BloggerOutreach Guides: A Comprehensive Guide In 2023

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Building relationships is the key to a successful marketing strategy. A content marketer’s ability to connect with key influencers in their industry plays a vital role in online success. This is where blogger outreach guides come in.

It refers to the process of reaching out to site owners and bloggers to find a common point of interest, exploit it, and build relationships. It is a cost-effective way of reaching out to prospects with more readership.

BloggerOutreach guides can be done online or offline at events and conferences. Whatever the case, a good strategy and approach are crucial to succeeding. It is how some blogs seem to emerge out of nowhere, even when your content is as good as theirs or better.

BloggerOutreach guides require more than just emailing random site owners to let them know you exist. And while some learning is required to master the skill.

You Will Find Yourself Following Once You Do:

More email subscribers and fans.
Increased social shares of any article you publish.
More inbound links from other websites in your niche.

Blogger outreach guides are often associated with link building, but it has more uses. Other reasons to invest in this service include:

Table Of Content

Product Reviews

Otherwise known as a sponsored post, this involves reaching out to bloggers who review products for their readers. The idea is to ask them to review your product and share it with their audience. In exchange, you give them a product for free. The products could be anything, i.e., fashion, beauty, health, fitness, etc.

Broken Link Building

If you come across broken links on resource pages on a site you want to get links from, you can reach out to the website owners to see if you can correct them. This sometimes offers higher success rates than other approaches.

Guest Posts

Reach out to bloggers who accept guest contributors and pitch to write a post on their website. That way, you can tap into their audience and grow your online visibility.

Build Relationships

If you have come across someone who shares the same ideas as you do, feel free to reach out to them and offer some value. You can comment on something they are working on. The idea is to build trust with that individual.

Invitation

You can invite influential bloggers in your industry to contribute to an article or appear on a podcast.

The question that remains is how to tap into the unlimited potential of blogger outreach guides and drive a profitable outcome.

The Crucial Steps To Take Are:

Prospect and identify influential bloggers.
Pre-outreach.
Find email addresses.
Make Your List More Targeted (Segmentation).
Send outreach email.
Track and follow up outreach emails.
Grow the relationship.

BloggerOutreach Guides #Step 1: Prospect And Identify Influential Bloggers

One of the most important steps in outreach is prospecting because it involves finding high-value influencers in your industry to pitch to. Even with exceptionally high abilities and standards, everything falls apart if you target the wrong sites. There are different ways to identify and build a list of relevant influencers. Our favourites include

1. Advanced Search Queries

These will guide you towards richer results because they push the search engine to provide more relevant results. Anyone who is serious about blogger outreach guides and link building needs more focused results to find better blogs to connect with. Google’s Power Search Course teaches you to use advanced search queries to find what you need.

(i) In-URL Search: Filters results of sites with preferred term or domain extension.

(ii) Exact Phrase Search: It is the most popular and filters results with the exact phrase you are looking for.

(iii) In-title Search: It helps you find search results of sites with your preferred keyword in their title.

Other ways to optimize results with advanced search queries include blog author search and wildcard search.

2. Influencer Search Engines

There are numerous influencer search engines that you can use to your advantage.

BuzzSumo:

This tool allows you to find key influencers in your industry based on social media shares across the major platforms. It is designed for content marketers and allows you to filter results in the form of articles, blogs, infographics, interviews, guest posts, interviews, giveaways, and videos. You can filter influences by categories like companies, bloggers, journalists, influencers, and regular people.

Followerwonk:

This is a Twitter-focused search engine that searches through Twitter profiles and helps users identify the best targets for blogger outreach. It finds Twitter bios to connect with, compares them to find overlaps and target new influencers, analyzes your followers, and compares their relationships with your friends or competitors. The tool also optimizes the results by matching your activities to gains and losses in followers.

3. Curated Lists

There are thousands of done-for-you resources available online, and it’s up to you to find them. It’s, however, important to make sure that the websites you decide to get in touch with have high domain authority. Consider the fact that the sites may not have published anything in a long time or are updated frequently.

Using search queries like “Top Marketing Blogs,” “List of Finance Blogs,” and site: twitter.com in URL: lists “health bloggers” will get you good results.

4. Twitter Outreach

Like Google, Twitter has its own search engine, and you can visit it at search.twitter.com. It is a powerful tool to identify and connect with influencers. The results are generated in real-time, and like any other search engine, advanced queries are of paramount importance.

BloggerOutreach Guides #Step 2: Pre-Outreach

Now that you are armed with a list of quality and relevant prospects, the next step is to warm them up to your presence. The idea is to build a relationship before sending a cold outreach email.

