With paid advertising costs on the rise, an older form of digital marketing known as blogger outreach is rapidly resurging. Blogger outreach is where you post content on high traffic sites that link to yours.. with the benefit of improved brand awareness, click through traffic and when done well, high SEO value.
Read below to learn about blogger outreach best practices and how you can get started in blogger outreach today.
The above is a recent example of a site that was new and we built to 24,000 visitors a month within 30 days, using 5 blogger outreach posts and no other marketing.
Blogger Outreach Best Practices.
Blogging has traditionally remained an important part of digital marketing. However, with the changing way users respond to advertising, the strategies to leverage blogging to promote your business are now more crucial than ever. Here is why blogger outreach has become so important in 2020
Blogger outreach brand increases brand recall. A recent study has showing companies that implement a blogger outreach strategy has increased from 2% in 2016 to 18% in 2020. Brand recall for brands doing successful blogger outreach can be as much as double the amount as for brand who do not invest in this form of marketing
Blogger outreach brings in ready buyers to your site. Capture audiences while they are reading topics relevant to your product or service offering. Guest posts that have links to your site enable users to click right through and purchase.
Blogger outreach when done well has an enormous SEO impact. Search engines love natural authority links that point to your site. Its one of their top 2 ranking indicators. We see sites rank to the top of search engines using blogger outreach alone.
Blogger Outreach Campaigns Lets You Access Exclusive Authority Blogs
Blogger outreach campaigns are essentially businesses or companies seeking exposure for a product or service, by leveraging influencers who have established a substantial following. These brands ask influencers to write about their brand in exchange for free access to the product or service.
Sometimes, money exchanges hands depending upon the relationship a company has with the blogger and what the blogger demands.
Many companies outsource their SEO strategy and outreach work to agencies that have more vast and varied networks.
These agencies do all the work, including creating content, having it published, and maintaining relations with an influencer, allowing you to focus on your brand and operations.
Blogger outreach campaigns make sense for the primary reason that there are very few bloggers or influencers out there that will turn down a free product and service.
At the same time, they are less likely to write a negative review because most influencers don’t want to burn a bridge that was just established. This includes those influencers who have a disclaimer saying that, “I was furnished with the free product, but all opinions and comments are my own.”
An influencer would give a negative review to products and services that are truly sub-standard and of poor quality.
There are many experts who are considered an authority in their niche to write neutral or overwhelmingly positive review in return for free products and services.
Now, it is important to understand that this fact doesn’t say anything about the actual quality of your product or service. Blogger outreach program just makes it easier for you to access exclusive reviews from influencers.
Another thing to consider is something called a link scheme. Google frowns upon the outright exchange of dollars, products, or services in return for a link. Your blogger outreach program may become a failure if you require the bloggers to include a non-no-follow link.
It is best to look at blogger outreach campaigns as something that can give you the ‘in’ with influencers and help you gain enough exposure to result in natural links. See more here about best practices and best opening emails.
How to Make the Most of Your Blogger Outreach Campaign
While blogger outreach program may seem pretty straightforward, there is in fact a lot of planning required to make it a success.
The smallest mistake, like picking up the wrong writer can create troubles for your brand. This is especially true in 2020 where search engines have become more ‘user oriented’.
You need to make sure you find the right people who create the right content to influence your targeted audience. Here are some of the best blogger outreach practices that will make your campaign stand out in 2020.
1. Research the Writer
You can ask a writer what they do and take them for their word, or do a little research and find out for yourself.
In fact, unless you study the writer and get an in-depth understanding of what they cover and what interests their followers, you are probably wasting your time.
For instance, if you are marketing healthy food products, like a protein bar, then don’t just reach out to food bloggers in general. Look for niche bloggers who write about healthy eating or fitness food bloggers who may have a better chance at reaching out to the intended target audience.
You can do this by individually checking out blog sites and reading a few content pieces. Summarize those aspects of the content that equate with your brand and product.
You can simplify this process by contacting one of many agencies that represent bloggers and outsource the whole thing, or you could contact the bloggers in a more automated fashion.
