There’s fitness advice for self-professed nerds. A place for people who want to learn a language fluently in 3 months. Moms that like to save money.

What does this mean for marketers and PR pros that want to include blogger outreach in their efforts? You need to be highly customized, and the only way to do that effectively is by completing in-depth research before you pitch.

At PR 20/20, we recently pitched a client’s customer case study to a handful of bloggers in the niche space of 3D CAD (computer-aided design) software. The story was picked up by several blogs as self-submitted guest posts, resulting in positive coverage of the company and deeper relationships with the important voices in their industry.

The experience holds several lessons for anyone reaching out to bloggers.

Find (the Right) Bloggers

Our client, 3Dconnexion, makes 3D mice, tools specifically designed make 2D and 3D CAD modeling easier and more comfortable.

A 3Dconnexion customer, Duratec Ltd, started using 3D mice in their custom bike frame design shop, and subsequently speed up their operations and become more efficient—a story we wanted to share with the industry.

Tools like Twitter search, Google News alerts, RSS reader Feedly, and relationships 3Dconnexion has built over the years have given us a solid database of target media and bloggers, and sifting through that asset helped us identify ideal bloggers for this particular story.

Get to Know Your Bloggers

You’re pitching to a blogger because they’re popular and trusted by a specific audience. They didn’t get that way by switching up their formula for success daily. Don’t expect them to change for you. Instead, tailor your content and outreach to them.

How? By reading their blog. A lot. Pull out topics and trends they like to write about. Note their tone, as well as likes and dislikes. Find out anything you can about the blogger’s style and interests to help you craft a highly relevant pitch.

Before pitching the Duratec case study, we re-read the target blogs, noting recent content and tone. Some tend to cover more business-like content, so for them we highlighted Duratec’s increases in productivity. Other blogs publish lighter content, so we talked up how Duratec’s design team built a 3D model of a flying bicycle in their free time using 3Dconnexion mice.

Develop Multiple Hooks and Angles

As the stories about productivity and the flying bicycle show, we had multiple story angles ready to pique bloggers’ interest.

Learn everything you can about your story. This is where many run into trouble. It’s tempting to shotgun a standard press release to dozens of email addresses. But it doesn’t produce results.

Your goal isn’t to have one great story to tell bloggers. It’s to have a grab bag of interesting stories and anecdotes about a client, company, etc. that you can mix and match into great pitches as needed.

Look at your story in a new light and dig deeper, supplementing with more research if necessary. For instance, a hard business story may have elements that, when pulled out, could turn into lighter stories that cater to a different subset of blogs. Or, secondary details in a story or press release can often be fleshed out into their own stories.

Duratec’s flying bike design has no bearing on their business, but it’s fascinating and fun. A blog that publishes fascinating and fun content relevant to the CAD audience is far more interested in the flying bike than in Duratec’s big productivity gains.

Build and Maintain Relationships

The pitch process isn’t a one-and-done email blast. Cultivating relationships with bloggers takes time, and once formed, those relationships should be maintained.

Elsewhere on the GroupHigh blog, Kristen Matthews offers important lessons on the value of a two-sided relationship with bloggers. Think often about what you can do for a blogger. If you do, they’ll think of you when the time comes.

And, most importantly, reach out to them when you don’t need anything.

Don’t Forget the Writing

If you score guest posts on one or more blogs, your work isn’t done. Be sure to ask about the little things, too, like:

• What formatting does each blogger prefer?
• Do they have a style guide or preferred grammar and sourcing conventions?
• Does the blogger have a word limit on posts? Are there standards governing pictures and links?
• How do they prefer document and photo delivery?

Basically, ask about anything that will make the blogger’s life easier. And, be sure to tailor each guest post to be unique for that blog. This is about starting and maintaining a relationship. They’ll appreciate the little things you do to streamline the process, and keep things relevant.

What are your best tips for successful blogger outreach?

About This Author: Mike Kaput is a hybrid marketer and editorial consultant at PR 20/20. You can find him on Twitter (@MikeKaput).