This step includes things like commenting on blog posts, tagging prospects in your social media posts, following them on social media, replying to shared content, sharing the content they post as well and targeting them with brand awareness campaigns.

Pre-outreach efforts help make cold emails sound warm, thus increasing the chances of success. Visit the influencer’s blog and comment on a post that best relates to the content you’ve already written or are working on.

Mention something you found interesting about the article. Don’t forget to share the post on social media and tag the writer.

The author may not interact with your shared post or comment back, but that is okay. This stage is called pre-outreach for a good reason.

The idea is to engage with the influencer’s content and let them know that you exist. It is about building a relationship, not just a transactional promotion.

BloggerOutreach Guides #Step 3: Find The Email Address

A frustrating part of blogger outreach is sending out hundreds of emails without a reply. Even when faced with a rejection email, you can use the opportunity to inquire why they aren’t interested in your proposal.

You can build relationships out of rejection, but this proves more challenging when prospects don’t reply at all. It leaves one wondering what they did wrong or what they should have done differently.

One thing you can do to improve your odds is to find the right people to reach out to. While it is very basic, it is something many content marketers overlook. Finding the right person to reach out to is just as important as reaching out in the first place.

In addition to the blog editor, you should consider identifying writers who cover preferred topics on that website.

Many of them have personal websites where their email addresses are open to the public. If their email address is not easily accessible, reaching them through their site’s contact form is more effective than pitching to a larger media outlet where you don’t know who checks the mail.

There are multiple tools that will come in handy when finding the email addresses of influencers. For instance, Hunter pulls the names of anyone associated with a website along with their email addresses.

It also has an email verifier tool that excels where others have failed. It can be installed as a Chrome extension that builds your list as you browse.

Another tool that comes in handy is called Clearbit Connect. It integrates with your Gmail account and allows you to check out a company from within your inbox. Clearbit creates a list of people complete with details like name, website, title, email, social media links, etc.

BloggerOutreach Guides Step #4: Make Your List More Targeted (Segmentation)

Not all publishers have the same demand. Personalization offers you better results.

Ensure your pitch suits each blogger personally to see effective outcomes from your outreach.

So, breaking down your list into categories becomes crucial. Here are the segments to begin with:

1. Industry Renowned Bloggers

These industry leaders are quite busy. Moreover, their inbox is filled with such requests. So, how can you stand out among them?

Personalized messaging is the key. Set yourself apart with a highly personalized subject line. For example, you can mention any article and tell them how to improve it.

Pro tip: Getting noticed via a generic cold email is seriously tough. Finding a mutual connection can be a great kickstart for you. By doing so, you can establish a common connection. You are more likely to get noticed here.

2. Prospecting Bloggers

These bloggers are beginners in the field, still finding their feet in the industry. They possess some industry knowledge, but their recognition is limited.

Their follower count isn’t massive, yet they can hold sway within close-knit professional groups.

The decision to reach out to them is yours to make based on your business objectives.

For instance, they could be valuable for link building.

If you observe their blogs progressing and their content consistently improving. You can consider a link from a low-domain-authority site as it can evolve into a potent one.

For reaching out, use cold email. But before you shoot your email, ensure you have done your homework. A thorough research about the blogger would be ideal here.

3. Influencers

Even though they’re not as famous as the big industry stars, they can make a difference.

Think about influencers who operate in your industry, run well-liked blogs, podcasts, or YouTube channels, and boast a substantial following.

They’re actively seeking new collaborations and regularly reviewing their emails for fresh business ventures. To grab their interest, a cold email could do the trick.

Yet, be ready to dig deep before you reach out and ensure your outreach is personalized and directly relevant to them.

Now comes the most important QUESTION…

How Can You Segregate Them?

Well, one of the most popular ways is taking the help of a tool. For instance, leveraging Ahref’s domain authority segmentation is easier.

Segregate the bloggers based on their domain authority.

For Example, Categories Can Be As Follows:

Industry-recognized PRO bloggers – DA 80+
Influencers – DA 60+
Prospective bloggers – DA 35+

Run the tool and list the sites (preferably in a spreadsheet) according to the metrics.

Note: DA stands for domain authority. It’s a metric developed by MOZ scored on a scale of 0 to 100. Higher domain authority reflects your popularity, reputation, and authoritativeness.

BloggerOutreach Guides #Step 5: Send Outreach Email

Now that you have warmed up to the influencer and found their email address, it is time to move in for the kill. Crafting a good cold outreach email is an art. And whether you get a positive or negative response, it’s important you treat the feedback as an opportunity. That said, there are a few things you should keep in mind at this stage.

