Ego bait
Ego bait is content that features or praises people or brands in your field, so they'll want to share it and link to it.
Ego bait is content built around other people: a list of the best experts in your field, an interview series, an award, a roundup of favourite blogs. The idea is simple. People like being featured, so they share the piece with their audience and often link to it.
Done well, it's a way to get noticed by the people your customers already follow. Done badly, it's flattery that nobody believes.
Common forms
Lists of people or companies worth following. Expert roundups, where you ask a dozen people one question and publish their answers. Interviews. Awards and badges for a site to display. Case studies of customers or partners.
For example, Fernhill Coffee publishes an interview each month with an independent café owner, with photos and a link to the café. The cafés share it with their customers, local food blogs pick some of them up, and a few link back to Fernhill.
What makes it work
The piece has to be worth reading for people who aren't in it. A list of "top coffee experts" picked for their follower counts is easy to spot. A list that explains why each person is worth reading, with something specific about their work, gets read and shared.
Be honest about who's included. Badges and awards that anyone can get by asking lose their value fast, and links bought or swapped this way count as link schemes under Google's spam policies.
Ego bait and AI answers
AI platforms read roundups and lists all the time, because they're a quick way to find names in a category. A well-made list on your site can be one of those pages. The bigger win is the people you feature: if they write about you in return, your name ends up on pages beyond your own, which is where the platforms tend to look.