An article in our local newspaper caught my eye today; it was a short piece on how the public relations folks in a neighboring County were going to offer a variety of new programming on their school and government cable channels. It also pointed out how the school system was using YouTube to host its video’s and had plans to add more.

My link spidey senses got all tingly as the ideas whirled in my head; I immediately started thinking about the opportunities I could take advantage of on local access cable. I headed over to the County site to see how and where to submit video content and found this on the Production Request page:

All York County Government and York County School Division offices, departments, agencies, governing bodies, boards and commissions are eligible to submit requests for programs, public announcements for cablecast or internal use, and/or requests for program production services to the Division of Video Services. Other individuals or groups are not eligible unless sponsored by an eligible user.

Ok so maybe not the dot-gov-link-gold-mine I had first envisioned but no matter, this still may have link building potential for both direct and residual links.

If your business caters to local government or the school division, look for sponsored programs and special events where local business people are called upon to donate goods and services. Video tape your products being used at the event and work with your government contact to have the tape included on the local cable channel. (remember, you have to be sponsored by a “eligible user”). Be sure to include contact information at the end of the video.

You can also send the same video to your local television stations for rebroadcast on weekends when news stories are slow and they’re looking for content. Never hurts to try!

If your school system or local government has a YouTube channel, start a dialogue and leave comments. There’s no link popularity to be gained but you’ll build plenty of community popularity as well as credibility.

Associating your business through in-direct links on local cable channels might not generate a measure of green through your toolbar, but it may help grow the green in your wallet! Pop over to your local cable station and see if there’s an opportunity to submit links either directly or through a sponsorship. You’ll be guilty by association in a good way no matter what you do!

We don’t talk much about surveys when we discuss link building, probably because a lot of webmasters feel their keyword lists should suffice as research when they’re trolling for links.

But really – your keyword lists don’t tell you about people’s loyalties or personal preferences which is what you need to know before engaging in the more promotional link building.

From my experience, people like to have packaged solutions, they want specific tactics and the sites to use them on. I think that’s why directory submissions are so popular and the center of so many link discussions. People can wrap their heads around the whole process because it’s a no-brainer.

Find directory, qualify, pay for submission, submit. Bam, one-way link in place. Easy peezy.

I like easy too but know from doing SEO that easy doesn’t boost your site in the serps. That easy normally begets links that don’t pass strong link popularity and that easy ends up making you work harder down the road.

Which sucks. That’s where the research in the beginning really pays off. Talking to people, doing surveys, buying trend reports etc – all those things help you get in touch with your customer base and eventually in touch with your inner link self.

I say this all the time ad-nauseom but it’s true: if you were doing business on Main Street you wouldn’t just take out a yellow page advertisment and be done with it. You’d find out from:

• friends
• family
• the Chamber of Commerce
• Better Business Bureau
• your industry association
• trend reports
• local newspapers
• SCORE
• SBA (Small Business Admin)
• resources like ConsumerWorld.com
• Federal Citizen Information Center (in Pueblo CO)
• SURVEYS YOU CONDUCT

… and so on where the people likely to buy your products frequent, trends in their demographic, what publications they read, etc. Then you’d go and advertise there as well.

Talk to the people who buy your stuff. Talk to friends and family and figure out what they’re doing online. We live in a SEO centric world and don’t search or think like the average consumer. Don’t assume your customers think like you do, or search like you do because they DON’T.

Find out where your customers go and do everything you can to place ads in those locations. Keep talking to them, keep asking questions, keep in touch. You’ll build exposure, gain trust and accrue links if you do.

photo found on AzureInspired

Earlier this year at the Small Business Unleashed Conference Abby Prince from WebProNews and I talked briefly about how to get started building links. It’s real basic, if you’re looking for link secrets you won’t find them in this one.

Here’s a bunch of photos from the last Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference in Columbus Ohio. It was a great show and I enjoyed being part of it.

This is Diane Aull (Torka) and I at the COSI charity dinner the night before the conference started.

Rachel Phillips of Search Engine Guide and Diana Adams from Pole Position Marketing.

Matt McGee and I

Christine Churchill in one of her sessions talking about keywords.

Rachel Phillips, Irma and David Wallace who all apparantely coordinated wardrobes.

Robert Clough and Jennifer Laycock of Search Engine Guide. Along with Rachel and Vickie Evans (Jen’s mom) they did a great job putting this conference together

Michael Stebbins and Matt McGee. Mouths open and in awe of something witty I said. (cough)

Stoney deGeyter being Stoney.

Notice his photo is larger than the rest. That’s because I wanted everyone to see his new long hair-do and because I took these photos from his Flickr account without asking. LOVE YOU BUDDY……

Chris, Heather Lloyd-Martin and myself at dinner the first night.

One of the best parts of being at these shows is seeing your buds. Heather was the first person I made contact with in this business, it was sometime in either 2000 or 2001. (neither of us can remember).

I met Chris (along with Jill) in Dec 2002 at my first SES in Dallas. I had been working for Jill for almost a year at that point but had never met her in person. That was the last time for Dallas, the show moved to Chicago the next year.

Seems like yesterday

Here’s the rest of the photos: SMBU Flickr and Stoney’s set. Enjoy.