As a solo entrepreneur, it’s vital that you’re as resourceful as possible. This often means that you’ll need to use every piece of technology available to you in order to grow your business and reach a wider audience, and this typically means that you’ll need to rely on social media outreach and search engine optimization.
As you may know, SEO is important to help your website reach a higher Google rank, but that alone won’t increase engagement. Instead, you need to learn how to interact with your customers and also draw them in with the help of social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. In fact, even services like YouTube can generate a lot of attention if used correctly.
In this article, we’re going to be talking about the basics of social media outreach and how you can build backlinks with minimal capital and external help. We’ll be explaining how you can make the most of social media and how you can utilize these different platforms in order to grow your business.
What is Outreach?
First, let’s define outreach. Outreach is a form of marketing that aims to use word of mouth as the main propagator. It focuses on human interactions instead of algorithms and digital tools, so in a way, it goes back to the basics of marketing that existed before global communications. It plays on basic consumer psychology and it aims to prevent buzzwords from taking over the marketing industry. Instead, it focuses on simple, tried-and-tested methods of growing a business where you create connections with both consumers and influencers.
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You’ll typically develop an outlook strategy based on the idea that humans want to learn and hear about new things. They want to see something spectacular, they want to see something game-changing and they want to share it with their friends to spread the word. That’s why social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter are ideal for solo entrepreneurs to work with; because of the wide audience they can reach, and they can do it with almost no capital or help.
Building Backlinks
Backlinks are essential links that lead to your website. In the past, this was perhaps the biggest component of good SEO. Sadly, this meant it was abused and many websites spammed links that were invisible or hidden in order to increase the search ranking of their main website. This is known as black-hat SEO and is largely frowned upon. In fact, if Google detects that you’re using these methods to gain an advantage, you’ll actually be blacklisted by the search engine and removed.
However, gaining organic backlinks is still one of the best ways to improve your search ranking and there are many ways to do it.
One of the simplest methods to build backlinks is to actually reach out to webmasters of relevant websites. For instance, maybe you’ve been reading a long-standing tech blog that has links to various products and deals, but you’ve noticed that some of the links are broken and lead to dead websites. You could contact the webmaster to report these broken links, and also suggest replacements to fill the gaps in their content. This is known as the broken-link building method and is a popular strategy when working with older blogs and websites.
Social media outreach is also a fantastic way to build backlinks. Since you’ll be in constant contact with influencers and consumers, you can get them talking on other platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and even their own blogs. Influencers love it when they have a source of new content, so if you’re able to offer something new and innovative to the audience, bloggers will want to benefit by becoming one of the first to cover any changes in your business that could create new content for their website.
In general, building backlinks requires you to be social. Whether it be on social media platforms or by directly contacting webmasters and giving them an opportunity to write about content that relates to your products and services.
You can also read: 10 Effective ways of Building Backlinks on your Blog
Building an Outreach List
Link building requires you to build an outreach list. It starts with a simple connection on social media–another reason why the platforms are so popular. When building a list, try to categorize the types of back linking and sort your contacts based on those groups.
For instance, for webmasters, you want to contact about broken links, class them as “broken links” outreach contacts. For those that are based in certain locations, class them as “location-based” social media outreach. There are many different types of outreach contacts and the way you classify them will make things easier in the future.
That’s because you can easily create email or messaging templates based on each one. For example, if you’re using Twitter to send direct messages to influencers or even consumers to spread the word about your product, you can make a simple template so that you don’t have to rewrite similar messages over and over. This will help you reach more people more quickly and saves you a lot of time.
You should also know that building an outreach list takes time. Even though the benefits are mutual for both you and the influencers or websites that you reach, not everyone is going to be on-board with your ideas. At first, they’re going to be skeptical about what you’re offering, and then they’re going to question whether or not you’re legitimate or not. It’s far better to be honest and work together with a well-known website, as opposed to working with several lesser-known sites that could tarnish your brand.
You also need to be ruthless in your approach. If a website has far too many advertisements then you’re not going to get much exposure no matter how much you work with them. If the blogger you contact posts only once a week then it’s probably not going to be a very popular place to put your products. If a website has low engagement, then it’s probably not reaching a wide audience despite their claims, and you want to stop working with these types of websites.
Related: SEO strategy
Final Words
Social media outreach is a brilliant way to start growing your exposure, but it does take some time to build an outreach list. Remove all of the low-quality websites from your list, ensure that you’re active on social media and follow trends to get the most exposure.
About the author: Michael Zima
Digital Nomad @ zimamedia.com Mike is the co-founder and digital nomad at Zima Media and an industry SEO and advertising expert. He previously worked for the largest SEO agency in North America and has over 10 years of professional SEO experience working with major brands. Originally a Chicagoan, Mike moved to Spain 3 years ago.
