You need really good content for your business to be found online. And you need to put the right keywords in your content. And that may be enough. But usually it’s not. There’s another secret ingredient to getting found.

Being friendly. And being friendly with right people. The right people in this case are people that will spread your message. They are not usually your customer.

The right people are influencers or connectors. People that have a wide reach and the ear of…your customer.

In the “good old days” these people often worked at magazine companies (like ours) and although our editors are still some of these people they are not the only people that can connect you to your customer.

Today everyone is a publisher. There may be bloggers that have a huge reach and credibility with your ideal clients. You should get to know these people.

And it’s not just the super successful blogger or established editor that can help you. In fact, if your business is not that well known yet, you probably want to start with less well known bloggers and connectors. They will be more open to helping you as they are not bombarded with so many requests.

In many industries, the Internet has evolved a different culture to traditional business. If you’re friendly and helpful even your competitors may be willing to promote your content. How people share your content can come in different forms. They can Tweet a link to one of your blog posts to their Twitter followers or include a link in their Linkedin status. One of the biggest returns will come if they mention you in a blog post.

This is very important to your SEO. It’s a really good “signal” to Google. Here’s someone that knows what they’re talking about pointing to your content and saying it’s valuable. This type of link will bring you value for a long time.

The key to this “friendly” strategy is “giving first”. You need to help others before you expect to be helped. You need to try to add value to their day before you can expect much from them.

So what can you do to help others? Here’s a few ideas to help you get started:

• Include a link in one of your blog posts to your new friends content—and let them know about it
• Tweet out one of their blog posts—and include their Twitter name in the Tweet as they are probably monitoring for mentions of their name
• Retweet one of their Tweets
• Interview them for your blog
• Invite them to guest post on your blog
• Send out an email to your friends and connections telling them about this person and some great content they have

We’re looking for more friends. So if we can help you please let us know.

We’re looking for opportunities to feature your local business on our blog and our magazine websites. So if you’re interested please drop us a line here. We believe “what goes around, comes around”.