First a confession. I love the history channel and I’m a big fan of Pawn Stars.
At first I thought the premise was pretty silly. Since my preconceived notion about pawn shops was they are places where desperate people sell their prized possessions, I was struggling to make the connection to history.
However, all it took was a quiet day and a Pawn Stars marathon for me to become hooked. Each show is packed full of interesting history lessons and even the cast is surprisingly entertaining. If you haven’t watched the show then I suggest you check it out.
One thing I didn’t expect was for Pawn Stars to become an education tool for me as a content marketer.
However, once again to my surprise I was wrong.
Introducing The Shows: History Channel’s Link Friendly Content
For those of you unfamiliar, the history channel has a whole series of new shows based on three Las Vegas businesses where they tie the business to history.
The first is Pawn Stars, which as I mentioned they feature unique and interesting pieces of history such as antique arms, heirlooms of our forefathers and sports memorabilia that they teach us about and then we watch “Negotiations” between the store and the seller.
The second is American Restoration where another business “Picks” beat up antiques and they fix them up in the shop and sell them for a profit.
The third is a series called “Counting Cars” and it is a series about a company called Counts Customs where they fix up vintage and antique automobiles and turn them into something special. Always with a tie into American History.
All three shows are watchable, but this isn’t a television show review. Let’s make the Content Marketing Connection.
Inbound Linking at It’s Best, Counts Customs visits The Pawn Stars
In a recent episode the Pawn Stars are called in to look at a seller looking to get rid of his 1932 Chevy Roadster.
Shop Owners Rick and Corey head to the home of the owner to look at the car. After they take a look and can’t see anything wrong they ask the price.
The owner says, 65k. The partners look at one another and confess that they really have no idea what they are worth, but that the price may very well be fine.
“Do you mind if we call an expert to come take a look?”
The owner says no problem. After the commercial break they show Rick and Corey waiting by the car and who else shows up but Danny “The Count,” owner of Counts Customs to be the “Expert” on the ’32 Roadster.
Very subtly they talk about Danny and his shop. No mention of his show, but they immediately drive his credibility by inserting that he is the go to expert for anything with a motor.
Next commercial break and there is a spot for “Counting Cars.” Suddenly the connection is made.
Learning From How The History Channel Links Their Content
By cross pollinating the characters of the shows, they are essentially inbound linking between their shows.
In fact, it was some of the best inbound linking I have seen in traditional media.
Now as I watch the show I regularly see Danny come in to look at cars and the team from “American Restoration” act as the Pawn Shop’s partner to restore old toys, bikes and other antiques.
The shows have become chuck full of inbound links from one History Channel show to another and it is all native.
A great lesson in content marketing and how inbound links can drive your readers/viewers to additional content when done correctly.
This should leave content marketers thinking about how they create inbound link opportunities within their content that make readers click and connect to more content than what they originally came to view.
What is your inbound link strategy that ties your content together and keeps your readers clicking?
Image courtesy of History Channel. All rights reserved.
Daniel Newman is the co-founder of V3*Broadsuite and is an experienced C-level executive, serving as a strategy consultant for small and mid-sized businesses. He’s also an insight/analyst partner to four Fortune 50 enterprises and previously served as the co-founder and CEO of EC3, a hosted IT and communications services provider. Prior to that, he served as the CEO of United Visual, Inc. in Chicago Illinois.
He is a widely published writer who contributes weekly to Forbes, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post and industry publications such as Commercial Integrator, Sound & Communication and Corporate Tech Decisions. He’s also author of three best-selling business books including The New Rules of Customer Engagement, The Millennial CEO, and just recently Evolve: Marketing (^as we know it) is Doomed.
Daniel has established a reputation as a leading thinker in topics such as Social, Big Data, Cloud and Mobile. He has been named to many top influencer lists in all of these areas, including recognition by the Huffington Post as one of the 100 business and leadership accounts to follow on Twitter. He is also an adjunct professor of management at North Central College.