Have you ever wondered what makes people share others’ content on social media?
Want to attract more high-authority links to your website?
If you can figure out what peoples’ engagement triggers are, you can engineer content that gets shared – and linked to – more.
The truth is that there are a lot of things you can do to “trigger” a share, but ego baiting is probably one of the easiest ways to get your post seen in front of a wide, fresh audience to generate traffic and new leads for your building materials manufacturing business.
Ego What?
Ego bait content is created to stroke the ego of industry influencers. This wins their agreement to share the post and link back to the content. You’ll often see ego bait content in the form of listicle posts like “Top 20 Distributors for..” or “Best Websites in the X Industry”.
Consider how you’d feel as a business owner if someone shouted out your business in a blog post. You would probably feel inclined to share, as that shoutout adds to your perceived credibility, as well as emotional validation.
It’s an incredible form of influencer marketing. If you select your influencers wisely, you’ll find your content circulating widely in front of highly targeted audiences, thereby expanding your reach, visibility, and influence.
These aren’t the only benefits to ego bait content, though.
What are the benefits?
As noted, ego bait posts are an easy way to gain free exposure by inspiring the help of industry leaders. But in addition to that, let’s say these influencers are also your target audience, or could possibly partner up in some way.
The primary benefits of ego bait content include:
- Backlink Aquisition: Gaining high-authority links from reputable websites makes your site look more trustworthy and authoritative in the eyes of Google, which is great for SEO.
- Increase Traffic and Awareness: Get your business in front of other people’s audiences.
- Wide Promotion: Participants will share the content to their social media or email newsletter audience. Some might even send out press releases on how they’ve been featured.
- “Goodwill Content”: Provide informative, helpful content to customers or prospective customers.
Starts the Sales Conversation: This content gives your sales team a reason to reach out, as they have to reach out to let people know they were featured in the article.
From backlinks to social shares, there are many ways that ego bait content can help your business in SEO, reach, and authority.
Gets You an “In” with Influencers and Leads
In that case, creating ego bait content will put a bug in their ear about who you are and what you do. Psychologically speaking, people tend to like people who like them. So by paying public recognition to influencers, you’ve effectively made a valuable positive impression before actually reaching out to them to strike up a working relationship.
Again, imagine that you’re the influencer. If someone shouts you out in their content you will probably share it. At this point, you now “know” someone you didn’t know before. You’ll recognize them when they send you an email a week later asking to hop on a call. And when they ask, you’ll be more inclined to read the entire email and consider their proposal than you would if they were a complete stranger asking for your time.
Good for SEO and Reach
The last big benefit is that of more shares and backlinks. People like to do what their friends and idols are doing. So if your influencer finds it necessary to share a valuable post, some of their followers will do the same.
As you know, the more links you have leading back to your website or blog, the more visibility you’re going to gain on Google when leads specifically search for your services and keywords.
So, not only are these shares going to place your content directly in front of targeted audiences on social media, but they’ll also help you with search engines. You get the best of both worlds for inbound leads to your building materials business.
Types of Ego Bait Content
There are several different styles of ego bait content. This is great because you can change up your style of content to keep it fresh while still maintaining a consistent flow of social sharing. Let’s go over a few different types of ego bait content with examples:
Interviews
Interviews are one of the most common and effective ways to get influencers to share your content.
With an interview, you’ll feature the influencer and “give them the stage” on your platform. You’ll be there to support the flow of the content the influencer delivers and help them tailor it to your audience, but for the most part, the influencer is either talking or writing to them.
Contact the Experts
It’s best with interviews to make sure the topic is one that both your audience and your influencer’s audience are highly interested in. That way when they share it, their audience will happily come to your platform to see the content and get acquainted with you.
It’s also important to note that with interviews, influencers usually like to have their business or a specific product or service promoted. How you do this is at your discretion, but it’s common for you to allow the influencer some “final words” at the end of the interview where they can pitch their thing.
