THE DEFINITIVE BLOGGER OUTREACH GUIDE
Due to advances in the internet, consumers are becoming more educated about the products and services they would like to buy. Many consumers consult online sources before making a purchase, collecting information from review websites, blogs and renowned influencers in the industry. This information can make the difference between a potential buyer and an actual customer. Blogs are a great tool for businesses to educate their customers and outreach is a great way for businesses to promote their website and blog. Here are some statistics to show why you should start your Blogger outreach journey.
Book Content
Chapter 1
Fundamentals in Blogger Outreach
Whether you are completely new to blogger outreach or just looking for a quick recap on the basics, you’re in luck.
We have summarized in this handy guide all you need to know about effective Blogger Outreach.
A) There are 5 Stages in the Blogger Outreach process :
Attraction: Capture the attention of the blogger using techniques such as Initial Chemistry, Visual Appeal, Common Interest, Being the Right Fit and Reciprocation.
Ambivalence: If there are any doubts, they will be raised early on in the process. This is the phase where decisions need to be made and the ‘Desire/Passion’ concept will be considered.
Commitment: Demonstrating your commitment to collaboration with the blogger, promote and emphasise any Exclusivity Agreement.
True Intimacy: Perhaps one of the more daunting steps in the process is when you explain to the blogger what you hope to gain from the collaboration. Remain transparent about your content and be receptive to any changes that they suggest.
Proposal: This is where your article finally gets published and you can head on to discuss with the blogger if this collaboration is going to be a one-time deal or a continuous effort. Commit wholly to any agreement if it is made and ensure that you build a positive relationship with the blogger from the outset.
B) 2 forms of blogger partnerships are Earned and Paid :
EARNED: Partnerships developed through promotional activities rather than advertising.
PAID: These are partnerships where any form of publicity is bought.
C) Blogger outreach can be approached in 2 ways - Campaign and Ambassador :
CAMPAIGN: A one off activity which has the ability to generate lots of interest through multiple influencers.
AMBASSADOR: An ongoing process with multiple posts.
Author: Courtney Bishop
A five part series which describes the blogger outreach process in detail. Very informative and well worth reading!
Author: Jessica Edmondson
Ever wondered how many kinds of blogger partnerships there are? In this post by Jessica she not only writes about the type of blogger partnerships but also discusses how to start working with them as well
Author: Kristen Matthews
Kristen perfectly sums up in this post 1) Why Blogger Outreach is a necessary skill to possess and 2) 2 different approaches one can take when doing an outreach
Chapter 2
Developing your Outreach Strategy
Do you know the similarity between a successful Blogger Outreach and winning a war? Strategy. Having a good strategy in place is crucial for success.
The next section of our guide will help you develop an effective strategy to achieve the best results.
A) Determine your motive for starting a blogger outreach program
Why are you considering blogger outreach? Are you looking to build your brand, gain high quality links or develop fresh content? There are many reasons why you may want to start blogger outreach.
The first step is to figure out what you want to achieve from Blogger Outreach before proceeding to the next step.
B) Set Milestones and an End Goal
With your goals established it is time to create specific milestones, such as securing 10 links no matter their quality, followed by 10 links with 3 of them being good quality. The purpose of these milestones is not to impress but to achieve something measurable that can be used as a guide to reaching your end goal. End goals could be something as simple as owning a page with a high Page Authority (PA).
C) Start finding relevant Bloggers for your list and segregate them
It is finally time to get into the finer details of blogger outreach; creating your blogger list.
In Chapter 3: Finding the Bloggers you wish to reach out, there is a short overview and reference list which outlines the best outreach tools that can help you locate suitable bloggers to reach out to.
F) Developing an action plan to gain their attention
You’ve done your research and now it's time to gain the bloggers attention. So what can you do to gain their attention? Well at the very least you should follow their pages on the various social media platforms and then start sharing/mentioning/retweeting their materials and tagging them in it so that they know that you’ve shared their materials. Once this is done you can take the plunge and request for a collaboration. However, I personally prefer to go an extra mile and offer them some form of help without any strings attached such as informing them that they have a broken link or that their link used in one of their posts is outdated and recommend them a new link with updated content that could either be one of your materials or someone else’s post.
