How do you reach a broader audience online and convert them to actual sales? More importantly, how do you do this at scale?

For many entrepreneurs, the answer lies in blogger outreach.

Blogger outreach, also called guest post or blog post outreach, is a white-hat practice that involves reaching out to third-party websites or brands and collaborating with them. This strategy enables you to tap into their network or audience and introduce your brand to new users. 

Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it?

Except a lot of work goes into outreach: finding the bloggers, creating the emails that would capture their attention and sending them to scores of people who have never heard of the business. On top of these tasks, you must follow the best practices in blogger outreach because it keeps your brand’s reputation intact and delivers better results. These are the reasons blogger outreach services are necessary for many businesses.

What are Blogger Outreach Services?

Blogger outreach services may not be as familiar as content marketing, local SEO or any of the other digital marketing services you may have secured. But these professional services have been around since the rise of social media and blogging.

The only difference between then and now is that tactics have evolved from simple link exchanges to guest blogging opportunities, infographic republishing and other forms of content promotion.

When you sign up for outreach services, your business will get:

• A customized blogger outreach strategy
• Access to a network of blog owners and influencers
• Quality links to boost your link profile
• Quality content creation and publication
• Link report

In the hands of an experienced SEO agency, your digital content and your business will get the exposure it needs, along with the link profile that improves your search ranking.

Now, what if your current revenue doesn’t have room for blogger outreach services?

How Do I Submit Blogs?

When it comes to prospecting and reaching out to webmasters, some people rely on quantity. They collect hundreds and hundreds of contact information and then send generic emails to all of them.

A few things happen to those types of emails:

• They land instantly in the spam folder
• They have a low open rate
• They don’t get opened at all and get moved to the trash folder

Instead of sending as many emails to as many prospects as possible, focus on ones that do offer guest blogging opportunities and ones that’ll give you the link juice your website needs.

Here’s a list of what to do to when doing blogger outreach on your own:

1. Find the Right Blogger

The goal here is to find a website that will link back to the pages in your site. If you don’t have the budget to get outreach tools, you can find bloggers through Google search.

In the search bar, key in the location of the website that you want to target, and then your target keyword, then choose the best result. Another method that will get you accurate results is using: “(location) + (keyword).”

For example, you want to collaborate with travel sites in Colorado, the search would look like this: “Colorado + travel websites” 

It should show results containing travel websites you can find in Colorado. You can also use this method when looking for a particular niche in the area.  For example, you’re trying to look for anything that has to do with “ophthalmologists in Denver.”

The results will show keywords that are related to your search in that area. Just look for the right keywords and curate the website before reaching out to them.

Another way is to analyze your existing backlink history.

This should give you an idea of how you’re performing when it comes to backlinks. You’ll also gain insights into what kind of websites are interested in yours, and what pages or topics they’re interested in.

Use tools like Semrush to check these websites and find out which ones are eligible for outreach. Be open to new opportunities whether it’s doing another collaboration with a site that’s already linking to yours or targeting a different industry that has the same readers as your site.

You can download your backlink history using Semrush or with Google Search Console.

Then, reach out to people or personalities you have mentioned in your article. If you’ve mentioned or referenced a brand or a certain individual in one of your blogs, go to that person’s website and find a blog post that can link back to the one that mentioned the person or the brand’s name. In this strategy, you will have to single out one content and promote that content on a third-party website.

You won’t have to write new content for them, but you can ask them to insert a snippet from your live post into their existing blog. Similarly, you can reach out to other people who have written content related to the one you wrote and ask if they can link back to yours.

For example, you’ve written a blog about “organic pet food” and you want to use that content for link building. Go to Google Search and key in: “blog” + “organic pet food.” A list of blogs containing the keyword will appear. Choose the best prospect to reach out to; this will require you to sift through numerous pages in the search results. Note that before doing this, make sure you have something new to bring to the prospect’s content.

2. Categorize prospects

Not all prospects are the same. So you need to do proper research and not just submit blogs to sites that will potentially say yes. Here, you must take the quality of their site, their target audience, and domain authority. Domain authority is a search ranking grading system created by Moz that will rate how a website will rank on search results. The higher the authority means the better chances that website has in appearing on results.

Divide your prospects into three categories: Highly authoritative, authoritative, average, and low level website.

Highly authoritative sites are those sites that already have a huge mark online and will have a domain score of 81 and above. They have a huge audience and are regarded by Google as notable brands. Examples of these websites are entrepreneur.com and mashable.com. These sites can also include .edu or .gov domains.

Authoritative sites are not as huge as the iconic sites mentioned above, but they are notable sites that speak to a large audience. These are blogs with a domain authority score of 60-80. A link coming from these websites will have a major impact on your business and the value of your webpage.

Average sites are those that gain traction or are just starting to gain momentum online. Domain scores from these sites will range from 35-59. Examples can be sites from social media influencers. These can also be review sites or business websites that have launched and already gained a lot of followers. Reaching out to them will be easier as they will most probably want to build new relationships with other businesses or websites as well.