I’d rather not call the initial email the pitch. Let’s call it the friendly introductory email or the FIE. The FIE should be non-abrasive, short, to the point and clearly explain why you’re reaching out and why the two of you are a good fit to work together.

Keep in mind that many bloggers get a ton of these FIE emails a day. However, from what I’ve heard, a lot of these emails are poorly written and one sided. So, if you’re avoiding the “I need you to do something for me,” tactic, you’re ahead of the game already. However, in order not to further bore bloggers by adding a dry FIE in their inbox, try one of these 5 tactics to make your pitches more creative and stand out!

Send them something free

Ford gave away cars for content. Omaha steaks sends steaks to bbq bloggers. Fashion brands send clothing to fashion writers. Restaurants send e-gift cards to local bloggers. Ray Bans sent company SWAG to influencers. You may not have something like a car or steak to give away but everyone has something offer, what is it?

It’s all about the subject line

Since the days are gone where you could spray your letter with perfume before sending it or sticking it in a cool envelope before you dropped it off, the subject line is where it’s at. It’s the new cool envelope.

What creative subject line can you jazz up your FIE with? Something exciting, a little more out of the norm than hi… Here are a few I’ve tried and have gotten responses from:

We Should Collaborate

Guess What!?

Where Have You Been All My Life!? (My personal favorite)

You get the drift and obviously these are crafted based on what you know about the blogger from reading their blog.

 Offer something bold

Since you’ve spent a chunk of time actually reading through the blog, you should have a feel for the blogger’s personality. Use that!

Maybe they would like a joke. Maybe they’d like your viewpoint on a point they made in a post. Or maybe they’d simply like you to comment on a baby picture they posted of their child. Perhaps you could share a personal anecdote of something that correlates with the topic of their blog.

Write like a human

Don’t be afraid to let your personality to shine through. We all have a personality (I think) so show it off. It’s great to offer a brief personal story when it relates to the topic at hand.

Personalize

Personalization of your FIE can go a long way. Start by writing each one individually instead of copying and pasting a cookie cutter email.

Through post references you can assure the blogger that you’ve actually read through their blog. Offer them compliments on pieces that you really like. And most importantly, spend the time to find their first names.

What tactics would you like to add when it comes to creating an awesome FIE?

For simplicity’s sake, I’ve reduced the traditional marketing funnel to three stages: brand recognition, pushing leads to clients and keeping customers happy.

Brand Recognition

The rim and widest area of the funnel because this is where we aim most of our content.

• Types of content: Blog posts, white papers, Infographics, SlideShare presentations.
• Tactics: Make it authoritative on a topic that coincides with your brand. Do more with less. Blogger outreach to extend your network.
• Leveraging Social Media: Hashtags, youtube videos, any engaging content should be spread across many channels.

Pushing Leads to Clients/Consumers

The people who fall in to this are of your funnel have jumped in to the rim and are considering your brand. However, often times many need that push from the one yard line to the purchasing goal.

• Types of content: Case studies, reports, consumer testimonials, eBooks, informative blog posts.
• Tactics: To educate non-abrasively on not only your company but also the field your company falls in to. This is the part of the funnel where you can use your authoritative and educational writing voice.
• Leveraging Social Media: Share company culture, retweet positive mentions that others make of you, share useful resources

Keeping Customers Happy

This is the narrowest stage of the funnel, where leads have already been converted to customers and the only way they’ll fall out of your funnel is if they become unhappy with your brand. This is also where you will find some of your brand’s loudest advocates.

• Types of content: Depending on the nature of your business a best practices guide is always great, weekly emails geared toward something useful to the consumer, blog content geared toward consumer’s interests.
• Tactics: Ask for and use their input. Make your customers feel like part of your brand and decision making process. This way they will take ownership and pride.
• Leveraging Social Media: Share your customer’s content and retweet their words, ask them for their input about company decisions.  Tune in to your social mentions and praise or give kickbacks to those who are actively mentioning your brand and they’ll keep doing it.

