Social Media Tools for Link-building

Social media enables connections with reporters, writers, and bloggers. It’s an overlooked link-building method.

Here are my favorite social media tools to identify and engage with potential link providers.

Tools for Link Building

Twitter search offers a handy “People” tab to find individual Twitter profiles based on your keywords. My favorite feature is the list of common connections for potential introductions. Here’s an example of searching for “CNN reporter.”

Twitter search can find individual profiles based on keywords and list common connections. Click image to enlarge.

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FollowerSearch, a third-party tool, finds Twitter profiles with queried terms in their bio. It also shows the number of followers for each profile. FollowerSearch can filter results by the number of followers or location (handy for local business outreach). A $39 per month premium version allows CSV exports.

FollowerSearch finds Twitter profiles with queried terms (“CNN reporter”) in their bio. Click image to enlarge.

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Twitter Lists and Tweetdeck. Finding promising profiles is one step. Knowing what they publish will help develop an outreach strategy, such as aligning a linkable asset with their interests. It’s also a good way to build relationships by engaging with their tweets and answering questions.

For both outreach and relationships, I create Twitter Lists for journalists and reporters relevant to my niches. TweetDeck is the best way to follow profiles on those lists. Click “Add column” in the left panel of TweetDeck, and select your list in the “Your Lists” tab.

In TweetDeck, click “Add column” in the left panel and select your list in the “Your Lists” tab. Click image to enlarge.

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Drippi can export connections or threads of any Twitter profile. Exporting connections acts as a Twitter bio search:

• Enter your target profile.
• Choose to search for followers or following.
• Enter desired keywords in the bios, such as “reporter,” “blogger,” or “journalist.”

For example, Drippi can identify reporters followed by a CNN Twitter account and then filter them by industry or keyword as contained in their profile.

From there, you could automatically direct message those filtered and imported Twitter accounts. But I avoid automated outreach, preferring instead to create a Twitter List and monitor and engage with their tweets and decide how to reach out meaningfully.

Drippi can identify reporters followed by a CNN Twitter account and then filter them by industry or keyword. Click image to enlarge.

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Devi is primarily a lead generation tool for Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, and groups on Facebook. Devi can find prospects and facilitate outreach.

To use the tool, install the Chrome extension, provide your keywords (e.g., topics of your linkable assets), and select those groups or profiles to monitor. Then participate in relevant discussions to understand how your topic fits and its influencers, for outreach. Engage only with meaningful content, such as a study, and don’t overdo it.

Use Devi’s “Commented” tab to reply to comments and re-engage with lapsed connections. You can also save contacts. Devi costs $49.50 per month.

Use Devi’s “Commented” tab to reply to comments and re-engage with lapsed connections. You can also save contacts. Click image to enlarge.

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IGFollow is a Chrome extension for Instagram. The tool extracts and exports the followers or followed users of any Instagram account and people using a particular hashtag. For each user, it will provide a username, full name, bio, and email or phone number if available.

IGFollow helps find Instagram contacts to engage with. The tool provides no filters, however, so it could take time to sort through the exports.

You can export your data to a CSV file and extract more. For free, you can extract up to 30 users. For unlimited access, upgrade to a premium plan costing $19 a month.

IGFollow extracts the followers or followed users of any Instagram account as well as people using a particular hashtag, such as “SEO” in this example. Click image to enlarge.