Do you want to build a loyal audience, bag collaboration deals from top influencers of your niche, and increase the visibility of your evergreen content? 

If so, with 4.8 billion users, social media is the perfect medium that can help you achieve the above-mentioned goals.

Additionally, you can forge strong relationships with the ones who already support your company and love your products and services: Your existing clients on social media.

Of course, these are incredible benefits. But did you know that these benefits can also aid you in your link building strategy?

To be honest, using social media for building links isn’t a brand-new concept. But the idea is often undervalued.

Leveraging social media to build quality links is a much cheaper alternative than many other options that require considerable investment. Therefore, you must learn in what ways social media can benefit your SEO efforts.

In this blog, you’ll learn about the top 10 strategies for social media link building. But before that, let’s understand what link building is.

What Is Link Building?

Link building is the process by which you persuade other brands to add a link to your website or blog on their own. Every link or backlink you get from other established businesses is like an endorsement of the reliability of your website and brand. 

These links also serve as votes of credibility from other brands. Therefore, the more votes you manage to get, the better it helps you rank in Google searches and other search engines.

Nowadays, link building is increasingly focused on getting links to a website from reliable sources that are pertinent to your niche industry or area. These links are supposed to be given without payment because someone identifies and respects you as a professional in your domain.

Now, what is social media link building?

It is exactly how it sounds.

The process of building links using social media platforms is referred to as social media link building. In this case, brands use their social media accounts as mediums to publish links that lead to their business webpage or blogs, or products.

Why Using Social Media Is a Great Way to Build Quality Links?

According to Neil Patel, when SEO experts were polled about the most popular strategies for link building, most initiatives were made through social media. They claimed it was the third most effective technique to build links after research and paid strategies.

When the same SEO experts were questioned about the biggest roadblocks they encountered when building links, their responses were the following:

• Getting no response or rejected when requesting for links
• Fewer prospects to create high-quality links
• Not having enough expertise in strategic link building

Thus, it is crucial for you to realize that link building is all about collaborative relationships. And it's via establishing and maintaining these relationships that you can increase the number of backlinks leading to your business website.

Social media platforms such as Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter are effective mediums for fostering collaborative relationships. Leveraging these platforms is also a great strategy to introduce yourself and your business, showcase the spirit of your company, engage with your audience, and increase your client base.

10 Social Media Strategies to Build Quality Links

1. Grow Your Brand and Build an Audience

One of the most prevalent online activities people indulge in is social media. Globally, more than 4.26 billion people used social media in 2021, which is expected to reach around 6 billion by 2027.

This is clear enough evidence that social media is a reliable platform for creating brand awareness and building an engaging community. 

There are many folks out there who will be interested in your products or the service you provide. Therefore, gaining more attention to your brand through social media can also be incredibly beneficial when it comes to building quality links. 

The more credibility your brand earns, the better it will be trusted by people. 

Your customer base will also be more likely to recommend your services or products to their friends, acquaintances, or followers. This could lead you to earn a lot of backlinks without having to put in a lot of effort.

For instance, if you are a fashion house with an impressive web presence and social media following, you might notice influencers and online magazines publishing content about your products. 

Each social media or blog post that is published could lead to a link back to your website or products.

2. Create Viral Content

The fastest yet trickiest strategy to gain social media backlinks is to go viral. While some posts go viral solely by coincidence or as a result of their unique content, many are created by SEO experts who have expertise in viral marketing strategies.

Also, at times, backlinks surface on well-known sources and news websites without any additional work on your part when social media campaigns or news about company crises go viral.

While it's a risky game to get into a social media scandal and wind up on a reputable news website, many marketers still dream of creating viral content through any means. But dare anyone even attempt to do that.

However, you need not worry about getting into a crisis or relying solely on your luck to make your content go viral. All you need to do is create engaging and interesting content and implement some researched viral marketing strategies.

3. Find Niche Bloggers for Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is one of the simplest yet most effective link building strategies that are out there. The process of guest blogging to earn backlinks is quite easy to follow:

• Search for niche bloggers in your industry that you think would be interested in your chosen topic.
• Contact and engage with them.

• Find out if they are interested in your brand.
• If they are, ask them to write a guest blog or post, mention your brand, and publish it on their website or blog channel.

Strategic guest posting comes with several critical benefits. It introduces you to new people, builds relationships via networking, and is great for ranking in search engines.

However, guest posting isn’t a quick process. Outreach often takes months, with only a few credible parties ending up accepting your blog post request.

But when it comes to social media link building, the process of reaching potential niche bloggers is streamlined and results in a positive outcome.

4. Get Your Target Audience to See and Read Your Content

One of the top challenges of content marketing is building a loyal audience who would be interested to see your content and engage with them. 

But no worries; you can use a few effective strategies to boost your content and make it more reachable to your target audience:

Enhance the Readability of Your Text

Many writers, with alleged years of experience, still deliver low-quality content. Here you can gain the upper hand by producing high-quality content. 

Make sure that the text of your content is free of errors, concise, structured, grammatically correct, and above all, informational and engaging. 

Additionally, optimize it with correct SEO practices to make your content reach the right audience and include backlinks via appropriate long-tail keywords.

Focus on Competitor Analysis

Another way to make your content better is to research your competitors. Check out brands from your industries and assess the quality of the content they are posting. 

Furthermore, analyze their writing style and identify the mistakes they are making. This will help you avoid those mistakes in your content and give you a competitive edge.

Don't Skip on Evergreen Content

Evergreen content is loved by all and can be rediscovered regularly or year after year. For instance, building content about your product or services around the festivities of Christmas will help you attract potential customers every December. 

Using the same logic, you can also build content around black Friday sales or prink Friday sales.