G) The Question
By now if have followed this strategy through, the blogger you wish to connect to should be pretty familiar with you due to your efforts in helping them.
You can refer to Chapter 4: How to run a well-oiled outreach campaign and Chapter 5: Outreach Pitch Checklist to assists you
D) Learning about your targets
Now you’ve found your bloggers, it’s time to “stalk” them. You wouldn’t look favourably on someone who approaches you for a favour but knows nothing about you! The same applies to blogger outreach. Before approaching a blogger, you should do some initial preparation such as;
E) Stay connected
Sometimes you may not receive replies from your outreach. This does not necessarily mean that you have failed in your outreach and could be attributed to a number of reasons from your post not being good enough through to the post not being in line with the requirements of the bloggers audience.
Author: Julian Sakanee
With an incredibly actionable list that helps to build your strategy, Julian has provided an super helpful infographic in his write-up that gives you a brief overview on the things you should do to complete blogger outreach like a pro.
Author: Kristen Matthews
In this post you will find 5 actionable steps that you can do right away with little hassle that will help you build your list of bloggers.
Author: Ryan O’ Connor
Do you have a game plan in mind for your outreach but are currently agonizing on how to best allocate your time for outreach? Then this post is perfect for you as Ryan helps break down the science to help you get the most results out of the efforts you put in.
Author: Henley Wing
If you are looking for inspiration to develop your workflow or feel that a challenge you are encountering seems too complicated to resolve, this page is perfect for you. A collection of 15 outreach experts have given an insight into to their end goal when performing an outreach, their workflow and challenges they wish could be automated.
Chapter 3
Finding the Bloggers you wish to reach out to
Don’t we all wish that we could find a spot where bloggers all hang out at instead of crawling through endless pages in the hope that we might strike gold hidden in one of the many pages? Below we have outlined some of the best tools recommended in the industry where you can find bloggers hanging out and making connections with each other. So why wait! Hop-on and start making your own connections today.
Mention – a tool to help you find influencers who are already talking about and supporting the niche you are in
Hey Press – a search engine that focuses on journalists
BuzzSumo – a popular tool to help source and analyse content which is being shared by influencers across the niches
Little Bird – finds the most influential influencer in the space that you are keen in through a mining process and proprietary algorithm
Inkybee – a media database created specifically for Blogger Outreach with 6 different options (e.g. Search tools, Automatic Discovery, Lists of blogs, Twitter analysis, Sector segmentation, Reports) to help you search for bloggers
Traackr – is an influencer network identification tool to help you find influencers with a huge following or influencers with that holds the keywords relevance that you are searching for using a keyword-based search
Buzzstream – helps streamline and organize the messy job of email outreach and link building
These are the 7 most common tools that many other influential influencers use for their outreach. However, this is does not mean that they only use this 7, in fact there are many other recommended tools recommended by them. For more useful tools, you can proceed to the websites provided in the reference list given below.
Author: Brittany Berger
A great article on 9 tools for bloggers across the different stages of the outreach process to help assist them.
Author: Neil Patel
Once again a brilliant post by Neil, in this post he showcases 10 different tools involved in his personal outreach program and delves into the unique features they each possess making them oh so valuable.
Author: Kristen Matthew
A slightly different take on the previous two posts, this guide provides you with some top tools to find bloggers. Kristen helps you find great bloggers in four easy steps.
Chapter 4
How to run a well-oiled outreach campaign
Email outreach is a tried and tested strategy that works brilliantly every time. That said, this means that every single one of your competitors know this strategy and are probably applying it to their campaigns too. Differentiate your business from the competition while increasing the efficiency of your outreach program and boosting the response rate in your outreach strategy.
A) Having a template
I’m sure that some of you might be thinking that outreach templates are an absolute no no and you should make sure that your outreach emails are as personalised as possible.
In a sense you’re right, but have you considered the time and resources it would take to create 100 personalized emails? Insane right!
Here are some tips on how your template should be structured:
Initial outreach email: make your intention clear and the benefit that he/she gains from this collaboration and give specifics on how and by when they can contact you if they are interested in a collaboration.
Follow-up email: Remind he/she on the details of your previous email, the benefits that can be gained from collaboration and finally end it with action steps.