Putting the Final Details on Your Strategy

• Judging by the fact that all three stages include blog posts, your blog is arguable the most important part of your content strategy.

• Notice how none of the stages include a “buy now” tactic. Your content marketing strategy should come off as you would come off mingling at a cocktail party. You engage the people around you, prompt them to want to learn more and give them valuable information and resources. Something to always keep in mind: a “buy now” prompt equates to you at a cocktail party saying “like me, please.” Seems a little desperate doesn’t it?

• While none of the stages have overly forward or self-promotional components to them, all of the stages should be full of “sharable content.” It’s the influential consumer that can really move your brand forward and you should make it easy for them to do so. Make sure that your blog includes share buttons, put some thought in to your titles, don’t write content for content’s sake and never publish something you’ve regurgitated from elsewhere. If you refuse to create nothing but epic content, your words will be eagerly shared and potential consumers and loyal consumers will keep coming back for more.

Are you using content for every stage in the funnel? If so, share a tip below! If not, feel free to reach out and ask for advice in the comments below or by emailing me at Kristen@GroupHigh.com

Content marketing is one of those phrases that gets tossed around quite a bit, but what does it actually mean?

I think it’s different for each person and business, but to me, a content marketer, it means creating quality blog posts, writing thoughtful and helpful e-books, as well as linking to and promoting other individuals’ or companies’ content that I think my viewers would find valuable. It is using the great content I write to spread a positive message that aligns with my company’s message.

I’ve used a variety of content marketing tactics but the two I’ve had the most success with have been running a company blog and writing E-books for lead generation. Hopefully you can implement at least one of these tactics in to your own strategy!

Leveraging Our Company Blog

Take for example my experience with the Big Ideas Blog.  As one of two blogs Infusionsoft maintains, the Big Ideas Blog is a sales and marketing blog that publishes at least twice per day with a variety of article topics, videos and infographics that share pertinent marketing and sales strategy or statistics with our readers who are primarily small business owners and marketers. We relay information in an appealing and conversational way that makes it easy to digest for virtually everyone who reads our content.

What keeps our readership on the rise each month is not just the variety of topics we cover, but the variety of guest blog posts that we publish. Not to mention the fact that we keep a pretty significant amount of distance from the Infusionsoft brand. By this I mean that we don’t throw sales pitches into each post or have calls to action for trying out a demo of our software.

Sure, we like to leverage our e-books through calls to action at the close of the post, but that is as much branding as you’ll get from us.  This is a far more subtle approach to marketing than most company-run blogs, but it works for us because our visitors keep coming back for more.

Using Guest Bloggers

Our guest blogger program allows small business and marketing experts contribute blog posts on topics that will resonate with our readers focused around small business marketing tips and strategy to everyday business issues. It becomes a great opportunity for writers to promote their name, tout their knowledge base and share the link with their social networks. We have had a great response since implementing the guest blogger program and anticipate continued enthusiasm.

E-Books Are a Win-Win

Something we discovered along the way of creating so much valuable content for the Big Ideas Blog was that you can create e-books relatively easily from your published blog posts.  E-books are great lead magnets for virtually every company.

The most straightforward way to create an e-book from blog posts is to assemble three or four related blog posts, edit them so that they are in a logical order and they transition smoothly from one post to the next. Add a little style, play with colors and, perhaps, add some images or graphs that build on your speaking points. The easier it is for people to read your e-book, the more information they will be able to retain.

Whatever your definition of content marketing, be sure it includes putting out the highest quality, most relevant information possible.  Readers, prospects and new visitors will appreciate your ability to create and curate content that speaks to them, and they’ll show you by expressing interest in your company.

What content marketing tactics have been the most successful in your own strategy? 

Think about influence and an individual’s reach on a spectrum. All the way on the left end of the spectrum are your pure influencers. They are the people like your mom, your best friend or your significant other who are your biggest fans. Their passion comes out when talking about you which leads to them holding an influential sway over those who they talk about you to. However, they often don’t have much reach so this influence doesn’t often go very far.

