1. A Beginners Guide toSuccessful Blogger OutreachCourtesy of your friends at GroupHigh

2. What Exactly is Blogger Outreach? Blogger outreach is the process of getting heard over millions of other voices on the web while trying to develop a relationship with influential bloggers in any given genre. 3. Traditional Marketing is Out Studies are showing over and Before making a big purchase orover again that traditionalaligning themselves with amarketing is out. Consumers no company, consumers researchlonger trust or even pay what people are saying, notattention to paid for ads. what the brand themselves say. Consumers want word of mouth. Here is a great infographic from HubSpot displaying this point perfectly. 4. The Point:81% of consumers trust information and advice from bloggers. Thats a lot. 5. Where Blogger Outreach Comes In Well, the bloggers are who the consumers are listening to. Thebloggers are the ones that need to be targeted. This is our favorite article bursting with statistics on how important itis that we reach our audiences influencers aka the bloggers. 6. Whos Doing it?Blogger outreach that is. 7. Most Brands Well, most brands are doing it.77% of marketers are building their brands influence with blogging. That means marketing companies are also becoming publishers. 8. Content Marketers Some marketers are rightfully unsure of their own writing abilitiesand outsource to content marketing agencies who specialize inwriting content for their company. That means they are doing a lot ofblogger outreach to get words on other blogs about their clientsblogs. 9. Pr Agents PR agencies have been doing it for years. It wasnt always called blogger outreach but they were reaching outto the influencers that they wanted on their side. These influencersare now bloggers and PR agents are one of the biggest groupsexecuting blogger outreach on a regular basis. 10. Bloggers The bloggers themselves are doing it. They are reaching out to other influentialbloggers and collaborating. This could be a recommendation on their own blog ora swapping of guest posts. 11. Why is Blogger Outreach Crucial to Marketing? 12. Word of Mouth Works Best Again, 81% of consumers trust information and advice from bloggers. If aninfluential blogger talks about you or your clients company or brand, its thesame as someone talking you up in the grocery store. Word of mouth works. Ithas worked since the beginning of time. 13. Ambassadors Bloggers are going to be your companys most influential ambassadors. Therefore, bloggeroutreach campaigns should be part of every companys marketing practice and they should beexecuted often. 14. The Results Tell Us So Google Analytics shows us over and over that each blogmention generates traffic and leads, it is fool proof as long aswe reach these bloggers effectively! 15. Tools to DiscoverBloggers for Your Campaign 16. Favorite Blogger Outreach ToolsGroupHighGoogle Blog Search GroupHigh allows you to search Google Blog search lets you searchfor bloggers in every fathomable for blogs in any genre and its free.niche and instantly find their The only drawback is that its acontact information, SEO time sucker. You have to manuallymetrics, social media presence find the SEO stats and social mediaand other important andinfo crucial to your campaign. Contact info is also tough to findcustomizable statistics crucial to sometimes. Make sure you alwaysyour campaign. It saves a ton of check the contact us or abouttime.us pages first. 17. Honing in on What you Need Before deciding which bloggers you are going to contact, youneed to decide which statistics are crucial to your campaign. 18. Is your campaign visually driven? Youneed bloggers with a strong Pinterestpresence. 19. Are you guest posting? A strong Twitterpresence and/or readership is a must. 20. Do you prefer Mozrank or Domain Authority?Pick a minimum number to determine howinfluential a blogs reach is and stick to it. 21. A list of topics the blog posts about that makeit apparent that this blog is a good fit withyour campaign. 22. How often do they post? If a blog posts morethan 7 times a week, your mention or guestpost may get lost in the shuffle. 23. Once youve found these stats and narrowed down your listto bloggers that fit each of your criteria, its time to pitch.Ideally, your list is around 100 perfect bloggers for yourcampaign. This number represents lot of influence you cangather but not overwhelming enough that you are temptedto slack on your pitch 24. The PitchMost important part, no pressure. 25. What is the Pitch? The pitch is the virtual handshake and internet introduction. You have about 5 seconds to make a good first impression to ablogger so your pitch better be perfect, no pressure. Here is a detailed article on crafting a pitch because Im going tocondense it here. Keep in mind that successful bloggers get hundredsof pitches a day and yours needs to stand out. 26. The Pitch Should be. Short Creative Start with a lead Clear as to what you have to offer the blogger Personalized Reference a blog post or popular topic Sound like it is from a human Thoroughly edited Read about the formula for a successful pitch here 27. Lets talk aboutengagement. 28. Engagement on the bloggers social media outlets should be donebefore and after the pitch. Make yourself stand out before they evenreceive your pitch by re-tweeting their words, posting on theirFacebook page, following them on Pinterest and commenting on theirblog posts. 29. After sending over your pitch, tweet at the blogger right away that you have acool idea for them in their inbox. This way they know to look for it. Also, its okayto follow up once more. Who knows when the blogger received your pitch? Theycould have looked at it in the middle of dinner, been intrigued but completelyforgotten about you. 30. Organization is Crucial 31. Make sure you have a list of every blogger that you reached out to.Have a column for when you pitched them, what you pitched them, ifyou got a response, and if you got a mention. This is the first of thetwo spreadsheets that you need to keep up with throughout to yourcampaign. (Ill get to the other one at the end) This allows you to findout if you are targeting the right blogs. You should have more yesesthan nos. 32. Reciprocation is Key We talked about reciprocation in the pitch. But make sureyou follow through and show appreciation to a bloggersmention or post about you by tweeting it and generatingtraffic to their site. If the relationship is successful, the two ofyou will work together again. 