5. Gather Customer Reviews and Feedback

Gaining customer reviews and feedback via messages and comments on social media provides many benefits. They provide social proof of your brand, boost audience engagement, and keep your content the talk of the town for a long time.

Now the question is what gaining customer reviews and feedback has to do with building links. 

Let's enlighten you!

Reviews will boost your social media business accounts in search engines and help you rank better due to relevant SEO keywords. Better rankings increase the number of people who will view your content and the likelihood that they will link to it. 

Additionally, since positive reviews increase reliability, more individuals are likely to promote your content by clicking on your links and sharing your website with their contacts.

Now, how to gather positive reviews and feedback?

First, you have to ensure that your products and services are of top-notch quality. Even if you are a wholesale b2b dropshipping business, it is important to source high-quality products from reliable suppliers and ensure that they meet the standards and expectations of your clients. This is the most crucial factor in running your business, as well as gathering positive customer reviews. 

Next, you can reach out to your clients via automated follow-up emails and request a review, tagging your social media profiles and linking to your business website after the product purchase. You can also offer them discount coupons for their next purchase as goodwill in exchange for reviews.    

Additionally, for any negative feedback, take into account those criticisms and resolve issues of your customers timely. This will win you brownie points and help in long-term customer retention.

6. Engage with Social Media Influencers in Your Niche

When it comes to growing an audience organically and nurturing them, social media influencers are their ambassadors. They are the kind of individuals who have a large following and can also help you build quality links.

If social media influencers like your products because they relate to your brand and company story, they might promote your business on their stories, posts, or blogs. Not only will this help you build quality backlinks, but it will also drive increased traffic to your website. That' why building relationships with influencers should have a special place in your business plan.

When you’re reaching out to an influencer, it’s important that your brand offers them something of value so that they can showcase it to their following. However, you have to confirm this factor before reaching them out.

Now, there are many ways through which you can reach influencers and engage with them via your social media accounts. You can contact influencers of your niche via messages or cold outreach, offer them your products or services in exchange for a mention like a barter system, or pay them straight-up money.

In another instance, as mentioned above, some influencers might come across your brand on their own, take a liking to it and share it with their audience once they believe in your credibility. 

If they praise your brand and products, don't shy away from showing them some love. You do that by engaging with their posts or stories via likes, comments, shares, and retweets. 

This will aid you in building stronger relationships with them, fortify trust among your prospective clients, increase your social media following, and pave the way for future collaborations.

7. Build Relationships

Social media is about connecting with people and building strong relationships. Once you accomplish that, it will help you build quality backlinks and improve your rankings in search engines. 

When you build a strong audience on social media, it boosts audience engagement on your posts via likes, comments, and shares. This also helps you increase the credibility of your brand and build social proof. 

However, building relationships on social media isn’t a piece of cake. You must be committed to your audience and engage with them consistently with all honesty. This will help you earn good links in the long run.  

Take part in conversations concerning your brand, products, and services, answer queries of your audiences, and like and comment on their stories and posts. This will help increase your brand visibility and fan following and drive more traffic to your website.

8. Build Links with Social Media Platforms

The most effective method for building links on social media is to include the URL of your business websites in your accounts. Ensure that every account you have on every social networking site is active, updated and has a functional link to your website.

For instance, on Facebook, include links to your website in the following places:

• Your profile under "Contact" and "Basic Info" on the "About" tab
• The featured post in your Facebook group
• In every post you publish on your wall. It is better scheduling your Facebook posts to maximize your results.

Repeat the same process on your other accounts on major social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, and other niche-based platforms. Make sure to include links to bios, descriptions, cover photos, posts, etc.

Additionally, you must ensure that you're posting high-quality content from your website on all your social media accounts. All of your web pages must be organized to make it convenient for you and your audience to share content from them on social media.

The more shares your content receives, the better visibility it will gain. As a result, you'll be able to build more quality links.

9. Get in Touch with Followers/Fans Who Mention You on Social Media

Another simple but effective way to build quality links is to track and get in touch with followers/fans. The goal is to build solid relationships with followers who mention your brand or products across social media. As a bonus, they may even help you attract more followers by sharing more stuff related to your company.

Since they already mentioned you willingly, getting a relevant link from them should be convenient. But how do you track them?

Well, you can use a social media monitoring tool such as Mention, which specializes in monitoring brand mentions across all social media platforms and the web.

10. Aim Your Social Media Marketing at Millennials and Gen Z

Lastly, you have to aim your social media marketing at teens and young adults: The millennials and Gen Z. 

In case you haven't noticed, Gen Z and millennials are quite literally taking over the globe. They should be your biggest target audience since they are the ones who might be your top consumers.

As a result, it is more crucial than ever to learn how to communicate with these audiences, especially considering that their purchasing power exceeds that of previous generations. 

They will boost engagement on your posts with frequent banter and jokes in comments and replies. Additionally, they will help you build quality links with social shares since they are the flag bearers of the viral culture.

Time to Optimize Your Social Media Link Building Campaign!

The idea here is to leverage social media to maximize the number of links to your business website and hence boost your organic search engine rankings.

However, most marketers treat link building and social media as two independent campaigns. But that's not the case anymore. Understanding that you must integrate these two efforts will reward you with a competitive advantage in SEO.

Social media offers a wealth of prospects and strategies for link building. The ones listed above are only a few of many that are suitable for long-term application.

To wrap it up, make sure to always publish engaging and high-quality content and include relevant hashtags. This will make your content more discoverable, and people on social media can share your content faster.

Author Bio:

Darshan Ruparelia is a B2B SaaS marketer at SocialPilot. Darshan is a SaaS enthusiast who helped many SaaS companies bring quality traffic through data-driven content marketing. In his free time, he loves to follow and play Cricket.