All the way on the right end of the spectrum are the individuals who have a lot of reach. They are people like celebrities who, with one tweet, can spread awareness of your brand to millions of people. However, their audience isn’t there to learn about your brand and their high reach doesn’t usually lead to action.

The most powerful tactic for your brand is to target and align with those who fall right in the middle of the spectrum—the mid-level influencer—who has the perfect balance of influence and reach. Mid-level influencers are primarily made up of bloggers, active social media users and your brand’s biggest fans.

More and more brands are realizing the power of the mid-level influencer and have seen success in reaching out to them and forming a relationship. From Proctor and Gamble sending influential moms free household goods in hopes for a mention to American Apparel using fashion bloggers as models for one of their catalogues —big brands are getting the “middle people” to talk and its working.

Are you ready to engage with mid-level influencers for your brand? Here are 5 ways to make it happen.

Be a Twitter Creeper

A mid-level influencer for your brand actively engages in topics that pertain to your brand. By using a social media monitoring platform (I use HootSuite) you can not only identify mentions of your brand but also tune in to conversations surrounding all of the keywords you associate with your brand.

For example, I follow blogger outreach and influencer marketing hashtags which allows me to join in the conversations and posts that go up using these tags. By doing so, I’ve gotten post ideas and then shared them using these hash tags which has attracted a few influencers to me and they’ve shared my words with their own networks.

 Blogger Outreach

It’s arguable that bloggers are the strongest spoke in the wheel of influencers. Technorati put out this research stating that 86% of influencers are bloggers. BlogHer’s research shows that 81% of the online U.S. population trusts information and advice they get from bloggers.

M/C/C used blogger outreach to harness the power of “mom bloggers,” one of the most sought after groups of mid-level influencers to grow Chuck E. Cheese’s social media presence and promote their gluten-free pizza. In fact, a few campaigns were done purely through social media and blog posts by the mom blogs that Chuck E. Cheese’s formed relationships with.

One of many bonuses that comes with blogger relationships is that bloggers tend to almost always also be on a variety of other social media outlets in order to promote their blog to success. Thus, by targeting bloggers, marketers are also often targeting active tweeters and Facebook posters.

Locating blogs that are a good fit for your brand can pose as a challenge. While the first priority should be finding blogs that are a very specific contextual fit, locating different social media followers and SEO metrics can be timely. You’ll find that picking a blogger outreach tool like GroupHigh is worth its cost in time saved!

Enlist Your Customers

Happy customers are some of your most influential brand advocates. Part of a good content marketing strategy includes engaging with current customers with surveys and other forms of customer feedback. So, you should be able to easily identify a good list of customers who you can empower as brand advocates. Here are some ways to take their customer happiness a step farther and propel your content marketing strategy forward:

• If the fit is there, ask them to co-create content with you.
• Ask them to be part of a case study about how they use your brand.
• Empower with great content so that they will want to share it with their own networks. This can be through information you give them or a post that you write.
• Incentivize them to create their own content that mentions your brand. Consumers trust posts from actual users of a product or a service way more than they trust posts from the brand itself.

Whenever I think about companies using their customers to propel their brand, Starbucks always comes to mind. They have a program called “My Starbucks Idea” where customers share their ideas and vote on the ideas they like. Starbucks then implements popular customer generated ideas. This is a win-win because these customers are going to become advocates now that they feel part of the brand and Starbucks gets free ideas!

Harness Advocacy

Ford is running an interesting promotion that harnesses advocacy for their brand. Their Fiesta Movement program is enlisting fans to apply and the 100 chosen ones will get to drive their 2014 Fiesta before the rest of the world. These “chosen ones” are expected to generate a ton of content about their experience with the car. I have a feeling they are going to see good results.

Besides running promotions like Ford’s, it’s crucial to keep the advocates you already have happy so they keep the company love coming. Acknowledge their work on social media or even a blog post.

