How We Secured a Link from The New York Times

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We recently conducted a successful link bait campaign at nexus-security and want to share our insights on creating a linkbait campaign.

Our campaign’s success stemmed from well-defined goals, compelling content, and vigorous marketing. Our efforts culminated in a link from a highly reputable source: The New York Times. Case Study Outline:

You might be curious about initiating a link baiting strategy, and ultimately, successful link baiting hinges on meticulous planning. I believe many link baiting attempts falter due to inadequate planning. Bloggers and link builders sometimes assume that simply publishing content will magically make it go viral…organically…eventually…because it’s “so exceptional” that people will feel compelled to share it. This is rarely the case. Like any successful marketing endeavor, link baiting demands a well-structured plan. Before launching our campaign, we crafted a comprehensive plan encompassing the following:

  • Goal Setting: Clearly outlining our objectives and defining success criteria.
  • Content Creation: Identifying a compelling hook and producing high-quality content.
  • Aggressive Promotion: Selecting target audiences and implementing a comprehensive media and social media campaign.
  • Progress Monitoring: Utilizing tools to track media coverage, link acquisition, website traffic, leads, and all web activity directly related to the campaign.
  • Results Evaluation: Analyzing whether goals were met and identifying reasons for any discrepancies. Planning is crucial for a successful link-bait campaign, so invest sufficient time in brainstorming and strategizing. A solid plan is the cornerstone of any effective link bait strategy.

Defining Linkbait Objectives: The Goals of Our Campaign

As previously emphasized, a well-defined plan with clear goals is paramount. Establishing goals provides your link-bait campaign with structure and direction. Furthermore, it helps determine the most effective “hook” for your link bait, whether it’s content, a puzzle, contests, widgets, humor, news, or other engaging elements. While the obvious goal of link baiting is to acquire numerous links, including a few high-trust, high-authority links, I believe your aspirations should extend beyond this. Ideally, a successful linkbait campaign should yield a trifecta of growth in:

  1. Links
  2. Traffic
  3. Leads/Sales It’s not mandatory to hit all three targets for a successful campaign. If your sole objective is to secure a single high-value link, that’s perfectly acceptable. The key is to establish your goals upfront to measure success, evaluate your efforts, determine ROI, and inform future campaigns. We carefully assessed our link bait campaign goals. Our primary success metric was link acquisition, with the ultimate goal of obtaining one link from a national publication. We also aimed to increase website traffic, both referral and organic. Traffic is essential for generating links; if your content remains unseen, it won’t be shared. Regarding leads and sales, our link bait wasn’t directly related to our products, so we didn’t anticipate significant sales from the traffic generated. However, if leads were generated, it would be a welcome bonus.

Let’s reiterate a crucial point: content reigns supreme in link baiting. It’s the “bait” that lures in the links. Don’t waste time chasing the latest linkbait trends or resorting to cheap tricks—it all boils down to compelling content. Subpar content won’t be shared, go viral, or attract links. Given the pivotal role content plays in your campaign’s success, it’s essential to dedicate the majority of your time, energy, and resources to developing your “bait.” Effective link bait can manifest in various forms. Here are some ideas to spark your creativity:

  • Infographic
  • News Article
  • Video
  • Controversial Topic
  • Quiz
  • Poll
  • Interview While these examples provide a solid starting point, don’t hesitate to think outside the box. Since our primary goal was to earn a link from a national publication, we opted for link bait with a “news hook.” We wanted content that capitalized on trending topics and resonated with the public. Larry Kim authored an article predicting Scott Brown’s victory in the Senate race based on social media popularity metrics. This was a brilliant move as the nation was captivated by the upcoming election, and we wanted to ride the wave of media attention. Furthermore, Larry cleverly leveraged “social media,” another trending topic, making it perfect for social news link baiting. This potent combination of two hot topics was a recipe for success, appealing to both followers of the Senate race and social media enthusiasts.

Effective link baiting requires relentless promotion. Even exceptional content and the most enticing link bait won’t automatically go viral. It often needs a little push. For our marketing campaign, we recognized the need for a highly aggressive promotional strategy to propel our content to viral status. We dedicated three hours to an all-out media blitz that included: Press Release Distribution for Linkbait: $140 through Marketwire

  • Our press release ranked #1 for “Scott Brown” and related queries in Universal Search Engine Results (SERP) within minutes of its release. Impressively, it maintained its top ranking for eight hours.
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Organic Ranking Enhancement: With minimal effort, our link bait blog post secured a first-page ranking for numerous “Scott Brown,” “Massachusetts Senate Race,” and “Martha Coakley” related searches, generating significant organic traffic that amplified awareness and attracted additional coverage. Real-Time Search Monitoring: Google’s Real-Time Search provides fresh, continuous updates from videos, news sources, blogs, forums, and Twitter, making it an invaluable “live listening tool.” Real-time feeds proved instrumental to our campaign strategy. Given the intense public interest in the Massachusetts Senate Race, real-time search results were abuzz with activity. This allowed us to monitor live feeds for Scott Brown news and discussions, enabling us to identify fresh content for outreach and “strategic commenting” (discussed below).

