Get your website off of your website!

Posted: 02 May 2011 07:00 AM PDT

It used to be hard to get other websites to link to your site. Why? Because you had to ask them to do it. Then (if they decided that made sense) they had to manually create the link. If you pointed them to a sub-page of your site and then redesigned, most likely that link changed – so you had to go through the process again. And this was primarily for other businesses or organizations. Individuals? Most normal people didn’t have websites, and didn’t think they’d ever need one.

Guess what? This has changed! These days – though most people don’t think of it like this – most normal people have websites. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that more individuals have websites than do organizations.

Why do I say that? Because of Facebook. Facebook profiles are essentially personal websites. People with a Facebook account now have a way to post text, photos, and videos, add some “about me” info, and have a place for comments. Contact information can be there, if you choose to do that. You even have a URL (and now, even an email address from Facebook). And the people who also have Twitter, Linked In, or Instagram accounts? They have multiple personal web spaces.

And this is awesome. Because now, you – as an organization – have an amazingly simple way to get your content linked to a multitude of other websites without really having to ask.

Just do this: post good, useful content to your organization’s social places. Post information about your upcoming events. Post interesting book reviews. Etc. And include a link back to the full content on your library’s website.

OK – you also need to write in a fun, interesting way that’s conversational and not too market-y sounding. And this is assuming your organization actually has a presence on social networks, and has been actively working to attract friends to those sites.

Guess what? People respond. By commenting and liking. By retweets to your stuff. When they do this, they have just done something HUGE. They have just added your content to their streams … to their “websites.” And at the same time, shared your content with their friends. Then the process starts all over again.

And voila! Your content has just made it “out of the building.” Pretty cool, huh?

pic by moonlightbulb