For a greater and more in-depth read up you can proceed to references below.
B) Having a follow-up plan
Making a great first impression is only one part of having a well-oiled outreach program. The other part is the actual follow up itself. This should be done regardless whether the blogger who you are reaching out to you responded or not. In the section above we have already covered what your follow-up template should include. In this section I will be introducing 3 fantastic follow-up tools.
Author: Gregory Ciotti
Gregory shows us not only how to avoid the dreaded Trash Bin Outreach but also on how to get people to read your mails through 3 easy steps and making a perfect email within 5 steps.
Author: David LY Kim
Included in this write-up are 2 base templates, initial outreach and follow-up, which help to set the tone at the initial journey of your outreach. In this write-up David shows you the difference in response rate when before he used the templates and after.
Author: Tim Soulo
This write-up has made it into this guide due to its clarity in explanation that even though you should use a template for your outreach you should take note to ensure that it does not reek of being impersonal and have the feel of a template. He also clearly explains the difference in groups of influencers and your outreach should differ for each, this can be viewed as a tie-up with the post, scale-outreach-using-paretos-law, written by Ryan O'Connor.
Author: Brian K Balfour
This write-up perfectly sums up why networking is so important while outlining some of the best tips for writing a networking email, easily broken down into five simple steps.
Author: Liane Cassavoy
Now as we all now should know in blogger outreach follow up is just as important as the initial contact. This is what many authors have mentioned, we should not view blogger outreach as a business transaction but rather as an ongoing friendship. Email follow up tools are therefore essential and in this post three of the best posts are reviewed.
Chapter 5
Outreach Pitch Checklist
We’ve all sent out an email and wondered whether you pitched the email correctly. So to save you those stressful moments, outlined below are some of the best email pitching strategies that will certainly increase your email return rate.
Pre-contact
Make your presence known,Do your research
First contact
Craft an impressionable subject line
First name salutations if possible
Reference a recent post or share by them
Have a brief introduction
State how you would wish to collaborate
Ensure that there is a clear benefit to the blogger from the collaboration
Hyperlink any relevant information
Ensure that the pitch is succinct before hitting the send button
Ensure that the collaboration would be beneficial to the blogger and their audience
Post-contact
Ensure a follow-up regardless of conversion
Chapter 6
Resources
Ever struggled to find resources for blogger outreach? Below are some of the best resources from the web.
Author: Dave Snyder
As seen in the URL this page is a one stop shop for all you outreach specialists out there. It provides you with links to platforms to help connect, search engines that can be used, blogs that are accepting content, tools to help you manage and outreach and sites that help you grade and measure sites.
The Ultimate Resource Guide to Blogger Outreach and Guest Blogging
Author: Kristi Hines
This post by Kristi helps you to find networks that give you the opportunity to guest blog and expand your blogger outreach network, top tips and information on how to guest blog successfully and opportunities that you can pursue for guest blogging.
124 Places to Promote Your Travel Blog
Author: Calvin Hawkes
If you are looking at resources to get more visitor to your traveling blog, Calvin’s guide is a must read for you then. Part of the strategy to achieving this is to have a content distribution plan. In the blog Calvin will show you 124 great places to share and distribute your content.
3 Ways to Connect With Influencers that Will Grow Your Business
Author: Billy Bones
What impresses me is the shift of paradigm in doing outreach, outreach is all about building a rewarding relationship. As Billy put it "It's a two-way street" and have to be a win/ win relationship; providing mutual advantages .....
Chapter 7
Case Studies
The amazing case studies below will show you how different brands across different industries have successfully used blogger outreach to bring real benefits to their business.
Author: Ann Smarty
Ann writes about how guest blogging has helped 8 brands like Intel, Xbox, Autodesk, Salesforce etc. What I found particularly helpful is she ends each example with a “What did they do right” summary – a real time saver so those who may not have time to read the entire article.
32 influencer marketing and blogger outreach case studies
Author: Dave Schneider
Dave has so helpfully gathered a collection of 32 different websites across different industries and verticals from retail to hospitality. He discusses how they develop strategies for different platforms like blog and social properties to engage influencers and help drive traffic for conversion.