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Strategic Seeding: As mentioned, Google’s Real-Time Search was crucial to our promotional efforts as it provided a constant stream of new content opportunities for strategic seeding. We utilized Real Time to target popular, high-traffic online publications where we posted insightful comments with backlinks to our “bait.” To avoid our comments getting buried or pushed down the page, we ensured timely commenting within minutes of the target content’s publication. This highlights the importance of real-time search in our strategy. These strategic comment links generated thousands of website visits and significantly increased awareness for our link bait within the campaign’s initial hours. Social Media Engagement: Leveraging Social Platforms for Referral Traffic Twitter played a pivotal role in our campaign, enabling instant content dissemination and fostering shareability. Our Twitter strategy included:

  • Targeting Key Players: We directly engaged with the Scott Brown campaign, his daughter, and other ardent supporters identified through Twitter Search.
  • Reaching Out to Media Professionals: We tweeted influential journalists from this list: Tweeting Journalists. In retrospect, this “spray and pray” approach might have come across as spammy and could have been more effective with personalized outreach to individual journalists. Nonetheless, it provided valuable insights for future campaigns.
  • Hashtag Integration: We incorporated trending Senate Race hashtags (like #41st and #masen) in our tweets to expand our reach.
  • Utilizing Twitter Bots: These profiles automatically scraped and tweeted our press release and link bait tweets, creating a surge in Twitter activity and driving traffic to our website.
  • Leveraging the Retweet Multiplier Effect: Numerous Scott Brown supporters retweeted our bait to reinforce their belief in his victory, while Coakley supporters retweeted it to criticize the post. Regardless of the sentiment, both positive and negative engagement contributed to the campaign’s viral spread.
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Beyond Twitter, we extended our link baiting efforts to other popular social media platforms:

  • Facebook
  • YouTube: Engaging in discussions within new Scott Brown and Martha Coakley videos
  • Digg
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Ping.fm: For simultaneous broadcasting across multiple social sites Generating Rippling Coverage: Our combined efforts in blog commenting, social media engagement, and media outreach created a ripple effect. Bloggers we hadn’t directly targeted referenced our social media poll (polls are highly effective for link baiting) in their articles, further amplifying interest, traffic, and links. Following Up: We expressed gratitude to journalists and bloggers who covered our article. While not a core campaign element, this courtesy and common sense gesture fosters future outreach and relationship building with these influencers. While promoting your link bait campaign might seem labor-intensive, it’s an indispensable step. Even the most exceptional linkbait articles have relied on robust promotional strategies to achieve success.

Our link bait campaign was a resounding success, surpassing our initial goal of securing an editorial link from the New York Times.

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We also garnered a bonus editorial link from Politico. Securing links from these two prominent online news publications effectively doubled our link acquisition objective for the campaign. Our comprehensive media blitz generated mentions and links from numerous websites globally, including here in Sweden. Furthermore, the viral nature of our campaign led to unsolicited comments and links to our social media poll on message boards, forums, and media posts. The link bait even inspired several copycat Senate Race social polls, which was incredibly flattering. Goal Breakdown

  • Links: A total of 236 links, including high-profile, high-trust sites like The New York Times and Politico
  • Referral traffic: Our website experienced a fourfold increase in referral traffic, with thousands of pageviews generated within hours
Link bait traffic spike
  • Leads/Sales: 3 leads Although the traffic generated by the link bait wasn’t directly related to our core product offering (search marketing software), we still managed to convert a small number of leads. More importantly, we successfully achieved our primary objective of obtaining a link from a highly trusted media outlet. In future campaigns, we plan to replicate this approach while tailoring our “hook” to resonate with a more relevant target audience.

Deconstructing Our Campaign’s Success

Several factors contributed to our campaign’s success: establishing a clear, detailed plan from the outset, executing it effectively, and aggressively marketing our content. However, without inherently linkable content, our campaign wouldn’t have gained traction. What made our content so shareworthy?

  • Emotional Engagement: Our social media survey resonated with people across the nation who held strong opinions about the Massachusetts Senate Race. This high-stakes event held significant weight for both political parties. GOP supporters embraced the survey as it reinforced their stance, while Democrats criticized it as nonsensical. Regardless of the viewpoint, it worked in our favor.
  • Impeccable Timing: The national spotlight on the Massachusetts Senate Race (and Scott Brown) reached its peak around the time we released our link bait piece. Timing was everything. Releasing it earlier wouldn’t have garnered the same level of coverage. We hit the sweet spot, which played a crucial role in our success.
  • Leveraging Hot and Trendy Topics: Scott Brown had become a political phenomenon in the lead-up to the election. The media was hungry for any information about him, and our link bait capitalized on this eager audience.
  • Creative Execution: Our link bait wouldn’t have gone viral without its unique angle. An article solely focused on Scott Brown’s merits or criticizing the Democrats’ Socialist agenda wouldn’t have been as appealing. However, by ingeniously combining two hot topics—social media and Scott Brown—we struck gold. Creativity and originality were key ingredients in our recipe for success. As you brainstorm future link bait ideas, remember that controversy that evokes emotions, timely content, trending news, and creative execution are all excellent starting points. And when you manage to combine all these elements, you’re well on your way to creating a winning linkbait campaign. Congratulations! You’re now equipped with the knowledge and insights to create a highly effective linkbait campaign. As newly minted linkbait campaign experts, we wish you the best of luck! Now go forth and conquer the world of linkbaiting—if we can get a link from The New York Times, so can you.
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