One question that I have been asked as a result of our social media case studies was whether the steps we took to get social media links was how a social media should be planned? The answer to that is no.
By submitting to all the social sites at once you are hoping to catch lightning in a bottle. The problem with this approach is that everything must line up just perfectly for you to succeed. And even if you do get on the first page of Digg or Netscape, the impact on your search engine rankings will reduced as your page will probably stop getting any new links 24-48 hours after your campaign ends.
A big one-time effort reduces the chances of any viral component to your campaign. By the time any viral aspect of your campaign starts to build you will probably have moved on something else.
If a major news story breaks in the middle of your campaign, then your message might well get drowned out by all the news noise. I am not saying that you successfully plan a social media campaign like this, I am saying that it is extremely difficult to do.
So what is the best way to plan a social media campaign? Implement your campaign in phases over a 10-14 day period and you will be amazed at the how more successful your campaign is.
Sample Campaign Layout
Say I am launching a social media campaign for a blog post on say “The 7 Best Coffees In The World”. Based on my previous experiments I have identified that I want to focus my social media efforts on the following sites:
- StumbleUpon
- Digg
- Netscape
- Del.icio.us
- IndianPad
- Bibsonomy
On day 1, I would submit the site to Digg and StumbleUpon. These two sites will generate traffic and also some links. Depending on the topic, I would expect to see the Digg post show up on the first page of Google within 2-3 days for the article title.
About a week after the initial submission I would submit the post to Reddit and Netscape. This will give the post a second wave of traffic and links. Within 2-3 days of this submission I would expect to see the Netscape post, plus my article on the first page of Google.
One week later I would submit the article to the remaining social media sites. This submission brings a 3rd wave of traffic and linking to the site. So after 10-14 days your post has been distributed across the social networks and you have added deep links to your site from a wide variety of sites. You are giving the search engines the impression that there is a viral aspect to your campaign as your page keeps getting fresh links, weeks after the search engines initially found your post. This “long” campaign will result in you not only getting but staying on the first page of Google for your blog post for the foreseeable future.
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Fantastic post. I’m going to try out this approach ASAP. Do you add in submitting your article to article directories, maybe at the end of the cycle?
Hi Sterling
I am not a fan of article directories which is why I do not include that step. It’s a personal bias:)