Running an online business has become more complex than ever due to increasing competition. You need a solid marketing strategy for competitive advantage and long-term sustenance. Among the top marketing approaches that businesses rely upon is blogger outreach. This post will cover the types and benefits of blogger outreach along with the steps required for effective blogger outreach.

What is Blogger Outreach?

Blogger outreach is a marketing approach in which businesses, brands, or bloggers reach out to influential bloggers or other influencers for collaboration, backlink building, product promotion, etc. It is an essential component of marketing strategy. It is a cost-effective method of broadening your audience base.

Types of Blogger Outreach

There are six major types of blogger outreach, each aiming at a different goal and requiring a unique strategy to yield the desired results.

Guest Posts Outreach

Guest posts outreach is among the most commonly used blogger outreach methods. You contact bloggers to express your interest in writing a guest blog post for their blog. Your initial pitch plays a vital role in securing you a guest post. Remember, in a few cases, the site owner or blogger may not allow you to include links to your site in guest post content. However, you can always link to your website in the author bio.

Link Building Outreach

Link-building outreach aims to acquire a backlink for your site. The following are a few popular approaches for acquiring backlinks:

Build Broken Links: First, you identify resources or content in your niche that are no longer alive. In other words, discover pages that return a 404 error. Now, list websites that currently link to the broken URL. Finally, create content on the same topic and reach web owners or bloggers linking to the broken URL, asking them to consider your content a replacement. In most cases, you will succeed in acquiring a backlink.

Skyscraper Technique: In this technique, you identify resources with plenty of backlinks. Then, you create more detailed and authoritative content on the same topic. Finally, you reach website owners and bloggers linking to the original content, asking them to point their links to your content instead. However, creating a better version requires a lot of time and expertise. Additionally, you can only gain a backlink if your content is better than the original.

Product Promotion Outreach

The purpose of product promotion outreach is to promote products through famous bloggers. However, remember this method is only for those selling products or services.

Mostly, product promotions are paid. As part of a business’s marketing strategy, it can approach famous bloggers and influencers to promote its products or services. The following are the two most popular approaches to product promotion outreach.

Product Reviews: You ask the bloggers to review your product and publish the review on their sites. Alternatively, they can write a testimonial, and you can share it on your site. In comparison to reviews, testimonials are mostly free of charge.

Giveaways: Giveaways equally benefit the host, i.e., the blogger and the business. The blogger will run a giveaway contest on its site, while you (the company) will sponsor the gift.

Sponsored Posts Outreach

In this method, you contact the bloggers or site owners to publish your post in exchange for money. Sponsored post outreach has a high success rate, but the cost of sponsored posts may be high depending upon the blogger’s influence in his niche. Sponsored posts offer two benefits: 1) you can include backlinks to your site within the post, and 2) your brand gets exposure to a vast audience base.

Collaboration Outreach

Collaboration outreach aims at building relationships with influential bloggers in your niche. The most common types of collaboration outreach are:

Link Exchange: In link exchange, you reach out to bloggers you have linked from within your content. Ideally, they should also consider linking to your site. But it may not always happen. However, when they also link back to your site, it is called link exchange.

Social Media Mentions: Sometimes, you only need exposure through social media mentions. You can only benefit from social media mentions if the blogger has a reasonable fan following on social media platforms. There are many ways a blogger can mention your brand, such as:

• Share their experience.
• Share your content.
• Recommend your product.

Benefits of Blogger Outreach

Content Marketing

You can reach a vast audience through influential bloggers in your niche. Even if they are not interested in buying your product now, they may be interested later or recommend it to others. You also get additional traffic to your site, which can help in SEO ranking.

Earn Backlinks

Blogger outreach is one of the most effective ways to earn backlinks. We all know specific backlinks are more beneficial for SEO, such as editorial and guest post links. You can achieve both through blogger outreach.

Boost in Brand Awareness

The more people you reach, the more your brand becomes known. Blogger outreach is ideal for reaching a diverse audience and boosting online visibility.

Increase in Sales

Your sales increase by promoting your services and products to a massive audience. You acquire new customers, and many of the customers may become loyal brand ambassadors. They will likely share your brand with friends and family.

Six Steps to Blogger Outreach 

1. Define the Goal

The first step towards blogger outreach is setting a clear goal. The following are a few goals a business may wish to achieve through blogger outreach:

1. More sales and revenue.
2. Increase in website traffic.
3. Backlink building.
4. Boost in brand awareness.
5. Lead generation.
6. Relationship building.

Remember, you can have more than one goal. It entirely depends on the nature of your business. However, you can find the right bloggers to reach out to only if you have a clear goal to achieve. Additionally, goals help businesses assess the performance of their outreach strategy. In the absence of any goal, you do not know if your strategy worked or not.

Most importantly, you may end up getting benefits that are not helpful in your case. For example, you may get immense traffic but only a slight increase in sales.

