Earlier today, SEO Michael Gray posted a Britney Spears Career Choices article to his blog. In his post, he mentioned that one of the keys to being good at social media and linkbaiting was to keep in tune with the trends, and have people on hand to create posts when an opportunity presents itself. Michael feels that if you are a player in the job or employment space, you missed an opportunity to ride this week’s Britney Spears MTV video music awards wave.

If you’re a player in any space, you missed an opportunity this week, as the Britney story has been getting all sorts of attention.

You don’t need me to rehash the Britney drama, there’s thousands of others doing that. However, the ever-changing story is nowhere near dead, and I’m betting Britney will continue being a great source for linkbait for some time to come. As Michael said, “the girl is a never ending fountain of material” so get prepared to ride the next wave.

The point of Gray’s post was to “be diligent and monitor trends and current events.” Michael suggested linkbaiters look for creative ways to bridge those gaps between the real world, pop culture, and your site.

By the time I checked Michaels post there were several comments, and I found the conversation interesting. While the concept is a great idea, a reader reported that interest in pop culture events like this one spike and disappear too fast for most people. They go on to suggest that what Michael Gray describes seems impossible to plan for. Others making comments appeared to feel the same way.

Make the impossible possible by following these tips…

Load up Your Linkbait Tackle Box
In order for this to work on a regular basis, you’ve got to be organized and well prepared. If you want to hit topics while the iron is hot, you’ve got to have the basics taken care of in advance. Regardless if your story is going to be about a celebrity, a sports figure, a holiday, or current event, the goal is to drive traffic to your preselected locations. While there we’ll be variables, the foundation of your content can be prefabricated.

Links
Get your links in order so they are ready to be cut and pasted into your post at a moments notice.

Bio
Have a few sentences ready about you (or your client) along with predetermined links. Have them ready to be cut and pasted into your posts.

Images
Build a collection of images and store them in a place you can get to easily (preferably on your webserver). This step alone could separate you from the crowd as you may be one of the few providing image content in a sea of virtual fisher persons.

How I’ve developed my approach over the years is I’ve kept a bundle of images on my web server, so I can access them from anywhere. I’ll keep a text file copy of all the things I mentioned above on my laptop, with everything already formatted in proper HTML tags. Using this approach, if you were sitting in an airport waiting for your flight, and a fresh topic broke, you’d have your entire tackle box available, and you could potentially get a story posted before take off.

Scan
Keep a close eye on as many social media and news sites that you can. Watch for patterns emerging in posted topics. With practice, you’ll be able to better spot the big ones or the ones that best fit your goals.

Know Tomorrow, Today
You’d think this would be the toughest part, but it’s actually the easiest. It’s September 2007 and the NFL season has started, NASCAR is going, a World Series is upon us, the fall network TV season has begun, kids are back in school, Halloween is around the bend. Catch my drift?

Get Smart
The VMA awards happen every year, so do the Grammys, so do the Oscars. Let’s not forget the Clio awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards, and others. They are all held the same times of year, and there’s always a story to be told. This same line of thinking applies to the Tour de France, NBA playoffs, Masters Cup, Kentucky Derby, X-Games, and I could go on. Drill into your niche markets and you’ve got annual conferences, marathons, fundraisers, food drives, and juicy, ready to be hooked, topics.

If you are interested in examples, take a look at 5 completely unrelated topics (from this summer) that all tied into one websites mission. All produced new inbound links.

Google Introducing 10 Second Advertising
Web Tool Outs Wikipedia Manipulators
2007 Tour de France
X Games 13
Beyonce falls

Grab your best bait, and get ready to party!

About the author: Michael Dorausch lives in Venice Beach, CA.