Example
This building materials supply company interviewed 16 eco-friendly home builders on how they “go green”. These types of posts are great for attracting links back to your website.
Listicles
Listicles are a specific type of blog post or vlog that simply lists the “Best” or “Top” of something – such as “Top ____ Experts Give Their Best Tips About ____”.
While these are less in-depth than interviews, they can easily gain a wider reach because you’ll have multiple influencers sharing the piece.
Usually, you’ll want to contact each influencer beforehand to give an exclusive quote to the article, but this isn’t necessarily a requirement. Them giving a quote beforehand psychologically binds them to the project and gives them a sense of ownership.
This increases the chance that they’ll share the piece once it’s published. But if you decide to do random shout outs without asking first, many influencers will still share it to say thank you.
Examples
Looking for examples of listicle ego bait content in your niche?
Check out “Top 100 Architecture Firm Blogs” or “Best Interior Designers in LA”.
Directories
You’ve seen plenty of directories. These are usually referred to as “resource lists”. The purpose of directories is to help users find valuable information and contacts. However, you can use directories as a type of ego bait content that attracts links back from the sites featured in your directory.
For example, if you sell building materials, your audience may also be in search of contractors.
Having a directory of contractors on your site could not only attract more traffic to your site via search engines but also have local contractors scrambling to get featured.
Most directories include the company’s logo, contact information, a blurb about them, and a link back to their website. Make your directory appear prestigious enough, and those featured will be happy to link back to and promote your directory.
Examples
Bautex Systems created this directory of Texas architects to attract both users and backlinks to their site.
This directory helps users find a GAF roofing contractor near them. It’s now an authoritative directory that contractors strive to be featured in and is a major factor in how much organic traffic they receive.
How to Create Excellent Ego Bait Content
Content marketing can be especially powerful for building materials manufacturing companies.
Being in such a competitive space, you need to make sure that your online presence is rock solid, that your SEO is top-notch, and that your content is helpful to your potential customers.
Ego content will help you attract links that will improve your overall SEO and social shares to accelerate your visibility.
Below we have broken down how to get started creating ego bait content for your business.
Step 1: Make a List
Start with the end in mind by identifying industry influencers you’d like to associate with.
There are some characteristics you’ll want to consider, like:
- How large is their audience?
- Is their audience active and engaged?
- Do they share content that’s similar or complementary to your own? If their audience won’t be interested in your niche topics, they might not share even if you shout them out. And even if they do share to a disinterested audience, you’ve wasted time because you won’t get leads.
- Is this someone you can see yourself having a conversation with? This one is specifically for interview-style content. If you can’t see yourself actually having a conversation with this person, your interview will be stiff and fall flat. It’s important you do some personality-level matchmaking for interview posts and videos.
Do they have a reputation for something that could affect your credibility for interacting with them in a public space? While it’s good to have an open mind, it’s also solid to know what you could be getting yourself into. If they have damaging lawsuits or something else following them around, it’s probably best to know this on the front end so you know how to handle it should it be brought up. Or you even might decide it’s best to avoid the association.
Step 2: Pair Your Influencer With Your Topics
You always want to tailor your topics to what your audience will be interested in reading or watching. With that being said, it’s best to find those topics first as a part of your general content strategy.
Then, pair your influencers with the topics that best suit them. That way, when you go to cover the topics you’ll know what influencer mentions you can include in the 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
Oftentimes you can simply reach out to the influencer and request an exclusive quote to be featured in the post.
This is great for a couple of reasons:
- You can go ahead and get their consent to share the post once it’s written
- It establishes the baseline relationship you’ll have with the influencer, should you have in mind that you’d like to build a long-term relationship with them
If you decide to do a list-style post touting the “Top 20 X” and include a lot of your influencers, it’s a great idea to reach out to each of them and ask for quotes. This doesn’t have to be long and drawn out.
This short script often works:
“Hey [Name],
I love the work you do with [What do they do that’s really impressive?].
