Let’s face it, in the world of online marketing, you are not going to be successful in blogger outreach by frivolous emails and asking people to share your content. If you want the quality backlinks and organic traffic that blogger outreach can provide, you have got to step up your game. Let’s look at exactly how we can dominate blogger outreach in just 5 steps. So, here we go.
What is blogger outreach? Blogger outreach is all about sharing content that other people will value. No one will want to give you a guest post if your content adds no value to them or their audience. This means you shouldn’t even be thinking about blogger outreach unless you already know you have quality content to share.
The first thing you want to do is figure out who you want to build a relationship with.
Find the right influencer
What should I look for in a blogger? The right influencer is someone who shares the same audience as you but is not your direct competitor. A direct competitor would not want to promote your content to their audience anyway. And a publisher or a blogger with a different audience than you would not want to post content that their readers would not find value in.
How do I know which bloggers are a good fit for my company? So, a big part of finding the right influencer is exploring their audiences. You need to see what kind of content they like. This will help you determine if your content is a good fit for a particular influencer, or if their audience is a good fit for you. The more influencers you find to reach out to, the better your results will be.
Start with pre-outreach
Find different ways to engage with your influencers, so that by the time you send them an email, they already know who you are. One way to do this is by commenting on their blog post and sharing them too. Social media is another great avenue for pre-outreach. You can easily engage via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn. By doing so, you are planting seeds for future relationships. Don’t worry if you don’t hear back from someone, especially if it’s a big influencer. The point of pre-outreach is just to let your targeted influencers know you exist.
Find email-addresses
Not all influencers will share their emails publicly. But, there are a few tools you can use to find this information. After acquiring the emails, you have to worry about crafting that perfect email.
Personalize outreach emails
This is the most important step of the blogger outreach process. Keep in mind that your target influencers receive tons of outreach emails every day. Your email will really have to stand out from the crowd in order to earn a response.
So, what is the best way to contact a blogger? Thanks to the pre-outreach you did will help you tailor your emails to their niche, audience and personality. Since every email should be personalised, there is no “perfect template” to follow. However, there are certain tips that you could follow:
• Start with a relevant subject line, make your intentions clear.
• Make sure you use your influencers name, make it friendly, and throw in a compliment or two. Just don’t sound desperate.
• Introduce yourself and show that you are familiar with your target influencer’s work.
• Tell them how they can benefit by sharing your work.
• Finally, proofread your messages. Grammatical errors are a huge deal-breaker. If you have them, nobody is going to want to read your blog content.
You could always go for other options like messages on Facebook and Instagram, rather than sending out emails only.
Follow-up emails
If I don’t hear back from a blogger that I want to work with, is it okay to follow up again? Yes, these are almost as important as your initial outreach emails. Follow-up emails are a great opportunity to show your influencers that you are genuinely interested in building a relationship. Send you first follow-up one day after the initial email. Tweak the original message a bit in this one. If you don’t get a response from that, send a second follow-up 2 days after the first follow-up and this time don’t craft a long one. Make it short and direct with your call to action. Still, if there is no reply, send a third and final email 4-5 days after your last follow-up. Let them know you are moving on in this one. It works more often than one might think as many people are afraid to lose something even if it’s not that concrete.
Bottom line
Digital marketing agencies follow these tips and build healthy relationships with influencers via the blogger outreach process.
