The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
When you’re trying to build quality links, one of the best ways to do that is by creating interesting content and pitching writers to secure media coverage.
But in order to be successful, your content has to be newsworthy.
One of the most common newsworthy elements is timeliness, meaning the information is either brand new or relevant right now.
Most brands aren’t operating full newsrooms and don’t have the capacity to cover breaking news, but there are still ways to participate in relevant, newsworthy conversations — and surveys are a great option.
I’m going to walk through how you can utilize surveys to add value to conversations, and earn the interest of writers at top publications.
Step 1: Identifying the trends
Saying “trends” is honestly too broad, because a trend can last for hours, days, months, or even years. Obviously, the shorter the trend, the harder it’ll be to contribute in a timely fashion.
For the purpose of building links, I tend to ignore Google Trends, Twitter trends, and other rapidly changing interests, because you’ll need at least a handful of days to put a survey together, and there’s no guarantee the topic will still be popular by the time you’re done.
Instead, I look for trends that last in the range of months, as they accommodate longer-term conversations and give you the room to explore new angles and perspectives without racing against time.
Here are some ways to identify these types of trends:
-
Keyword research[1]: When keywords and topics have a high volume, that means there’s a great deal of interest; often these tools use historical data to inform their