Developing a social media link-building strategy is simple if you approach it as you would meeting people in a new neighborhood. You have to make an effort to find out who's who, introduce yourself, participate in community activities, and help others in order to earn respect and "membership."

This two-way relationship-building approach is crucial to the success of corporate blogs, which are often misused as advertising or PR mouthpieces. A blog is a tool that can help a company solidify its brand and build and develop rapport with a community -- but only if it's used for dialogue rather than broadcasting.

Links are the currency that helps develop mutually beneficial relationships and improve search engine optimization. (It's called "link love" for a reason!) When people link to your site, it rises in search engine rankings, improving overall traffic. So, how do corporate bloggers go about giving and getting links?

1. Get to know who's who
Start by researching the top blogs in the relevant industry area; they may be written by individuals or be part of a corporate site. Get acquainted with the influential sites and bloggers in your neighborhood and tune into their conversations. Putting the top 10 or 20 blogs in a content reader will help monitor popular topics and dialogue, so you know where to jump in with comments, expertise, and opinions.

2. Decide where you fit in
Develop an editorial calendar of content for the blog, which offers the opportunity to offer relevant information, expertise, or guidance (preferably more than once a week) on subjects relevant to the people in your neighborhood. The idea is to identify a target audience, find a niche, and add a new angle or experience on a particular subject.

Using the career arena as an example, there are many angles blogs can take:

• HR professionals offer advice on how job seekers can better market themselves.
• Career coaches/authors explain how to decide what career path to take.
• Management/leadership experts answer questions on day-to-day workplace issues.
• Job seekers write about the ups and downs of their search.

A corporate blog can discuss a company's product or service, but the blog will turn people off if it's always self-promotional. It has to be interesting and, above all, useful to the audience it targets.

3. Get the house ready, then invite people over
When starting a blog, build up several weeks of solid content before officially launching, so that when visitors arrive, there are various pieces of content to look at and choose from. Having a base of ready content also shows that you're committed to sticking around. Even those initial blog posts should contain links to other bloggers to demonstrate that you're part of a community and tuned in to what others are saying.

4. Link to potential comrades, not just the elite
Blog posts are an opportunity to link to the people in your neighborhood. If you've read relevant posts to the topic you're writing about, link to them. You can link to them in a very direct way, saying, "In a recent post blogger X made a great point." Or you can simply hyperlink relevant key words to the post. Perhaps one blog post a week can offer a round-up of industry news that links to and points out key events or opinions in the community. The linked-to bloggers will notice and visit your blog to check out the context. Be generous with links: Don't just link to the big name bloggers who get so many links they won't notice yours. Link to bloggers whose brand values and quality reflect what you're striving for. These are the relationships that will be there long term, advises Liz Strauss of Successful Blog. You can establish your online peer group by putting these sites in your blogroll.

Consider linking text carefully, and don't use phrases like "click here." Are there descriptive keywords or phrases with which you want your blog associated? Words that people are likely to type into a search engine when they're looking for the kind of information or service you offer? You can use links to strengthen the association of your blog with those keywords. Someone blogging about careers, for example, may want to emphasize the phrase "career management" and look for ways to include links for that phrase in posts.

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