2. Keep the Emails Simple
You need to keep the messages simple and concise. Nobody has the time to read through information overload.
Keep it succinct while giving them what they are looking for. Let them know outright that you are interested in having them review your product and what’s in it for them. See our guide with templates on best opening emails for blogger outreach.
Make sure you get to the main takeaway by the second or the third line. Pay attention to the subject line at the same time. Let it give the influencer a taste for what they are going to get from an outreach relationship between the two of you.
Be creative at the same time. If you have a truly unique product or prospect, then you know the influencer will be hooked. They need fresh content for their readers as much as you need their readers to be aware of your brand.
Don’t worry even if you have something that has been done before. Just look for unique selling propositions, explain how your brand is different, and surround it with content initiative that is both unique and useful.
3. Be Passionate and Build Trust
Make sure your enthusiasm comes through your pitching email. Emotional pitches are great because they help build trust with the writer.
However, this is only possible if you are passionate about your product. It is best to work with an agency if you are not too sure about your product. Agencies also help build trust quicker since they already have an existing relationship with the blogger. See more here about the benefits of an agency vs DIY blogger outreach.
If you budget doesn’t allow for outsourcing, then look for mutual contacts in your network who can reach out to the influencer on your behalf.
Another approach is to really work hard to get the influencer to notice you. Write well-thought and insightful comments on their blogs and articles. You can follow them on twitter as well.
Summary Of Blogger Outreach Best Practices
To do blogger outreach correctly takes time and know how. The first step is creating high quality content that is shareworthy. This makes it easy to convince sites to post content. For maximum SEO value try to get these sites to then link to yours – preferably with a do follow link.
Blogger outreach is important in 2020 for a number of reasons, primary being, getting other influencers to take notice of your brand and have their followers become potential customers. However, to do a blogger outreach right, you need to take out time and plan ahead.
Having quality content entices blog owners who write on topics relevant to your site, aids readers of their blogs to learn more and to understand your brand and product offering and if done well will result greater visibility, more traffic and ultimately more sales.
Broadcasting the same message to your entire audience (repeatedly) is no longer an effective marketing strategy.
It is important that you take into account the critical mass achieved by social media, and place focus on building relationships among other things in your social media marketing strategy.
One of the best ways you can build relationships is by reaching out to other authorities and experts in your niche or industry.
You may pursue social media marketing for more fan following or ‘friends’, but it is a given, that they may never really convert. Most people opt for social media marketing just for a traffic boost, not understanding that it has the potential to provide so much more.
Blogger Outreach is the New Face of Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is a fantastic means to build your authority and possibly your search engine rankings.
For a long time now, social influence has been used to affect the links to a website. And with the latest 2020 Google update, links have become the currency of the web. However, the fundamental landscape of using social media to match purpose has changed.
Earlier, emails requesting to exchange links with some other site that had a similar purpose, idea, or goal were common.
After 2010, these emails have dwindled down to a major extent because of each year bringing a more advanced Google AI.
However, even today, certain agencies, which are too slow to adopt the recent trend changes, continue sending these emails, in the hopes that something might come out of these social media exchanges. These tactics no longer work because of the changing social media landscape.
That said, it is important that you understand that social media marketing is not truly dead. Previously, people who sent out mass link exchange emails without any targeting in mind were regarded as ‘social media experts’.
These so-called ‘experts’ created underground groups where the focus was on buying fans and followers. People on these groups would beg others to tweet or vote upon their content for visibility purposes because they thought that this way they would be able to gain backlinks.
However, over time search engines caught up to the fact that the same people were upvoting each other and liking posts. These practices became less practical.
You need to focus on having your social influence diversified if you want your social media marketing campaign to be a stellar success.
This means you need to look beyond the same 5 people tweeting (and retweeting) about your brand, or having the same dozen followers hitting like on your post time and again.
Blogger outreach is the new face of social media and helps you break free of this single-minded approach. It allows you to adopt a single tactic that would work for all your businesses and products under the same umbrella (but, in a different way for each of them).