I’ve seen companies do anything from sending free items to hosting VIP events for their top advocates. My company has given free previews of upcoming features of our software. This has gone over phenomenally and makes these customers feel like they are part of the team. Not to mention their feedback is valuable to the evolution and success of our product.

Cater to the Narcissism that is Social Media

Part of the reason that social media has become so huge is that it serves as an ego boost. Who doesn’t like to see their words retweeted, shared, liked, pinned, linked to or plus oned? By stroking a few egos, you may see more engagement and positive mentions of your brand.

ModCloth’s social media team does a great job of encouraging and sharing fan generated content. Their customers often tweet pictures of themselves in ModCloth’s clothing and the social media team tweets back compliments. This encourages a lot of social sharing of their fashion looks.

Don’t forget that social media users and bloggers love to be one of the first people to share some awesome news or a cool new product in their niche. Use this to your advantage and empower them with inside information, a preview of something new about your company, etc. that you make available only to a select few influencers.

Twitter creeping, blogger outreach, keeping customers happy, empowering advocates and constantly adjusting social media strategies has my week filled to the brim. But, it works.

Do you have any additional strategies when it comes to engaging and targeting the mid-level influencer for your brand?

Though I can’t offer you a magic button that finds and makes contact with all of the perfect bloggers for your campaign, I can offer you some tools and tips that can streamline the process. As a result you will find yourself with more time on your hands and you may realize that organization is something you can grasp after all….

1. Outline your ideal blogger so you know exactly what they look like and you can move on from the bloggers who aren’t a good fit. Here are the categories I use for my outline:                                                                                                                                                                

• Genre: Examples include fashion, food, marketing, mommy blogs
• Niche: Examples include leather boots, vegetarian, blogger outreach and arts and crafts for kids.
• Reach: Determine which social media and SEO stats work best for your campaign such as twitter followers, MOZrank and traffic data. Set a minimum for each of these.

Write your outline on a sticky note and stick it to your monitor so you don’t veer off track. Reaching out to the bloggers who are the right fit ensures that you aren’t wasting your time. Plus, bloggers who are a contextual fit are going to be more willing to work with you. Thus you can contact less people but get a higher response rate.

2. Develop your list building strategy. Your lists of bloggers steers your campaign and sets it up for success or failure. No pressure. Here is a really strong 4 step strategy developed by GroupHigh’s CEO when it comes to building your lists of bloggers.

3. Invest in a blogger outreach tool. It’s worth the money spent in time saved. The number one piece of feedback I hear from GroupHigh users is how much time the tool saves them. Obviously I’m going to be partial to GroupHigh so Google “blogger outreach tools” so that you can check out others and find the best fit for you.

From earlier happy hours to more time to create posts for your company blog, I think you’ll find the extra time on your hands refreshing.

4. Create a spreadsheet to keep track of bloggers you reached out to.  Here are some necessary columns:

• Every blog you reach out to
• Bloggers first name
• Bloggers contact info
• If they accepted or declined your pitch
• The URLl to your post or mention
• The amount of traffic that post gets back to your site (other relevant stats in this realm such as bounce rate and new traffic)
• The amount of social media shares that post gets

Tracking results not only allows you to measure your campaign but let’s you know what worked and what didn’t for future campaigns. Not to mention that you will have all of the bloggers in one sheet that you’ve worked with and you can contact them again for future campaigns.

5. The pitch. While of course the pitch should be customized and tailored to each individual blogger. The “meat” of the pitch can be the same for each email. This is the middle of the pitch where you explain why you are contacting the blogger and what you can offer them. So, don’t feel guilty if this part is pre-written. But shhh, you didn’t hear that from me!

What tips do you have to share to streamline and organize your blogger outreach campaigns? 

What is worse than taking one of your company’s most strategic marketing tactics and failing in the execution? Well actually, there are quite a few things that can be worse but looking like an idiot is pretty high up there, isn’t it?

Blogger outreach, depending on how you go about it, can either push your company’s success forward or leave you in a standstill. And in today’s fast paced world of digital marketing, the last thing you want to do is stand still.

