will cover the key elements you need to know right here and I’ll show you the exact steps to take which will quickly boost your SEO potential and start increasing your visitors every time you publish a new post!
Here are the 4 steps that I follow every time I publish a new post to get traffic from search engines. Work through each step and you will be well on your way to a ton more traffic to your blog!

Step 1. Start with keyword research ‘AFTER’ you write 

Finding keywords to rank for is a vital component to SEO and it’s something you should take seriously. But don’t base your articles around certain keywords!!
I hate it when people do this. They find a few keywords and then try to write a piece of content around it. The problem with this is that the quality of the article will be somewhat lower than if you wrote a piece on a subject that you actually want to discuss and get out there!
You will have a much better flow if you just write it as it is without having to worry about keywords!!
So remember this rule: Great content first, keyword research second!
Once you have completed your article, make a note of the subject and the main topic. Now this will immediately give you a basis for your keywords!
So for example, this article, which you are reading right now, is about doing SEO on your Blog. Now here are a few topics that I could note that briefly describe what this article is about.

• Increase traffic to your blog
• SEO for blog posts
• Boost blog traffic

We now take these topics and convert them into keywords, and here is a very quick and effective way of doing it:
Go to Google and start to type your topic into the search bar. You will notice that Google will start to give you recommendations and predict what you are going to type! Now this is great for us because Google are basically telling us what people are searching for.
Here are a few examples of what happens when I begin to type our topics into Google:

As you can see here, I have typed ‘Increase traffic’ and Google has started to predict some keywords for us.
As I continue to type it becomes more specific…….

A couple of long tail keywords that look interesting here are:
‘Increase traffic to your blog for free’
‘Increase traffic to your WordPress blog’
Now there are hundreds of different combinations you could go at. You could change the word ‘your’ to ‘my’, or you could put ‘How to’ at the beginning!
Again, you can get a good idea of the long tail keywords that people are searching for!!
You should always target long tail keywords rather than 1 or 2 word keywords that are too generic.
Now that we have a few long tail keywords we can now see what kind of traffic they get. There are a few different tools available that predict the traffic that keywords get. You can use Google planner to see past data and search volumes.
Here is an example. I have searched for the keyword ‘Increase traffic to your blog’

The average monthly searches have just shot up to 480 from 70, yet the competition seems to be lower!!!
Now I only take information like this with a pinch of salt, but we have certainly uncovered a nice keyword that we can target with our article!!
Interestingly, using the word ‘my’ instead of ‘your’ only showed an average monthly search of 30!!!

More keyword ideas

There are plenty of free tools out there including http://ubersuggest.org/
Simply enter your keyword and the tool will give you a load of suggestions!!  I typed the keyword ‘increase blog traffic’ and it produced 147 keyword suggestions.
So finding keywords is really quick and easy and best of all it’s free!
Now that you have your keywords you simply incorporate them into your article, and now I’ll show you exactly how to optimise your post to give you the best opportunity to grab top rankings and drive more traffic to your blog!

Step 2. Optimize each blog post

Here are 7 key elements for optimizing each blog post prior to publishing to give yourself the best opportunity to rank for the keyword you have chosen.
Also I recommend that you target 2 long tail keywords for each post!
1. PAGE TITLE - Make sure you include your keyword or part of your keyword in the page title.
2. FIRST PARAGRAPH - Always include your keyword in the first or 2nd paragraph.
3. HEADINGS - Include your keyword in at least 1 of your headings.
4. SEO TITLE & DESCRIPTION - If you use an SEO plugin such as All in one SEO or Yoast, you can fill out the title and description section. Make sure to include your keywords here as Google will use this to help identify what your page is about. Here is an example of what it should look like.

5. BODY TEXT - It’s important that you don’t overdue it here. Keyword stuffing is not good and may get your page penalised! Luckily we have already written our article before we did the keyword research, so you shouldn’t have any problems here!!
6. IMAGE ALT - Your posts should include a number of images, but it’s important that you optimise these images correctly because Google cannot read an image like we can. Therefore we have to tell Google what the image is about. In the ALT text you should include your keyword and variations of your keyword. Make sure you do this with at least 1 image.
7. INTERLINK YOUR PAGES - This is something you should be doing every time you publish a new post, and that is to interlink between your blogs posts. Not only does this pass link juice between your pages and let it flow through your site, it also makes it easier and quicker for Google to index your pages quicker!!
Ok, now we have a fully optimised blog post for the keywords that we have identified. Doing this alone will see your post shoot up the rankings. But if your keyword is quite competitive then you still may not be visible on page 1, and lets face it, if you want to increase traffic to your blog, you really need to be on page one.

Step 3. Spy on your competitors

This is one of my favourite techniques and it’s something that I do to GUARANTEE my blog posts get on page 1 of Google every time!!
At the minute, the only thing stopping us from grabbing top spot is our competition, and the only reason they are ranking higher than us is because they have more high authority links pointing to their post than we do.
So the simple solution is – Match or Better the backlinks that the sites at the top have. To do this we must create a list of the kind of backlinks that we require. I like to use this simple formula when assessing the quality of the competition!!
Add together the ‘authority’ figure and divide by the number of backlinks. If there are more than 20 backlinks I just take the top 20!!
There are different tools you can use for this but I like to use Ahrefs.
So here is what we do……
Type your keyword into Google:

Notice how the keyword is included in the title and description!!!
Copy/paste the number 1 ranked URL into Ahrefs. (It’s important that you get the full URL and not just the domain).

