It’s a common thing to hear people saying that “word-of-mouth” marketing is the best and most efficient marketing method. Personal experience and many research results show that almost everyone will accept a recommendation for a brand or business from someone they trust, like a friend or a relative, whereas it would be much harder to get new consumers through “traditional” marketing methods.
Word-of-mouth marketing is so effective because it’s a chain reaction – one person spreads the word to several other people. Those people then do the same, and so on. What if there was a single person that could spread the word to a thousand consumers that trust his/her recommendation? This is what an influencer is. Utilizing influencer marketing can prove to be your most efficient way to widen your audience and gain many new clients. It provides, however, a great case for link building and SEO.
What is Link Building?
Link building is a crucial and most complicated method of increasing the search engine rankings of a webpage. And, although the process itself is very complex, the core concept is quite easy to understand. You find another website that produces related content and get in touch with the person or group behind that website. In a sense, they will become your “virtual influencer”.
In the next step you contact them and let them know about yourself and your content. They can then refer to a post on your website in their own posts, which will create a backlink. This backlink is something that Google’s algorithm, for example, can find and track. That means you will automatically rank up when people search for certain keywords on Google, because another valued website used your content as a reference, which proves to Google that your content is indeed legitimate, true, related and insightful. This is how influencer marketing uses link building to improve your online position.
The True Value of Backlinks
Of course, backlinks aren’t only important for SEO purposes, although they are crucial in that area as well. You will appear higher on search engine rankings and thus get more views for your site. But you will also get a lot more organic content directly from the influencer’s site. When he refers to you as the source of certain information, there will be a lot of people that are interested in finding more details about that information the influencer mentioned, which will result in more people viewing your content and starting to get interested in it.
Creating backlinks through link building is beneficial for both sides. The influencer will gain more credibility because he/she included some references, and you will become the valuable reference. Therefore, it isn’t a bad idea to provide some backlinks to other websites on your own pages as well. That way, you can help other people struggling to rank higher, while also ranking higher yourself.
Picking the Right Influencer
The thing that discerns influencer from other marketing methods is the fact that you don’t directly reach to your audience. Instead, you do it through the influencer, which acts as the medium between your content and the potential clients. Therefore, it is crucial that you find the appropriate influencer. It has to be a person of authority in your line of business, as that will drastically increase your reputation, as well as your own authority.
But, most importantly, it has to be someone that is bound to have the same audience you want to reach. By doing that, the people that flow to your site from your influencer’s page will almost always be interested in your brand and become potential consumers. It is also important not to pick an influencer that produces the same or very similar content as you do. This is because then the influencer will simply “outshine” you and you won’t get as much benefit out of it. By using Join, you can assess the content of an influencer thoroughly before you choose to work with them. That way, you can be sure that you work with the optimal influencer for your situation.
Combining SEO and Influencer Marketing
SEO and Influencer Marketing are both very profitable and effective methods, so why not combine them for even more benefit? This can be done through the aforementioned link building. By finding the right influencer and the right way to incorporate backlinks into your influencer’s website, you will gain both the benefits of SEO, meaning your webpage will rank higher in search results, as well as the benefits of influencer marketing, because more people will hear about you from a person of authority, drastically raising your credibility and increasing your audience.