Newbie sites are those that are just starting out and haven’t gained much traction yet. It’s best to choose the ones with the most potential and just keep track of their progress. They won’t offer your site much value, so it’s best to observe them before reaching out.

3. Reach out to them

How do you get hold of your prospect’s contact information? If you’re looking at reaching out to about 50, going through their sites for that information will be tedious. So use tools like buzzstream or hunter.io are tools to automatically find contact details, such as email addresses.

Buzzstream has a tool called “Email Permutator” where you enter the target site’s domain and the name of the prospect, then click “Permutate” and a list of email addresses will appear. You then need to verify the emails through MailTester to make sure that you get the right one.

Do the prospecting first. Some people try to collect email addresses first, casting a wide net, before curating the quality of the website and seeing if that site is right for them.

4. Craft Your Email Pitch

Once you have their contact information, create your email. Creating the message is one of the most important parts of the strategy. Any established guest blogging services will tell you: don’t sound generic, unrelatable and spammy.

You can create the right message that will resonate with your prospect by following these tips:

• Create a catchy title or subject line

Your prospects are going to be receiving hundreds of emails a day, some of them will have hundreds of guest blog requests. So you have to make sure that you’re not just going to be one of those unopened emails in their inbox.

The best way to approach this is to state your purpose while keeping them interested. Right off the bat, they should have an idea of what you want and what they’re getting. Avoid gimmicky subject lines.

A title that’s formatted like “Guest Blog Outreach: 8 Ways the Surge in Mobile Usage Can Help Your Digital Marketing Campaign”, will get their attention, make you look professional, and will stir their interest.

• Build Rapport

Blogger outreach is an effective strategy, making it a popular method. Your prospect knows this, and they will have the impression that you’ve randomly sent the same email hundred others.

So get to know your prospects better. Learn about what they do and what they’re all about, then incorporate that knowledge in your pitch casually. 

If you pull it off and create a great first impression on them, then you’re going to have a connection with your prospect that could last a long time.

• Keep it straight to the point

Keep your email simple and straightforward. Tell them upfront why you’re emailing them. Some people feel the need to write hundreds and hundreds of words thinking that the more they explain and provide information, the better. This is counterproductive as the prospect’s time will be limited, so your message should keep their attention and should be as concise as possible.

• Be genuine and sincere

Be honest and genuine about your intentions. Avoid embellished statements and words of flattery.

• State how they’re going to benefit from the partnership

The email shouldn’t be about you. It should be about the value you’ll bring. Explain why you’re emailing them and what they’re going to get out of the partnership.

• Close the deal with clarity

End your pitch in a professional and clear way. Provide details about what they should do after reading the email. Again, the simpler the better. A simple “Can’t wait to hear from you.” or “Did I miss anything?” are some examples, but you can be more creative.

Here’s an example:

Subject: Guest Blog Outreach: 8 Ways the Surge in Mobile Usage Can Help Your Digital Marketing Campaign

Message:

Hi, Randy.

I’ve been browsing your blog and read your post about “Desktop Usage.” The bit about the increase in desktop searches was really well done. Going to apply those tips myself for our website.

I’m writing because I wanted to contribute an article that’s related to that particle post. It’s about 8 Ways the Surge in Mobile Usage Can Help Increase Your Digital Marketing Campaign. Similar to your article, this will be providing tips, but from the mobile angle.

I hope this is something you’ll be interested in. If this works for you, send me an email!

Regards,

Ben

Blogger outreach service firms will have multiple templates that fit multiple prospects. But it’s also good to personalize each one, and not just send off a template. Once you’re happy with the email, you can then give it a final brush and send it to your prospect.

4. Follow Up

Once you’ve sent the email, don’t forget to follow up, but only do so once or twice. Follow-up emails should be short and only serve as a reminder for the previous email.

If they give you a positive response, then you can then create your article following their writing guidelines.

5. Track Your Blogger Outreach Efforts

An SEO agency will track each marketing initiative; do the same for your blogger outreach efforts.

A campaign that isn’t tracked or couldn’t be tracked won’t have any chance of success. You’ll need a process for tracking your blogger outreach efforts as well as define the KPIs that are important to your campaign.

Document every outreach that occurred. How many emails were sent each month, how many were opened, how many weren’t opened, and how many prospects said yes. Tools like Buzzstream have an email tracking feature, but there are also tools like Boomerang and Streak that you can use to track emails straight from Gmail.

List every article that was published, which website published the article, and the domain score or authority of that website.

Determine the KPIs that are important to your campaign and set your goals in numbers. If your aim is to increase your site authority or domain authority then set your target number and how many websites you need to get to that number. If your goal is to drive more traffic to your website using blogger outreach, you’ll need tools like Google Analytics to determine if there are users coming from that particular domain.

Amplify Your Business Exposure with Blogger Outreach

Blogger outreach will require hard work. It requires time, research and strategy. You also need to be discerning about which sites will bring value to yours and which won’t help your cause at all. There are good links and there are great links. Then, there are bad links and links you don’t want to associate with.

If you find that the work is too much, work with a blogger outreach service. This way, you increase your dominance online as efficiently as possible.

Get in touch with Creativo Media today and ask us about our guest posting services.