I’m writing a blog post for [name of blog] shouting out the best [titles] in [industry]. You’re definitely on the list! I want to make sure the post packs actionable value for the readers too.
Would you mind answering a quick question with just a couple of sentences? I have to get this out in 48 hours so let me know.
[Insert specific, open-ended question that’s easy to answer here]
And let me know any specific links to anything you want me to include to give you some promo 😉
Thanks so much!”
Having them answer a specific question or set of questions will help them think less and just get it done. The more you can help them help you, the more inclined they’ll be to help with the post, link back to it, and share it on social media.
Step 4: ASK for the Share or Backlink
A lot of the people featured will go ahead and happily show off their new shoutout – especially if it says they’re the best at what they do.
However, remember that they’re busy just like you. Sometimes they’ll need a little reminding and encouragement.
So, when you publish the post, you’ll want to do a round of reach-outs at that time and specifically ask them to share the post and link to your content.
Again, this can be simple and straightforward:
“Hey [Name]! I just published the [link the post] and your quote is in there just like we talked about! I hope you like it, and would you mind [ giving us a link back/giving it a share on your social media channels]?
Here’s the link: [URL link to post]
Thanks!”
Also, make a point to tag them on social media when you share the content. These little reminders will make it easy for them to retweet or share your social media post.
Pro Tip: Consider creating an embeddable badge for all of the people or companies featured in the article. You’ll acquire more links this way.
A Word on Backlinks
Getting website owners to link back to your content isn’t always easy. The trick with ego bait content is to, well, stroke their egos.
Make your content so great that they feel honored to be featured. Praise them for their knowledge and accomplishments. Then, asking for a link back or a share will be a no-brainer.
Get creative with your ego bait content, try some different ideas, and find the best kind of content for your audience. If you focus on the value rather than simply the traffic or links, your content is more likely to be irresistible.
What About Other Kinds of Posts?
Ego bait isn’t limited to list-style posts. There are plenty of ways to involve influencers in your content with the purpose of them sharing it on your behalf.
Here are some other examples and their differences:
Video Interviews
Video Interviews are more in-depth and pack huge value – but you set them up a little differently.
Obviously, you need the influencer’s consent to feature them on video, and a lot of influencers really want to know what they’re getting into before hopping on a call with you for an hour.
With that being said, you’ll want to schedule a preliminary call if it’s your first time chatting with them. That way you two can break the ice off camera and set the tone and plan for the interview itself.
Random Shoutouts
You won’t always need to request a quote for an article. You can also just shout your influencer out or use an existing quote in your work. In that case, you won’t need to reach out to them before the article is written.
You’ll just want to reach out to them after the article is published to ask for the share or link. Then, remember to tag them in your own social media posts.
Written Interviews
Written interviews are awesome because they’re quick for you. Simply reach out to the expert or site and ask if they’re willing to answer a few questions for an interview article. If they say yes, send the questions their way.
You’ll definitely want to proof the answers (for clarity) and add an introduction and outro. Afterward, just publish the post and follow up with them to share and link back to it.
Recap
The benefits of ego bait content are tremendous, and it’s incredibly easy to create – but it can feel complicated when you’re reading about the nuances in over 2,000 words.
So, here’s a quick recap of the important things to remember:
- Keep it Fresh: Consider different styles of content you can use for ego bait to keep it fresh. Listicles and Interviews are great key styles to rotate between.
- Make a List: Make a list of influencers, experts, or websites that you want to network with, and whenever you want to cover a topic in a piece of content, just refer to that list to see who the best influencer to include would be.
- Always Ask: ASK for shares and backlinks. If you forget this part, you’ll leave a lot of leads (and money) on the table.
- Network: Reach out and network! You can follow up with these Influencers for high-level partnerships and business opportunities. A lot of them might even decide to buy from you. Once you open the door, walk through it.
Doing these four things will have you on your way to creating great ego bait content. With it, you’ll have more reach, more leads, and awesome professional relationships.