Here are some “tactics” to ditch when it comes to your blogger outreach campaigns. They’re little tidbits that I’ve heard from both the bloggers you’re reaching out to as well as fellow PR professionals and marketers.

For each of the following, ask yourself if you are currently using these strategies in your own outreach efforts. If you are, it’s in your best interest to ditch them immediately.

Sending Press Releases

I’ve heard rumors that bloggers are creating a war on press releases…

What this means for your campaign—you don’t want to pitch a blogger like you would a traditional journalist. Unlike journalists, most bloggers don’t blog as a career, they have another full time job. Thus they have very limited time and don’t want to spend it dealing with the press releases that you’ve sent to 50 other bloggers.

Speaking of those 50 other bloggers, they want be sent original content and personalized emails. Not press releases.

Ignoring the Little People

When you are scouting for bloggers, look for the ones who are a contextual fit for your brand. If they are good writers, their blogs look well-kept and there is clearly at least some engagement going on in the blog, reach out to them despite their lack in followers!

Don’t forget, baby bloggers grow up to be big bloggers and you can never have too many people with an engaged audience on your side.

Using a Database of Bloggers

The wrong blogger outreach tool could really stifle your efforts to form awesome relationships with bloggers.

For example, if you are using a database of bloggers, you are reaching out to the same bloggers that everyone else in your niche is contacting. From annoying bloggers in the database to having to deal with too much competition to get their attention, a database very well may cripple your efforts.

If you want to be able to have access to the entire blogosphere, check out GroupHigh’s customizable search function. Or even use a Google blog search which is more time consuming than a database but at least you may not be reaching out to the same bloggers that everyone else is.

Treating Bloggers as One Night Stands

Maintain your relationships with bloggers just like you do your real life relationships. And if you’re not maintaining your real life relationships, well, that may be your problem.

Anyway, keeping in communication even after you’ve gotten your post or mention will pretty much ensure that those bloggers will work with you again in future campaigns.

Sending Cookie Cutter Pitches

Refrain from sending cookie cutter pitches. The key to blogger outreach success is to let the blogger know that you picked them out for a specific reason and that your email was written only for them.

• Find and use their first name
• Reference a specific post or a topic they write a lot about
• Tell them something you like about their blog (no, you can’t just say “I like your blog.”)

Dropping the Ball on Actually Reading the Blog

In order to personalize your email to bloggers, you have to actually read the blog, not just the tags.

This not only aids in personalization but you’ll also find out if you’re reaching out to the right bloggers. For example, you may be doing a campaign for your organic bread client. By reading through food blogs, you’ll be able to eliminate the ones who only write about gluten free products. How embarrassing would that be to offer a gluten free blogger bread!?

Forgetting the Value of a Two Sided Relationship

When you reach out to bloggers, ask yourself what you can offer the blogger and include that in your email.

From exclusive content to a well written guest post to a product or gift certificate from your company, offer the blogger something that makes it apparent that they will get something out of working with you.

What blogger outreach tips have you had to get rid of to clean up your strategy in the past? Cheers to a good discussion in the comments below!

Let’s face it, organization can be boring but it’s the backbone to every task we set out to conquer. When it comes to blogger outreach, your key organizational component is creating your list of ideal bloggers before you reach out to them.

But when it comes to actually building the list, many marketers and PR professionals are groping in the dark. So, I’m here to share a plan of attack that has been successful for me and my clients. It’s a really logical four step process broken down in to these parts for each campaign:

• The initial search where you will find a large amount of bloggers who are a contextual fit with your campaign that you will narrow down from in the next 3 steps.
• 1^st list which includes only bloggers who have mentioned your brand
• 2^nd list which includes bloggers who have mentioned your competition
• 3^rd list includes bloggers who have written about the niche your brand falls in to

Step 1: The Genre Search to Uncover a Big Pool

Your initial search for bloggers is going to uncover a pool of writers who fit in to a genre that you give your campaign. No, it’s not a good idea to just reach out to the thousands of blogs in your genre. You will want to get specific and only reach out to blogs who are a good fit. This will save you time and give you better response rates, I promise!