2. Set the Selection Criteria for Prospect Bloggers

After setting up a clear goal, you must also select the selection criteria for prospective bloggers. For example, you must look for blogs with high domain authority to acquire backlinks. Similarly, you should shortlist bloggers with a huge fan following on social media platforms to increase brand awareness.

Remember, just like goals, you can have multiple selection criteria. The following are a few selection criteria you can choose from:

Engagement Rate: Engagement rate is a metric that determines how actively your audience interacts with your content. The audience can interact with your content in several ways, such as likes, shares, and comments.

Traffic: Another selection criterion is blog traffic. The number of visitors a blog receives in a month determines how much exposure you can get from blogger outreach.

Domain Authority: Domain authority determines how beneficial a backlink would be for your business. However, remember only dofollow links pass link juice from one site to another.

3. Find the Bloggers

Now that you have set the goal and selection criteria, it is time to find the right bloggers in your niche. Finding the bloggers is the most crucial step of blogger outreach. It takes time and effort. However, I have shortlisted the following efficient ways of finding influential bloggers in your niche:

Google Search

This is the cheapest way of finding bloggers. However, it is time-consuming. You can find the relevant popular blogs in two ways:

Find the top blogs in your niche:

You can look for lists people have complied rating top blogs in a particula niche. For example, if you type ‘top beauty blogs’, Google will retyrn something like this:

Similarly, if you search ‘top beauty bloggers’, Google will return a list of bloggers based on sources across the web.

Find blogs using keywords:

Another effective way to find popular blogs is to type the relevant keywords in the Google search bar. For example, if your blog is about cats, you can search terms, such as ‘food for cats’ or ‘cats health issues’. In Google search results, look for blogs and list them.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a popular tool to find influencers on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and across the web. There are several ways you can use BuzzSumo to find influencers. However, I like the content analyzer the most.

You can use the content analyzer tool to find the most shared content on a particular topic.

Once you have the list, you can look for top sharers to get a list of influencers who shared the content on Twitter. You can organize the list by domain authority, page authority, Twitter followers, retweet ratio, average retweet, etc.

Alternatively, you can find influencers on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok using a focus topic.

NinjaOutreach is another popular tool for finding influencers and blogger outreach. It offers automatic email outreach while, at the same time, you can track the statistics of emails.

4. Divide Bloggers into Categories

Dividing the bloggers into categories helps you apply a different strategy to each category. Ideally, you should divide bloggers into three categories based on the selection criteria.

If you used a tool like BuzzSumo or NinjaOutreach, you probably already have statistics about the bloggers, i.e., domain authority, followers, etc. However, if you used Google Search, I recommend using Moz’s domain authority checker to find the domain authority. For statistics related to social media, you can check their profiles.

Make an Excel sheet so you can quickly sort the list of bloggers. For example, if your selection criterion is domain authority, sort the list accordingly. Now divide the list into three categories, i.e., high-influence bloggers, medium-influence bloggers, and new influencers.

The more the influence, the more you need to work before reaching out. For example, it may be perfectly fine to reach out to new influencers immediately, even if they are not familiar with you. On the other hand, your outreach email may end up in the trash if high or medium influencers are not familiar with you.

5. Get on Bloggers’ Radar 

This step predicts the success of a blogger outreach. Before reaching out to influential bloggers, you must get on their radar. As a first step, follow them on social media. Additionally, comment on their posts and share their posts. Another effective method is to send them an email telling them you love their work.

Another reason you should follow bloggers is to familiarize yourself with their work. Outreach emails can only be effective if you are aware of their work. Instead of using templates, I recommend crafting your emails. Mention what you like about their work and how it has benefitted you.

6. Reach Out to Bloggers

For reaching out to bloggers, you can opt for three ways:

Send Message on Social Media: You can directly send them a message on social media. This method is suitable for those seeking product promotions.

Send an Email: For guest posts, backlinks, and collaboration, you should send emails. You can find the email addresses of influencers, bloggers, or authors using Hunter.

Use the Contact Us Page on Their Blog: Another effective way to reach out to bloggers is through the Contact Us page on their blog. Your message will land in their mailbox.

Remember, your outreach emails should be well crafted to gain attention. For example, if you are seeking a backlink, you should provide the URL of the content and the reason for linking to it. An important reason could be a replacement for a broken link.

Similarly, offering a free product and asking them to write a review would be great if you are interested in product promotion.

For guest posts, you must provide a topic for consideration. The topic should be relevant to the blog and not already covered. Below is a simple:

“Hi [Blogger Name],

Hope you are doing well.

I have been following your blog for a while, and it has helped me in [mention the benefit you got].

I have a guest post idea that I believe would be a great addition to your blog. It is [guest post topic].

I would love to share the outline with you.

Looking forward to your reply.

Regards,

[Your Name]

[Your website/blog address]”

Conclusion

Blogger outreach is beneficial for all businesses regardless of their industry or sector. It helps generate traffic, boost brand awareness, and increase sales. However, you must do it correctly to achieve the desired goal. If done right, blogger outreach can take your business to new heights. While you will only waste time and resources, getting nothing in return if done wrong.