Summary: Linkerati are tech savvy web users who can make or break your viral campaign, and who fall into one or more of the following groups:
- Bloggers
- Social media users
- Journalists
- Researchers
- Offline promoters
- Forum participants
This article relates to social media.
‘Linkerati’ is a term coined by the brilliant SEO guru Rand Fishkin of SEO Moz. It refers to people who who…
- are web users;
- are owners of websites/blogs;
- have established trust and authority with the search engines;
- regularly update their websites/blogs; and
- link to ‘hot’ content on the web.
If they link to your content, it’s good news because their ‘vote’ has a lot of weight.
On the whole the linkerati don’t link to direct marketing campaigns. They’ll link to your content because it’s that good, it can’t be ignored. So whilst you may find your content is linked to by other people, through social media, emails and so on, the linkerati are a bit more fussy.
What kind of people are ‘linkerati’? There are broadly six types to look out for.
Bloggers
Bloggers write about stuff that interests them, which might include your viral content. Once regarded as a bunch of people who rambled on about their daily life, now bloggers have an increased importance in our culture, with the top bloggers seen as authorities in their field. They use platforms like Blogspot and Typepad but not all of them get indexed. However, there are a bunch of bloggers that attract many readers, and whose sites are regarded as authoritative. These are the ones that you’re interested in – it’s not easy to get them on board though. Here’s a link to the top 100 in the UK by ranking, as a starting point: http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/top-100-uk-blogs/
Avoid paid blogs – you can get links from them but these are nothing in comparison to a single link and write up from a blog like TechCrunch.
Social media users
These are people who use and grow sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and Reddit. You’ll be able to spot them from their site ranking (sites like Digg rank users according to how much they participate). They’re regular visitors and submit content as well as voting on other people’s content. Their participation determines what content becomes popular, so it’s good to get them on your side. They’re also savvy enough to spot a marketing campaign a mile off and are unlikely to promote it.
Journalists
Journalists are writers who are generally paid for their writing, that being the major difference to bloggers. The other difference is that they write stories which are published and then don’t change, whereas bloggers are prone to changing their blogs as new information comes to light.
Reviews from journalists carry weight because they are professionals – also, their work is often published both on the web and offline. Naturally they vary in terms of how valuable they are, depending on the publication.
Researchers
There’s an increasing culture of sharing information, evident from the number of people who choose to publish their research online. Many of these exist on university websites. Researchers who are also published authors, scientists, academics and influential business people have weight because their reputation offline gives them credibility online. Their standing offline affects the sites and content to which they link.
Offline promoters
It’s odd to think that viral content online can be promoted offline but there are plenty of people who do this – TV hosts for example, paper magazines/journal authors to take another. Respected tech people, radio show hosts and other public figures have the same role.
Forum participants
I find it fascinating how much time people spend in forums, commenting and helping others (sometimes!). Every interest group in the World has a forum somewhere in which you can chat to others, on or off topic. You’ll see that, like for Digg, forums rank their users by participation and some users have a lot of weight as a result.
Forums are often full of people arguing a particular point, and being less than constructive, so they’re difficult to lever in your favour but influential forum users are a group to factor in.
Enjoyed this article?
Subscribe to our RSS feed, follow us on Twitter or just simply recommend it.
Related Articles
Further Discussion
1 Response to “Who are the Linkerati? Why should I care about them?”
Leave a Response
Make sure you enter the * required information where indicated. Responses are moderated so please no link dropping, no keywords or domains as names; do not spam, and do not advertise!
said at 11:23 am on August 3rd, 2010
[...] This post was Twitted by AngelSEO [...]