When it comes to link building, there is an array of strategies you can follow to acquire backlinks. However, when you want quality backlinks, only a handful of these strategies work. If you have tried everything in the SEO book and still struggling to attract quality backlinks, it’s time to step outside the box and try something new.
Creating ego-bait content is one of the strategies that’ll save you from the boring (same old) link-building practices while giving you a quality backlink at the same time. Ego bait content is one of the highly underrated link-building strategies that only a few SEO experts utilize or talk about.
However, if executed accurately, ego bait content can do wonders for your website. It also gives you an opportunity to connect with influencers in your niche. So, if you also want to understand a new, yet effective link-building strategy, continue reading, the following blog will be helpful.
What Does Ego Bait Content Mean?
In case you’re wondering what ego bait content means, here’s what you need to know. As the name implies, ego-bait content is a strategy where you craft an ego-bait content piece, that’s specifically created with a goal to attract a specific individual, mainly an influencer.
When you have an influencer in mind, whom you want a link from, the goal is to write a blog post that has the potential to attract the influencer himself. Unlike other link-building strategies, the ego bait content is not written for a large group of readers, but for specific individuals only.
What are the Benefits?
Ego baits make it very easy for you to gain significant exposure to industry leaders or influencers. Additionally, they make way for you to collaborate with the influencers closely. The ego bait content helps you to earn goodwill.
When an influencer shares your ego bait content, there’s a great possibility some of their followers will also reshare or repost the content. All this process will invariably fetch you much more than you could expect. Here are a few things an ego bait content will translate to.
Primary Benefits of Ego Bait Content
Comprehensive Promotion
As the influencers and their followers share your ego bait content with their social media accounts or emails, you will get more excellent coverage. It might also appear in the press releases and round-ups. You get a promotion to a great extent.
Helps You Earn More Backlinks
With more and more shares and, you will gain more links. It will enhance the visibility of your website. Shares by top influencers also may you gain high-authority links from reputable websites. This improves your site’s trustworthiness and authority, and Google will rank it higher for user queries.
More Traffic and Higher Brand Awareness
With higher visibility and more shares, you get more traffic, more leads that subsequently translate into more conversions and higher ROI.
You Earn Goodwill
Being in a favorable position from the influencer and their followers also helps you earn goodwill.
Gives You a Starting Point for Sales Conversation
The ego bait content in the form of press releases, round-ups, resource pages gives a great starting point to your sales team. They have a reason to reach out and let the audience know that your brand is featured in an article.
Ego bait content can help your business outreach in several ways, and in the process, it enhances the SEO traffic and, importantly building and authority and trust.
How Ego Bait Content Actually Works?
The success rate of ego-bait content is all about human psychology. Since the content is specifically crafted to catch influencer’s interest, he’s most likely to leave to link to your website.
Influencers are always looking to publish ego bait content that engages their audience. When you write such content on their behalf, you basically save them from the hassle of doing all the research. In return, he’ll willingly provide you with a high-quality backlink.
However, it is essential that your ego bait content is up to the mark so that it can captivate the influencer. You can’t write a regular blog post and expect the person to link to your website. Let’s discuss how you can create such ego bait content pieces that engage the interest of an influencer.
How to Create Ego-Bait Content that Attracts Influencers?
While there are several ways to create ego-bait content, it is crucial to utilize strategies that help you target a specific person. In general, there are five different ways you can create ego-bait content, including:
Interviews
Listicles
Directories
Awards
Round-Up Posts
Guest Posts
Infographics
Let’s discuss each of these types in detail and understand which one is the right for your website.
Interviews
Interviewing the influencer himself and publishing it as a blog is the best way to get the influencer link back to your website. Everyone loves getting in the spotlight – and an interview is the most effective way to do that.
While publishing the interview, try writing about the life accomplishments and expertise of the influencer. You can also write the life story of the influencer to make your content more extensive and informative.
One of the major benefits of conducting interviews is that it is quite easier to gather content for an interview. Unlike other blogs, you don’t need to spend hours on research. All you need is a set of questions you want to ask. Simply send the questionnaire to the influencer and let him deliver it back with appropriate answers.
Once you’ve got all the answers, you can easily create a story about the life & expertise of the influencer.
Listicles (Best of, Top 10, etc)
Listicles are articles that contain a specific list. For example, Top 10 Google Ranking Factors. Publishing a listicle is yet another effective way to create ego-bait content. While writing an ego-bait listicle, you can write an article about the top influencers in your niche.
