In my comments from digg is Not Social Media Marketing someone asked me, what is a linkerati?
In my arrogance and blinkered vision I expected everyone to know who the linkerati are. But not everyone spends most of their waking day immersed in the murky world of getting eyeballs to websites. Obviously I have to as I am a blogger whose goal is to teach and coach my readers to social media marketing nirvana.
But not everyone knows the jargon and as this is a pretty new industry there are a lot of fresh new faces. So lets get down to basics.
The linkerati is a term coined by Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz, and before you say it’s just a made up word, all words are made up. It’s not like when Humans decided to do the “language” thing they were giving a dictionary. If you ever want to get well known within an industry, invent a word which everyone will use describing something everyone is thinking about but can’t put a word to.
Rand gives a nice rundown on what groups of people make up the linkerati. He even had a White Board Friday about it.
Michael Gray continues the discourse and refers to the linkerati as pawns on a board.
“In the end it?s all like a chess game, and the Linkerati are the pawns on the board, much less powerful by comparison to the other pieces. However used together in support roles you can develop stronger more complex strategies, improving your overall position.”
I personally wouldn’t describe them as such. To me the linkerati are the connectors, they are ones who have ultimately created the web. Creating connections to related and sometimes unrelated pieces of information dotted around the web. And thus, they are all powerful and very popular. If you can persuade the linkerati in your sector, you will own that sector.
The linkerati are such that they are constantly in hunting mode, scouring all they can get their hands on to find something worthy of a link. They are desperate to link, it’s what they do, it’s what they are known for. We all have that one blog in our sector where we know we can find interesting links. I find in our world, wiep.net can always be trusted to link to something juicy.
You may think that because the linkerati are a desperate crowd, hungry to link to something, it should be easy to get a link off them. Not so.
They devour tons more content than you and have a much better idea of what’s good and what stinks.
They avoid the mediocre, step over the lukewarm and turn their backs on the average. What they are looking for is the exceptional, the exquisite, the shiny, sparkling things of the web. They love it when they find something brilliant which they can point to.
The linkerati are defined by what they link to. Who and what they link to is how they are perceived.
It’s important to know this because, if you are wanting links from them you have to produce exceptional content. You have to create something which will make people put down their steaming hot mug and coffee and say, “wow”.
If you can’t do that, then get someone who can
But:
- If you know your sector.
- If you have the time to invest.
- If you don’t mind spending days crafting content.
- If you are willing to spend hours on a headline.
- If you can spend the time to study your sector
- If you read this blog every day.
Then maybe you can reach out to the linkerati and save yourself a couple thousand dollars.
There is so much more we could talk about.
- A deeper analysis into the mindset of the linkerati.
- Differing levels of content quality per sector.
- What kind of person becomes a linkerati.
- How to get the linkerait to love you.
- Hot words that get the linkerati excited.
- How to think like a linkerati
Most of this stuff is deeply psychological and is very much about pushing emotional buttons. We could talk about how linking to something is more emotional than rational, but I don’t have time.
Much more, much later I’m afraid.