I’m totally into the concept of reaching out to website owners about dead links on their pages. I notice that stuff now and then. Totally agree, it’s a solid first step to scoring a backlink.
True! am grateful for your comment.
Really good information. I’ll be keeping these tips in mind.
Hi Melanie, thanks for dropping by!
This is great information thanks…backlinks can be so important for all platforms where searches are conducted,,,
True!
I have found backlinking to be beneficial in more ways than one. If nothing else, I have discovered articles and friends along the way that I may not have otherwise known about. It also got me to register on Google’s radar 🙂
Yeah, social media outreach if well used, can easily help build backlinks!
I love your way of thinking and giving me so much value and food for thought on this topic
Thank you from your Vroom Vroom Team for sharing your links with us at #262 SSPS Linky. Please check back weekly to see if featured on the blog post or by any of the co-hosts.
Hi, I already bookmarked your site, so I will definitely be checking in weekly otherwise thanks for the feedback.
Fantastic post! The concept of bootstrapping backlink building with social media outreach is a game-changer. Your step-by-step guide and practical tips provide a clear roadmap for leveraging social media to enhance backlink strategies. It’s inspiring to see how this approach can effectively build valuable connections and generate quality backlinks. Thank you for sharing this insightful and actionable advice. Keep up the great work!
Hi Tan, I really appreciate feedback! Thanks for taking your time to comment.
The biggest thing to note when doing outreach, even emailing other bloggers or reaching out to them on social media, is to make sure that the context you’d like linked provides just as much or more value than the article you link to.
I totally concur with you, otherwise am grateful for your feedback.
Very useful and informative. Also, I found it reasonably easy to follow too, which is a surprise for me! Thanks for sharing!
I appreciate your feedback.
Great information. I’m only on week 3 of my blog, so I can definitely use this advice. Thanks!
You are welcomed Kara!
this is really helpful i will always come here to do my finding thanks for sharing am bless and i will put it at work
Welcome.
Thanks for the info- very helpful for a newish blogger!
Welcome Clarrisa!
backlinks are toughest task I find in blogging and I keep on learning about it. this is really helpful and i will try to implement it
Hi, glad to learn that you found this post helpful. Welcome.
These look like some fabulous tips for backlink building. I struggle with it and i would love to implement your strategy 🙂
Glad, you found this helpful.
Interesting information on backlinking. I will have to save this one for later.
Hi Jenne, glad this is helpful to your blogging.
Such a great and informative post. Been studying about SEO and how backlink works on it. I have learned a lot.
Hi Preet, thanks for visiting!
Glad to pick up something here, at least I can try to build blacklinks with minimal capital. Hope it can help me grow and make my business bigger.
Glad you have found this helpful.
Really great post and breakdown. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Catherine, thanks for visiting.
Backlinking is something I knew almost nothing either. I have heard the term thrown around a bit. Thanks for sharing this article.
Your feedback well appreciated.
It’s a great read and I like how you pointed out people abusing backlinks to spam sites. It’s important to know what you are doing and what other things to improve your rank of the website.
True, thanks.
This is so helpful. We are always trying to work on SEO and backlinks.
Welcome.
Thanks so much for this great post. Quality backlink is another good form of Good seo. I just started building comment backlinks few weeks ago
Hi Mathew, thanks for visiting.
This is an interesting article. I am going to look into this. Thank You.
Welcome.
That is really good information! I’ll have to look into this, myself!
Hi Sara, welcome again!
This blog is really helpful. Thank you for sharing our thoughts!
Hi Maggie, you are most welcomed.
Thanks for linking up at Booknificent Thursday on Mommynificent.com!
Tina
Welcome.
Hello John and Michael,
Thank you for sharing the valuable information in this article!
I was just wondering, what’s your recent experience with broken link outreach? Are webmasters/blog owners receptive of this outreach strategy. To me, this is akin to cold-calling. I would love to know your experience on this strategy.
Best,
Sigrid
Thanks for the advice!
Welcome.
I definitely need to up my backlink game. Thanks for the tips!
Most welcomed.
Backlinking is something I knew almost nothing about until about a week ago. Now two of my networking groups are promoting backlinks, very informative article.
Thanks for the positive feedback. Welcome.
I recently started considering how I could improve my Domain authority and I realized I could achieve that by having powerful back links. So, I’m hunting back links like a weirdo with the hope that it will help improve my DA.
Hi Jennifer, thanks for visiting. Yes, high quality backlinks can improve DA and ultimately the rank of your site in search engines. Normally guest posting and commenting on other blogs like you are doing right now, is a great way of improving DA of your site. Welcome.