Blogger outreach is not an easy thing to deliver on. This is especially true when you start scaling your business and have multiple clients.
It requires a lot of customization, it’s people intensive, it’s process intensive, and there are different variables involved.
Blogger Outreach Variables
- Is your outreach pitch good enough to get responses?
- Is the blogger going to read your email and respond?
- How many times will you have to follow-up with the blogger?
- How many times will you have to go back and forth with the blogger until a relationship is established?
- How many guest post backlinks do you need to generate per month to make it worth your while?
- Who will create the content?
- How will you follow up with the blogger?
- Does the blogger want to get paid?
- Is the blog worth your while?
Clearly, there are many variables and nuances to blogger outreach. And the #1 thing you can do is first learn the process.
Then you can hire a few VAs, manage them, and have them handle blogger outreach on your behalf. And there are even better ways to scale this process.
3 Steps for Successful Blogger Outreach
1. As Far As Good Blogger Outreach Is Concerned, You Need As Much Automation As Possible.
I realize that people hate the word automation, because spam immediately comes to mind. But automation is necessary to reach greater levels of success.
Automation tools are extremely, extremely intelligent. But they still require a human touch in order to make the emails look personalized. You will not have good results if you don’t personalize your emails.
2. What is Your Pitch?
For the most part, when people receive an email they really don’t care about you. I know that sounds harsh but it’s the honest truth. And they really don’t want to know about you either. Just stating the facts.
Do you know what they want to hear? They want to hear about what you can do for them. So, if you want to increase your conversion rate, you have to first offer them something. And then you can ask for something in return.
Remember, the universal principle of “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” applies to blogger outreach. If you do a blogger a favor first, they’ll feel compelled to do you a favor in return.
Robert Cialdini figured out the Law of Reciprocity many years ago. And he was kind enough to share it with us in his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.
Example: you can include the blogger in a big article that you’re writing for another major online publication, and this will help them get additional exposure.
Or come up with something else using this blogger outreach infographic template:
3. Scaling
Don’t just reach out to 20 bloggers a month. You aren’t going to get enough responses and your results will be disappointing.
You have to reach out to hundreds of bloggers per month and you have to do it consistently. Because at the end of the day, you’re hoping to build a pipeline very similar to sales.
Treating Blogger Outreach Like Sales
Most important of all, make sure your organization is completely dialed in to the system.
At Outreachmama.com, we treat blogger outreach like sales.
We actually use CRMs to manage our link building and the back and forth dialogue that goes along with it.
Every time a link goes live, a bell goes off, and that’s a feather in our cap!
If a blogger showed interest at first but then went dark, we’ll know about it and we can follow up with them in a few months.
Keep your blogger outreach really, really organized. That’s what’s going to work out for you over the long term.