ContentPick Up on Current Events for Link Building

Pick Up on Current Events for Link Building

Giving your website an active role in current events is a lot more efficient than creating media attention from scratch. Here's how to prepare your website for future events so you can attract links with your prompt response.

Attention

Attracting a lot of attention with your website is one of the best ways to build links. Giving your website an active role in current events is a lot more efficient than creating the media attention from scratch. Here’s how to prepare your website for future events so you can attract links with your prompt response.

Pick Up on Existing Attention

There are many forms of attention and attention has become a commodity itself. Getting attention has a couple of fixed recipes and some of those have a very predictable outcome. Getting attention from out of nowhere is always hard, but when you link your message to something that already receives a lot of attention it becomes much easier.

Once a hot topic emerges, everybody wants their piece of the action. If you’re one of the first to respond or one of the first creative responses, you can have your share, too.

Because timing is everything, you need to come prepared to be on time. That’s why you need to plan ahead for future events and most of those are predictable.

While all your competitors are planning ahead for annual or seasonal events like national holidays, you should rather skip these crowded times (unless you have a fantastic plan). Even announced events like the Olympics, sports matches, festivals, and award shows can become too crowded with every brand shouting for attention.

The only way to get a head-start during these events is by guessing the outcome and launching your message before everybody else does. Even when incidents become predictable only few campaigns come prepared.

You know an actress will stumble during the Oscars. You know festivals get record amounts of visitors. And you know riots follow various sports events. Find a relevant hook and attach your message to it.

By focusing on events bound to happen but without a fixed date, you can outsmart the competition. Prepare an early response to one of the following examples.

  • Each year has its extreme weather and natural disasters somewhere on the globe. Charity initiatives with a lot of media attention are sure to follow.
  • Scandals in politics or involving celebrities happen each month. Funny responses get a lot of attention.
  • Elections come in many forms and at least once every four years they get an extreme amount on attention.
  • Famous people die. An ode to their work gets media attention. Eulogies are often pre-written, so why shouldn’t you prepare?
  • Movie premieres, electronics introductions, game launches, new albums, and concert tours all require a lot of attention and some of them are bound to get it. Help them with a message that boosts both your popularities and they might even cooperate.

Getting Attention With Your Message

Now that your message is well-timed during the attention peak of the chosen topic, it needs to get traction. This is the initial boost of attention required to get people talking about your message.

Famous people, events, organizations, popular websites, and media labels have attention and they want to keep it as long as possible. It is in their best interest to cooperate in activities that give their existing attention an additional boost and surprisingly often you can do a joint promotion when it is sure to catch attention. Using this as a podium (the traction) for your message makes it go viral.

Now you have a relevant message with the right timing, brought by someone with a lot of existing attention. Everybody will be talking about you, online and offline. So how do you get links out of that?

From Attention to Links

An active role is needed for a website you control. It doesn’t need to be your regular website and something with a nonprofit feel to it will often work better. Everybody will be alert to your goals to want all this media attention, so any form of direct sales should be avoided.

Link building isn’t such a well known goal for attention yet, so people will gladly spread your message for you. Including the links to some of the involved websites.

From my experience there is only one big danger to all of this. Everybody wants their piece of the action once you’ve created a new hot-topic. Make sure all that attention keeps focused on your website for as long as possible.

Resources

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