The good news is that the big newspaper you’ve been pitching stories to for months has finally decided to feature your content.

The bad news is that you didn’t get a link. Yes, your brand was mentioned. Yes, the content was credited back to your client. But the sad truth is that your precious link is nowhere to be found.

If you build links primarily through content, you probably have felt the pain of an unlinked brand mention many times before.

At this point, most of us will move on and be grateful that at least they credited the content properly.

“That’s okay, I’m sure more sites will pick it up and some of them might link back to our site.”

“Well, we didn’t get the link but this is will be great for brand awareness.”

“It’s all good, I read somewhere that brand mentions may have some impact on how Google evaluates website authority.”

Here’s the deal:

If you’re reading this article, then chances are you’re producing and promoting content with the one goal of getting links.

You don’t do this thing day-in-day-out just to build brand awareness or in the hopes that perhaps that unlinked brand mention will trigger lots of links someday.

So don’t give up so easily.

In this article, we’ll put a twist to a quintessential link building technique to help you convert those brand mentions into links, and we’ll discuss things you can do to minimise the chances of journalists sharing your content without linking back to your site.