 Now you will see the backlinks in order of authority, as you can see. It is only showing 4 backlinks!!

So to rank well for this keyword probably wouldn’t take to much effort. A few guest post links would do the trick. You can see that the strongest link is from a site with a Domain Rank of 77. This is pretty strong.
Using my formula of adding the rank and dividing by the number of links, the average ‘rank’ figure is 36. So we need to beat this to give ourselves of ranking for this keyword!!

Step 4. Build quality backlinks to boost your rankings

This is the stage that a lot of people totally mess up! And the reason they do that is because they don’t know what they are doing, or they listen to everybody else and get it completely wrong!
Let me tell you this. You do not need a ton of backlinks pointing to your page or blog. In fact, you can do more harm than good by trying to build as many different types of links as possible.
Just look at the example above. The URL has 4 back links and some good content.
Don’t waste your time and money on SEO agencies or dodgy Fiverr services, they won’t work and more times than not, your rankings will drop as you will get hit by a Google penalty.
So what exactly should you do to build quality Google safe links? 
Simple……
You need NICHE RELATED, CONTEXTUAL LINKS.
Preferably from high authority sites.
Don’t waste your time on anything else when doing SEO on individual posts. A few social shares are good, and I’ll come to that shortly, but for now we are going to concentrate on getting enough quality links to get us on the first page!
My 4 top tips for building quality backlinks include

1. Guest blogging
2. Private blog network links
3. Outreach
4. Social media

Let’s have a closer look at each one.

1. Guest blogging

Probably the best way to get high authority contextual links is by writing a quality article for somebody else, you get the chance to link back to your site. Matt Cutts recently said that Guest Posting was dead and that it would no longer carry any value, as it would be classed as a spammy way to build links.
Well I can tell you straight, this is a load of rubbish!!  There is no way that Google can distinguish between a guest post link and a genuine contextual link to another site. If you provide good content and relevant links then you will be completely fine!
So how do I get my guest posts published?
Getting your post published on a high authority site is not always easy, so listen up because I’m going to show you how to do it!

1. You must create a list of bloggers in your niche.
2. You then need to build a relationship with the bloggers (email them, thank them for their work, offer to help them, do them a favour)
3. Now you can offer to write for them

By building a relationship first, you have just put yourself way ahead of the average Jo that sends them an email asking to guest post. High authority blogs get them all of the time, and to be honest, they get quite fed up of it. So make sure you stand out and build a relationship first.
I know this may sound like a lot of work, but remember; you only need a couple of good guest post opportunities to rank your new blog post!
It’s definitely worth the time and effort because not only are you getting a back link that carries authority, you are getting direct traffic from your guest post as well as building your own brand!

2. Private blog network links

One of the best ways to get some high authority links is to use a private blog network. Many top ranking sites in competitive niches use PBN links. You can buy links from Private Blog Networks, but you are running the risk of them being shut down!
Another option is to build your own private blog network. If you want to learn how to build your own private blog network then this free guide is helpful. Although I wouldn’t recommend doing this for the sake of ranking one of your posts, it is a good idea to build one for the benefit of your whole site and any sites you may make in the future. Having the option to build high authority links at the drop of a hat is golden!! 

3. Outreach

Another method of getting links is to ask other bloggers to link to your new post from one of their articles. Now you can’t go around just asking random bloggers to link to you, as you won’t get anywhere. Like before, we need to build a relationship with the bloggers first. You then need to find articles on other blogs that you feel would link in nicely with your new post.
Send an email to the blogger and mention how you latest post would really benefit their readers. Tell them that if they kindly add a link to your post, you will give them a mention on twitter or even link back to them from one of your other pages!

4. Social media

As I mentioned earlier, social media can play a big part in building backlinks. The more people that share your content, the more popular your blog posts become and the more likely that other niche related sites will link to you.
Here are a couple of procedures I follow with each new post

1. Make sure to Tweet every time you publish a new post
2. Mention other influential bloggers in your post and then mention them when you tweet. Chances are they will re-tweet and your content will get shared
3. Use a plugin such as social locker. This allows you to exchange part of your content for a social share!!
4. Post your link on other social platforms such as Facebook, Google+, Linkedin, Tumbler, Pinterest

If you don’t think that social media is that important, take a look at this post on Social media statistics!!

Wrapping it up

So there you have it, my 4-step guide to kick starting SEO for your blog! If you want to get noticed and you want to increase traffic to your blog then you need to put some time and effort into SEO. Here is a quick summary of what you should be doing with each post you publish!

• Make sure you write quality content that offers value.
• Do your keyword research AFTER you have finished your article.
• Optimise your post to incorporate your keywords into your title, headings and first paragraph.
• Add your keywords into your Title and Meta description.
• Check your competitors’ backlinks.
• Go out and build a better back link profile than them.
• Use my techniques to get quality guest posts and high authority links.
• Watch your blog post rise up the search engine results pages and see your traffic increase.

Guest Author: Jason Chesters is the founder of the leading SEO blog DoSEOyourself.com. He provides quality information on all aspects of SEO, including case studies, experiments and tutorials. You can connect with him on Twitter @doseoyourself.