Posted by Diana Beyer
Original article:

If you can just manage to get your brand listed, particularly one that is maintained by one of the big boys in town, you’d be golden. But how can you ever do that? All you can do is make certain your brand best it can be and then hope for the best, right?

Wrong!

Top lists are managed by people who’ve got busy schedules just like you do. It means that often they’re not aware of everybody that’s out there. And so if you want to get mentioned on the site, you’ve got to make certain that the people know you’re out there.

Towards that end, let’s look at some tips that will help you get your brand mentioned on those list sites and you can get their traffic streaming towards your site.
 

Make certain you have a great page

Most of the time, the top list people aren’t actually experts in your field. Yes, they might have done their research, but chances are they’re maintaining dozens of top list posts, each of which means paying attention to what’s going on in the market. It means they’re going to use a shorthand for deciding if a site gets to compete for their list.

First thing they’re going to look at the quality of the site. So make sure it actually doesn’t look like amateur hour. In fact, the better it looks and the better the content is, the better off you’ll be through something called the ‘halo effect’.

This effect means we don’t measure different things separately, but clump them together into an overarching measurement of what we think of a product. What’s more, the first attributes we see are going to measure disproportionately heavy. So make certain they weigh in your favor.
 

Get some testimonials and good reviews

This is the second thing most of these sites are going to be looking at. They’re not actually going to try out your product, instead, they’re going to look if other people are happy with it. They’ll look at testimonials on your site, as well as reviews on other sites they can find.  So go out of your way to make certain testimonials and the reviews as positive as they can be.  So you'll have the social proof in place. 

Okay, so far so obvious.  Now, come to the part you might not have been aware of.
 

Find the lists you want to be on

Go around on the internet and find the lists that you want to be on. Now you should have some kind of ranking system for them, where you try to figure out how much research they’ve done (the less research they’ve done the easier it will be to get on there) as well as how appealing it is to be on that list (lists that don’t get any visitors are obviously going to be less interesting).

Now, don’t just note down how you can get in touch with these people, but also note other things about their sites. What is the name of the author? What other articles did they write? Is any of them actually good?

The more information you have about a person the easier it will be to give the appearance that you’re not just some spammer trying to get on a list, but are actually genuinely interested in their brand. It will make much easier to get on their site.
 

Mention them

If you really like a list and really want to be on it, then figure out some way that you can mention them, or their content on your site. After all, back links are the currency of the internet and linking to their site will give you a powerful tool later on when you approach them, through the norm of reciprocity. The easiest way to do this, obviously, is to have a blog in which you can link to one of the articles they wrote, perhaps by letting your readers know that it was inspired by them, or by referencing them in an argument you make.
 

Write them

Now, you reach out to them. You can do this in either of two ways. You can do it all in one go, where you mention that you like what they’re doing, reference the back link you put into an article because you thought it was worth mentioning, and saying that you noticed they have a top list post. From there, suggest that your brand might be a good addition to list and they should take a look.

The alternative strategy is to get in touch, let them know you like the site and wait for them to get back to you. If they’re particularly diligent about things, they might have already made the connection and offer to put you on their list. That’s great, as now you don’t even need to ask.

If they don’t offer to put you on the list or don’t get back to you, then nothing has been lost. All you do is write them again and in this case make your suggestions (always make it a suggestion, as then you’re much more likely to be successful).
 

It’s a numbers game

Now, this won’t always work. Some people will not think your band is suitable, others will not be very responsive because they’ve moved on to other things, and others might not be maintaining their site. It doesn’t have to work every time, however.

It only has to work some of the time.

Because as your reputation grows and you get more attention from some top lists, the chance that you'll be included in other top lists will grow. 

This is in part because writers are lazy and when they’re putting together their own lists they’ll scrounge others. And in part, it’s because the lists your on will serve as social proofing for later lists that get written. So all you have to do is keep at it. Write a few lists a month and watch your reputation grow.
 

Last words

In fact, a good strategy is not to immediately approach the top lists. Instead, start out with the lower ranked lists, then as you become more confident, you can move up the scale. This way you’ll have the lower ranked lists to point to when you’re trying to make your case to the higher ranked lists, as well as having worked out the kinks in your approach on the less valuable sites so that you’ll actually have a better chance of getting mentioned on the top sites.

It’s always good, in these kinds of things, to not try to run before you can walk.