Social eCommerce

Chapter 13. Influencer Outreach

You can’t do social media alone. We’ve well-established the fact that you need to engage with your customers and followers. There’s another kind of audience to reach, though—one that can provide a huge advantage: influencers. In SEO, they are referred to as the linkerati. The linkerati are social media mavens who command gigantic audiences and determine the virality of other people’s content. If these people link to your site, you’re going to get a lot of attention from humans and search engines alike. So you’re going to want as many influencers to say as many nice things in as many places as possible as often as possible. Not only does this lead to more sales, it also increases your social media following and improves your SEO.

Back in Chapter 2 we described content marketing—an article or video that is designed to be popular and spread through social media like an aggressive virus through a willing host. You can create the best content piece in the world, but it won’t go far on social media unless an influencer takes an interest in it.

Not only does social media provide another venue for searching, it also serves as an invaluable tool for acquiring links. Specifically, social media provides a venue to virally spread your content piece. One good article can put you at the top of Google search results, saving you a ton of money in PPC ad costs.

Of the three pillars of SEO—content, architecture, and links—it’s the links pillar that’s usually the weakest. ...