It's Who You Know...But Not How You Think...

It's long been said that it's not what you know, it's who you know that will get you places in life. While that may be true, to an extent, in the real world, it's often VERY true when it comes to thinks like link building. It's absolutely essential when it comes to link baiting. Have you given some thought to who your friends are lately?

One of the key points that is often missing from talks and articles about generating good link bait is the ability to plant the seeds. You see, no matter how good your link bait is, no one is going to link to it if they don't know that it exists. While it's true that you can submit your own links to social bookmarking sites, submitted links from random people often get buried before anyone has a chance to view them and vote for them.

This is why a good link bait launch includes emailing off a notice about the content to a few people that you think might blog about it. That doesn't just mean sending it to your mom and your best friend, it means sending it to people that have readers.

Now, let me make a distinct point here. When I say people that have readers, I don't mean "popular bloggers." Sure, if you can get the top five bloggers related to your subject to blog about it, you're gold, but that isn't the only way to go.

If I head to Technorati right now and start looking for search engine marketing blogs I'll find lots of sites run by big name SEOs that pull ten or even hundreds of thousands of readers each month. But guess what, I'll find tons of sites that get read by hundreds or thousands of readers each month. Those sites are often clambering for content and would love to be one of the first people to blog about a hot piece of content.

Guess what else? Many of those "big name" bloggers read those smaller sites. Six degrees and all that jazz.

The challenge of getting some of those big names to cover your new content is that many of them are inundated with email. Even if your content is great, getting it in front of them can be difficult. Those smaller bloggers don't always have that problem.

Another thing to remember? Those smaller bloggers may one day be the big name bloggers and they'll remember the relationships that they built when they were still up and coming bloggers.

So who do you know? Are you focusing all your time and effort trying to break into the popular crowd? Or are you quietly and methodically befriending lesser-known bloggers with the knowledge that it will help you both work your way to the top?