If you have only one influencer in mind, from whom you want to acquire a link, you can mention his/her name at the #1 position. This will encourage the person to link to your article and share it with their audience as well.
As a result, you’ll have a quality backlink and a streamline of traffic at the same time. Like interviews, publishing listicles is also an easy task that doesn’t require any detailed research. In most cases, people already know the top 10 influencers/business owners of their industry.
However, make sure to craft the listicle in such a way that it engages the readers and also makes the influencer honored to be a part of it.
Directories
While creating directories may be a bit challenging, as you’ll need to gather a lot of information and design a completely new platform, it helps you nurture a healthy relationship with businesses in your locality.
Basically, if businesses generate their revenue from the local customers, you can create a directory for all the local businesses. Once the businesses will create a profile on the directory, they’ll start generating consistent traffic to their website.
In return, they’ll happily provide you with a backlink. Creating directories is considered as one of the highly scaling link-building strategies as it’ll help you acquire multiple backlinks from different businesses.
Awards
You can create listicles or publish interviews, but nothing comes close to the power of awards when we’re talking about ego-bait content. Believe it or not, but awards are the most effective way of creating ego-bait content for an influencer.
And, it is not necessary that the award should be a physical object. It could be as simple as a featured post about the influencer and his business. However, in this case, you’ll have to conduct detailed research as you’d want to talk about the things (about the influencer) that helped you run your business.
Keep in mind that, an award post that’s only written with the sole purpose of acquiring a backlink may not work in this scenario. So, dig deeper and evaluate the positives/expertise of the influencer that you think can help others as well.
Round-up posts
As per Orbiteers 2020 blogging survey published on CMI ego bait content, roundups are a very underexploited (least preferred) platform, but it is the most effective. While using round-ups for ego bait, think like a storyteller or a journalist. While focusing on the most important and most prevalent problems in your industry, offer solutions.
Now, look for newsworthy ego bait content for the topic you have chosen to get a tie-up on current events. Choose the best experts to tie up for the ego bait content. Choose industry experts and influencers that can give you unique perspectives on your topic.
To get unique perspectives, choose experts from other fields like sociologists, psychologists, and psychoanalysts. As discussed earlier, you can use a compelling script to get a unique, easy-to-answer question you have already formulated for them. This will make it easier to offer you quotes. It is worthwhile to design an ego bait round-up that resonates with your audience. If an expert’s comment or quote is not unique, do not include it to satisfy the expert’s ego; think of the value it will give your readers.
After publishing your round-up article, reaching out to your experts is essential to get backlinks and shares. In this way, you can design an ego bait round-up that gives you the most of it and provides value to your readers. It will your authority, trustworthiness, and highly effective post, helping Google to keep you on the top of search queries.
Guest Posts
Guest posts have been used as ego bait content for a long time. Guest posts offering valuable and helpful information to the users have always fared well as a much-read and sought-after ego bait content form. Getting cues from experts and influencers in your industry, you can form truly valuable, unique, and helpful ego bait content. They understand their target audience needs, and with their expertise, they can offer you actionable insights on the same. It might be a fresh take on something or a new approach. The more significant benefit is that you will attract the expert/influencer’s audience to your site, especially those who follow them religiously.
Infographics
Infographics are a top-rated source of information people like to use because of their visual appeal. The use of graphics in the form of images and colorful elements will stimulate the brain. Due to their visual appeal and accessible information, people use infographics to share information. Infographics naturally get shared and are a seamless part of the well-formulated ego bait strategy. Seeing statistics in a visually appealing form is made possible with infographics.
How to Use Ego Bait Content for Link Building Opportunities
Now, that you’re familiar with different types of ego-bait content, let’s discuss how you can use it for link building. By this point, you must already have chosen the right ego-bait content type. However, before you dive into writing the post, there are a couple of things you should remember to craft the perfect ego-bait content post.
Step 1: Find Your Influencers
The best policy to begin with I to form business goals you want to achieve. Who are influencers and industry experts you want to liaise with?
There are certain things you must consider to choose your influencers.
Scope of Outreach
How big is their outreach? Do they have an active and well-engaged audience?
What kind of ego bait content do they prefer to share? Generally, it is content that supports or complements their existing content. Do you have content like that? Because a significant factor that will help them share your content is if their audience is interested in the topics you provide. Otherwise, they won’t share your ego bait content even if you shout them out. And it makes perfect sense as only this can give you leads, or it will be a futile effort.