33. Rookie Mistakes 34. Dont do it! *Not doing enough pre outreach *Pitching a blogger like you wouldresearch and wasting time on a journalist. Bloggers arentpitching to bloggers who arejournalists.irrelevant to your campaign. *Sending a one sided pitch. Its not *Not tracking the results of your nice.campaign to know if it was *Not looking at all of a bloggerssuccessful or not.metrics. For example, a blog may *Writing a cookie cutter pitch to have a low MozRank because theybloggers. are new but may have fivethousand Twitter followers. Itwould still probably be beneficial. 35. Maintain Your Relationships WithBloggers After posts and engagement have passed, its important to maintainrelationships with the bloggers who worked with you. Who knowswhen they may be able to benefit another campaign of yours? Keepin touch and maintain a presence in their blog comments and socialmedia channels. To get a really thorough rundown on how tomaintain blogger relationships, check out this article. 36. Tracking Your Campaign 37. Tracking your campaign is crucial to finding out if it was a success ornot. Determine statistics that are important to you or your clientand make a spreadsheet. Use Google Analytics and look at socialmedia shares to fill out your spreadsheets. Wait about a monthafter each post so a sufficient amount of equal time as passed aftereach post before recording your data. 38. Popular Metrics to Keep Track of Total visitors to site New visitors to site Bounce rate Number of re-tweets Number of Facebook likes 39. How to Find out if You are Mentioned 40. One of the biggest gripes heard from marketers and PR agents is thatthey pitch bloggers and dont hear back from them but stumble uponposts months after they were written. What could be more frustratingthan making a successful contact and not even knowing it? Here are some tools that you can use to see if your client or companyhave been mentioned 41. Google Alerts You can set up through Google to receive an email every time yourclient or brand is mentioned. It picks up all the big sites but oftenmisses smaller sites and blogs that mention you. 42. Social Mention Social Mention allows you to type in your company or clients nameand find out which outlets are talking about you including YouTube,twitter and Facebook just to name a few. You can create a socialalert which is like Google alerts but for social media mentions. 43. HootSuite Make sure youre set up with HootSuite. Sometimes a blogger willTweet at you if they post about you. 44. IceRocket IceRocket is a search engine that brings up blog posts, twitter andFacebook mentions of your brand. It brought up everything thatKurrently brought up for GroupHigh social media mentions but alsoshowed blog mentions. 45. Technorati Technorati searches over a million indexed blogs in the blogospherefor mentions of your brand. It allows you to post comments andfeedback on the blog posts- yay you can join in the conversationabout your own brand. However, when we typed in GroupHigh, theblog posts that showed up in IceRocket didnt show up in Technorati. 46. BoardTracker BoardTracker lets you search for what is being said about you onforums and discussions. 47. A Regular Old Internet Search Its also not a bad idea to perform an internet search and see whatsites pop up first. You want to be familiar with this because mostconsumers are Googling you and/or your brand before purchasing.How can you use what pops up in your marketing plan? Are there anynegative reviews of you that pop up? If so, your priority is damagecontrol! 48. Reflection Time 49. Youve found all of your mentions and posts and youve filled in yourspreadsheets.Get both spread sheets out and set side by side somewhere you arecozy because its reflection time! Each campaign is going to teach yousomething new and useful for the next one as long as you read themessages in the metrics that you gather. 50. On your first spreadsheet, did you get a positive responsefrom at least 33% of the bloggers you reached out to? If not you need to figure out why. Did you not throw a good pitch? Maybe you reached out to the wrong bloggers? Did you have something to reciprocate to them? Did they have a similar MozRank to yours, did you reach out to bloggers out of your league? Answer these questions to yourself and try to figure out how you can hone in on bloggers more effectively for your next campaign. If you did get a lot of positive responses from bloggers,make note of what you did write and do it again! 51. On you next spread sheet, look at the blogs that brought a lot oftraffic to you or your clients site. Put stars by these and make sureto keep them in mind for future campaigns. Make sure that youengage with these bloggers frequently.Also, thoroughly analyze each blogger that brought a lot of traffic.Was it the bloggers influence or the mention or post itself? Try tomimic what worked for future campaigns. 52. Resources to Keep on Top of ContentMarketing and Blogger Outreach Content Marketing Institute is the authority on all things content marketing GroupHighs blogger outreach blog is full of tips on blogger outreach CopyBlogger is a blog that keeps you up to date on the world of blogging Pratik Dholakiya is a prolific guest poster about blogging. Follow him@DholakiyaPratik so you dont miss any of his words Kikolani is a blog about blogging tips and is full of good advice Convince and Convert is full of good tips on social media and contentmaketing Sally Falkow is a brilliant PR Strategist with a ton of good advice 53. About GroupHigh GroupHigh is an all encompassing platform that allows users to: Search for blogs in any genre or niche Import blogs Find statistics, metrics, social media info, and contact information for any blog Track and organize outreach campaigns with some awesome features 54. To Stay Up to Date on Blogger OutreachFollow GroupHigh Demo our software Follow us on Twitter Like us on Facebook Read our awesome blog Join our blogger outreach discussion group