For each of the three lists that you are going to create, you are going to refine your search from the pool in different ways.

Many of us work best with examples so here is mine to illustrate how to construct your three lists: I’m doing blogger outreach for my home décor client. They want me to find and establish a relationship with bloggers who will talk about their new line of eco friendly décor. Thus my genre will be interior design and home décor blogs.

If you are a GroupHigh user, the easiest way to search for a mega pool of bloggers by genre in our search function is to use every keyword relevant to that genre.

If you’re not a GroupHigh user, Google blog search can allow you to find blogs by genre.

Step 2: Build Your First List

Once you have a pool of bloggers it’s time to narrow down and make your first list. You’re going to search for posts that have mentioned your brand. Again if you’re a GroupHigh user, you can do this in the post content filter.

The logic: It’s going to be easiest to get mentions from bloggers who’ve proven their knowledge and like for your brand. This list is going to be the most successful of your three lists and it’s great to start off on the right foot.

To create a list of blogs that have mentioned your brand the manual way:

• Google Search for your brand’s name
• With social media monitoring you can try to trace Twitter handles who have tweeted about you back to the tweeters blog because everyone shares their own blog posts. From the blog you can often find contact information. Moral of the story: monitor your tweets!
• IceRocket allows you to enter in your company’s name and search for blogs (as well as other social media outlets) that have mentioned your brand. This way you can contact those blogs for your campaign.

If you are a GroupHigh user, type your own brand’s name in to the post content filter of your search results.

Reaching Out: When you reach out to them make sure reference their post about your brand as your reasoning for reaching out. Thank them for the shout out and tell them you’d like to establish a relationship with them.

Step 3: The Second List

After you’ve reached out to your first list, it’s time to start the search process all over again. It’s going to be identical to the one that I outlined above but you’re going to use your competitor(s) names instead of your own brand or client’s brand.

The logic: By searching for mentions of your competitor you are finding bloggers that are showing knowledge of the space your brand falls in to. It’s also a really smart strategy to expose an audience to your brand who has been exposed to your competitor’s brand.

Reaching Out: Reaching out to these bloggers will be slightly different. Instead of saying that you are writing because they mentioned competitor xyz, I recommend saying that you’ve read posts on something topic specific and you think the two of you are a great fit to work together. For example I would write “hey I’ve seen you have posted about ecofriendly décor before and I would love to introduce my line to you…”

Step 4: The Third List

As if you haven’t been working long and hard enough on your campaign, it’s time to create another list. This one is going to be niche specific. You are going to go into your genre pool of blogs and refine your search by a niche or two that makes that blog a snug contextual fit to your campaign.

Springing off of my example, I would go in to my pool of home décor blogs and determine that a good niche for my campaign is ecofriendly or organic décor.

The Logic: These bloggers are writing about the space your brand falls in to so the context is there. The reason why this step is last is because it’s probably going to be your longest and most time consuming list. The earlier list, especially the one with your brand’s mentions, will yield your best response rates so by the time you are at your third list, you are seeing some mentions and results of your work which will fuel this longer campaign.

If you’re a GroupHigh user, you will type your niche words in to the post content filter to show blogs that have written about these specifics before.

If you’re not a GroupHigh user, this step can be time consuming but can be done. You have to read through the blog (maybe just by titles) to get a feel for whether or not that blogger is a good fit by niche.

Reaching Out: When reaching out to the bloggers in the third list, reference one of their posts that makes it apparent that the two of you are a good fit. Stroke their ego and tell them something you liked about their post!

Extra Filtering

Depending on your genre and niche, you may yield a high amount of search results. Using my example, I uncovered 2,800 blogs in the home décor genre that had posted about either ecofriendly home décor or organic home décor. This is way too many blogs to reach out to so I would refine my list by posting tactics, MozRank, followers, etc.