You must establish a rapport with your chosen influencer. Do you feel both of you have shared ways to think and act, or maybe not? But, still, can you picture yourself having a conversation with them? Yes?! Go for them right away. They will be perfect for you to come up with interview-style content—an excellent ability to communicate means that you can get out some interesting chks of ego bait content with them. You must carry out some personality-level matchmaking for interview posts and videos.
Pay Special Attention
There’s something that you must consider while choosing your influencer. Carry out a reputation check. Is there something that will negatively your credibility if you are interacting with them on a public platform?
Have an open mind is crucial to growth, but you do not invite unnecessary trouble with damaging lawsuits other things that surround them. Will you be able to handle it all if these things come forth subsequently, or you think it will be better to avoid the association altogether.
Step 2: Time to Partner Up for Further Action
First, observe and analyze the type of content your audience will be interested in reading or watching. In other words, first, find those topics that will be a significant part of your general ego bait content strategy. Following this, pair your influencers and send them topics that complement their blog and overall strategy. So, if you cover the topics, you can harness the influencer mentions in your post.
“When coming up with an Ego-bait post, keep in mind that the post must be attractive to the prospects in a way that appeals to their ego. It’s important to recognize the person (or their website) as someone important in your niche. There are several easy ways to do this.” – Matt Lee, Lead Generation Experts.
Step 3: Reach Out
Typically, you can reach out to an influencer with a request to get an exclusive quote featuring in your post.
It helps in more than one way. You get their consent to share the post as it gets written. It forms a baseline to work with your influence and also propels you in the direction of building a long-term work relationship with them.
A list-style post is a great idea to quote influencers in your niche, such as the Top 10 brands for X. This will help you include all of your influencers, and your task now would reach out to each of them and request quotes. If you thought it would be time-consuming and tedious, have a look at this smart outreach script.
“Hi [Name],
I admire your work with [ the part of their that impresses you].
I’m creating ego bait content for my next blog in line [name of blog], shouting out the best [titles] in [niche name]. You’re surely on the list! I want to include actionable value tips for the readers as well.
Would you spare some time to answer a quick question in a couple of sentences? I have to post it in 48 hours, so let me know.
[Put an open-ended easy-to-answer question here]
Do let me know of any specific links you want me to include in the post to nibble out some promo for you.
Thanks, let’s talk soon!
This is a quick way to make it convenient for them to answer a particular question and accomplish your task fast. The more helpful you are, the more you can give quotes for the post, link back to it, and share it on their platform or social media.
Step 4: ASK for the Share or Backlink
It may not be that easy to earn a backlink. Even if your post features your influencers and gives a promo link, they will simply feel happy to show off their new shoutout, which added to their reputation in the niche. They may forget to link back to you.
Never mind, and remember they are super busy, like you. At times, they’ll need a little reminding and encouragement to give you your deserving link.
After you publish the post, you may have to plan a round of reach-outs to ask them to share the post and link back.
Don’t worry; this is also simple. Here’s a sample of the script you can use.
“Hey [Name]! I just published the [name and link of the post] with your quote in there, the way we talked about it! I hope you like it, and I thought you would be giving [us a link as well / it a share on your social media]?
Here’s the link: [URL link to post]
Thanks so much!”
Additionally, tag them on your social media account when you share the post. It will again be a reminder for them to retweet or share your post.
Better if you can create an embeddable badge for the people or organization mentioned in your blog post. You will impress better and acquire more links like this.
Only after due consideration, you must reach out to the influencers. Warm them up with good comments and email them to form a connection.
Finally, it’s time to write the ego bait content itself. Since ego-bait content is eventually a type of content marketing strategy, make sure that your content is high-quality and offers high engagement at the same time.
In case it requires research, makes sure to put in your efforts so that you don’t end with a regular post that no one wants to link to. No doubt, in the case of interviews, half of your job would be done by the influencer himself, however, it is still imperative to craft the perfect story that engages the audience.
Conclusion
There are several benefits of writing ego bait content. Not only will it give a boost to your backlink profile, but it’ll also help you establish a strong network in your community. With ego bait content, you and the other party can mutually benefit both parties. In the cluster of the same old link-building strategies, ego-bait content will provide you with a unique opportunity to acquire high-quality backlinks and help in higher website Google rankings. Hiring the best SEO Company in India can help you in creating such ego bait content type to increase organic search engine ranking results
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