Cats got me backlinks and SEMRush buys Backlinko

I thought today would be fun to talk about a single marketing newsworthy campaign revolving around cats and a mixer that’s still going, but first, a couple news items:

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Backlinko was just purchased by SEMRush, Brian Dean, maybe one of the best marketers out there and a crazy good newsletter. News broke this morning on Twitter and SEMRush’s news site.

Someone asked John about a high DA website and spam checked score of 6+. I didn’t really read anything more than that in the question because those are number like in the Whose Line is it anyway game show, “where everything is made up and the points don’t matter.”

Also, the word “link juice” was used, which feels very cringy to me. Can we stop saying that. How about we just say authority, because that’s really what it is.

John responded: “Since Google uses neither DA nor the spam score, it doesn’t really matter either way, right? That’s why I said to just ignore all of that and do something real instead. If experts are telling you to do this, then find other experts.”

OK, to the main event – Cats. Not the movie, which by all accounts doesn’t exist, right?

So a few weeks ago a couple name Nikki and Jessica bought a vitamix. Upon the arrival, they sat it down on their kitchen floor and promptly their cat decided to sit upon the unopened box. Jessica took a photo and posted this to a Facebook group called THIS CAT IS C H O N K Y.  The group boasts nearly a million members, and the post immediately took off. Over 10k interactions by the next day.

They have three cats, and they wouldn’t leave the box. They resorted to feeding the cat on the box as she refused to get down even to eat.

Jessica continued to post updates and then reached out to Vitamix via their facebook page to ask for three empty boxes, enough for their three cats.The saga got it’s own hashtag that trended, The Great Vitamix Incident of 2021 and/or #Appliancegate, has developed.

Here’s where we’re getting into the marketing side of things. Vitamix responded within a day and sent them out three boxes. What was a single day post now made it to Vitamix corporate facebook page and beyond. The story was picked up by major news outlets like USA Today, NPR, People, and the Washington Post, to your viral sites like Bored Panda, Cheezburger.com, and hundreds of retweets and facebook shares.

The backlinks alone are incredible, to all different places but Vitamix is the big winner here with a quick response by their social marketing team, they sent three boxes which garnered them hundreds of top tier links and PR. Sometimes the best way to get links, is to do something. 

And a small PSA, don’t buy links.

https://www.facebook.com/1606875812956981/posts/2924246927886523/

OK, that’s all, folks, see you tomorrow!