Understand that with a higher blogger level comes more outreach emails from content marketers like you. Influencers are busy people, and as such, your emails should stand out from the rest. Personalization is the most effective way of setting yourself apart from the competition.

The key is to use the influencer’s name and tell them why you are getting in touch. Mention that you’ve interacted before and explain why your content is important to their readers.

There is no such thing as a perfect outreach email that will land you every guest post. Some sites receive so many pitches that they post guidelines, so make sure you adhere to them in this case.

Each influencer is unique, and it’s crucial you familiarize yourself with them enough to strike their psychological triggers.

#Template

Hi [Name],

I’ve been following your blog for the past year, and I’ve learned a lot.

Thank you for (specific compliment). It struck me that your readers might benefit from a post about (topic).

I’d love to provide this information to your audience. This idea came to me because (talk about personal struggles or connection with that topic).

Here are some potential titles for this topic:

[2-3 Good Headlines For Your Post]

You might not be interested in having this on your site, and that’s OK! I’d still love to hear any thoughts you have on this topic either way.

If you’re wondering if my content would be a good fit for your blog, please see some other things I’ve written:

(Links to good articles on your blog).

Thanks for taking a look!

(Your Name)
(Your Site)

From The Above Email Template, We Learn That A Good Cold Email Should Include:

A clear and relevant subject line.
Your introduction in the first or second sentence.
Offer the blogger a benefit.
Social proof of people you’ve worked with before.
Links to your work.
Call to action.
Credibility with a branded email signature.

You can find more email templates here.

BloggerOutreach Guides #Step 6: Track And Follow Up Outreach Emails

You can get help from the following e-mail outreach tools and platforms-

(i) Sidekick: This is an email tracking tool offered by Hubspot. It has a great interface, and the free version is compatible with Outlook and Gmail. You can integrate it with CRM if you use the paid version.

What we love most about Sidekick is that the profile contact insights offer comprehensive data, including your email contacts’ professional history, mutual contacts, where they live, email history, and more. It tracks the opens and clicks of sent emails, allowing you to know which pitches work best. The downside is that it doesn’t have scheduling or reminder features.

(ii) Yesware: What sets this tool apart from the rest is that it tells you which subject lines and email templates are read most. It helps users fine-tune their email templates and maximizes open rates. It is an incredible tool for anyone who is serious about link building.

Whereas the outreach email has to be personalized, the follow-up email can be a template. Below is an example that worked for us.

#Template

Hi (Name),

I know you are busy, so I wanted to follow up on my last email proposing a post on (Topic). I think your readers could benefit from the article. I’d love to write about my take on it, but I might have to post it on my blog or elsewhere if I don’t hear from you soon.

In case you missed it, here is what the article is about and a few examples of my work.

(Few sentences about the problem description and solution)

(2-3 links to previous work)

Thank you. I look forward to your response.

Regards,

Your Name.

Your Site.

If you receive a response, there are a few things you can do to foster the relationship. Start by showing appreciation for their response and help. Take the relationship to the next level by asking them to review your blog posts and provide feedback.

Be sure to keep your requests short and precise. Ask if there is anything you can help them with. After all, blogger outreach guides are a two-way street.

BloggerOutreach Guides #Step 7: Grow The Relationship

Having added value to an influencer’s website, it is time to turn your one-off transaction into a lasting relationship. Thank them for sharing your posts on social media. Adding them on Skype gives you an opportunity for a real conversation that is more personal and warm. Get them to relax and open up on Skype without asking intrusive questions.

Another way to grow your relationship is to partner up on a joint venture. You can start small with a co-authored post or infographic before delving into more involved projects.

The most important thing is to make sure to meet the objectives and see the results you set out to achieve. Keep track of metrics like total visitors to your site, the number of Facebook likes, bounce rate, guides, and the number of re-tweets.

A tool like Google Analytics will help you track the impact blogger outreach has on your site.

What Are You Waiting For?

It may seem old school, but blogger outreach guides offer plenty of benefits for link builders and content marketers. Taking a few minutes each day to comment on the right blogs and email to influencers goes a long way towards separating yourself, from other bloggers.

You will stand out from the rest, and with time, your blog will be the one that arrives out of nowhere.

That said, identifying the right websites, contacting owners, and launching a successful blogger outreach campaign takes time…

a lot of it. It is also costly, especially if your efforts don’t pay off. This is where using a professional blogger outreach service comes in. Our campaign strategists work with you to identify ideal influencers, manage your campaigns, and deliver optimal results.

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