I may want my campaign to be visually driven and I want to work with authoritative bloggers. I could require my bloggers to be on Pinterest and have a minimum MozRank of 5 bringing me down to 287 blogs—a much more reasonable number!

Tips for All Lists and Outreach Tool Users

• Nurture your relationships—blogger outreach is no one night stand. Who knows when that blogger may be useful for another campaign!?
• Personalize all of your interactions, i.e. use first names and refrain from using cookie cutter pitches.
• Some research shows that “mid level” bloggers are just as effective as famous bloggers because they have the time to nurture their relationships which creates stronger audience loyalty leading to their mentions causing more action than just awareness.
• Above all, use judgment. If a blog is new but has really good content, you might want to get your foot in the door. Baby bloggers grow up to be big bloggers….

What are some strategies you use when determining whether or not a blogger will go on to your list of who to reach out to? 

When your company is looking to pitch a blog with a guest post or review request, you probably don’t want to pitch blogs blindly. You will want to do some research to make sure that it is a quality blog that has an audience you want to reach. The following are the most important things to research before pitching a blog.

Qualifiers for Successful Blog Outreach

While search engine marketers are only concerned with Google PageRank, you’re going to want to know much more.

Topics Covered

Want to know if your target audience is reading a particular blog? The best way to find out is to look at the topics the blog covers. If you or your client sells social media tools or consulting, then blogs that heavily cover social media should be your first choice to pitch.

Post Frequency

Next is post frequency. There are tons of lists out there that compile popular blogs on particular topics. The problems with those lists include the fact that they are often out-of-date or include blogs that simply don’t post often. If a blog only posts once a month and none of those posts are guest posts or product reviews, then your success in getting them to talk about you or your client will be slim.

Social Following

A blog may have tons of traffic, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it has tons of authority. While traffic can be bought or manipulated through traffic exchange networks and other services, having a strong social following on more than one social network generally is a good sign that the blog is authoritative in their industry. You don’t want to just see that a blog has tons of Twitter followers – you want to see that they have followers on Twitter, Facebook, and a presence on other social networks as well.

Search Authority

A website’s authority when it comes to search engines shouldn’t be your only priority, but it should factor into your decision about whether a blog is a good choice for your outreach. If the blog fits all of the above criteria – the right topics covered, decent post frequency, and strong social following – then strong visibility in search is icing on the cake. This means that the blog probably ranks well for the topics it covers and gains lots of additional traffic from search engines.

While Google PageRank used to be the main focus for a website’s search strength, many marketing agencies are now turning to MozRank from SEOmoz. SEOmoz measures the number of incoming links to a domain as well as the quality of those links, giving the website a score from 1 to 10, with 3 being average and anything above 8 being exceptional.

How to Find These Qualifiers

There are lots of tools and methods to finding this kind of information about blogs you are considering as a part of your blog outreach campaign. Your first option is to simply visit all of these blogs individually and all of the above information in a spreadsheet or other document.

If you are a GroupHigh user you already know that the platform takes the pain out of qualifying blogs for your outreach program by putting everything you need to know in one easy to read section in their search results.

Here, you can see:

• The main topics covered by the blog which will clue you in about the blog audience and their interests.
• Post frequency along with specific titles of the latest posts.
• Social following statistics on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube plus whether the blog is on LinkedIn and Google+.
• MozRank scores for search authority.
• Location and basic description for the blog.
• Website URL and contact information.

The best part is you don’t have to manually annotate the information – you can just click one button to save the blog to your target outreach list.

What to Do Next

Once you’ve created a targeted list of relevant blogs, your next job will be to start contacting them about your guest post or pitch. Be sure to:

• Address the blogger by name, especially if they have a large following. The larger the following, the harder it will be to impress them as they probably have lots of pitches sent their way.
• Describe how the guest post or pitch you are sending will benefit the blogger and their audience.
• Offer a free trial or sample when possible. If you make their experience with your brand pleasant and memorable, they will be more likely to give you good coverage on their blog

What is the first trait you look for when deciding which bloggers you are going to reach out to?

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