practical guide to effective blogger outreach

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Yomego is a specialist social media agency. We live and breathe social.

This expert focus means we are able to track the latest trends and technologies, apply our expert knowledge and deliver relevant insight and strategies to add value by building advocacy and driving sales.

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Yomego Services

Yomego has offices in London and Glasgow

How to embrace social media to build awareness, drive advocacy and, ultimately, contribute to incremental sales.

Strategic Consultancy

Design, develop, deliver and manage a wide variety of content including website, games and community sites.

Delivery

Research & Insight

Highlight where your audience exists and how to engage them effectively. We also regularly release white papers and write guest blogs on trade platforms.

Monitoring and Evaluation

Our exclusive Social Media Reputation (SMR) service benchmarks popularity against competitors and provides recommendations in tune with your wider marketing activity.

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Selection of our Clients

Effective blogger outreach4

In this session, we’ll cover: -

• Blogging platforms• Benefits• Sourcing targets• Working together• Scenarios

Why bother?5

• Cost effective• Highly targeted• Varied readership• Content has potential to go viral• Familiarity and trust

What can you achieve?6

• Increasing brand awareness• Reaching new audiences• Promoting a specific product or campaign• Getting product feedback• Recruiting attendees to an event• Improve SEO

Blogging Choices7

Blogger8

• The 13th most popular site in the UK• Founded in 1999• More than 400m active readers• More than 500m blog posts published on this platform

Blogger9

• The 13th most popular site in the UK• Founded in 1999• More than 400m active readers• More than 500m blog posts published on this platform

Tumblr10

• The 29th most popular site in the UK• Launched in 2007• Over 29m blogs containing more than 10bn posts• The average user creates 14 original posts and reblogs 3 per month

Tumblr11

• The 29th most popular site in the UK• Launched in 2007• Over 29m blogs containing more than 10bn posts• The average user creates 14 original posts and reblogs 3 per month

WordPress12

• Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org - Similar sites, different behaviours• Wordpress.org – Open source site, lacks ability to host a site• Wordpress.com – Free platform with hosting• Over 55m sites in the world • 600m weekly page views• 100k new sites created every day•Wordpress 3.2 – 500k downloads in two days

WordPress13

Method14

Q. How do you reach a hundred influential bloggers and make each one of them feel like you’ve read their blog, understand who they are and are writing to them personally?

Method15

Q. How do you reach a hundred influential bloggers and make each one of them feel like you’ve read their blog, understand who they are and are writing to them personally?

A. You read a hundred influential blogs, get to know who the bloggers are, then write to them personally.

Recruitment16

Who should you target?

• Shared target demographic• Reaches many people• Readers consider their content valuable• People who are already interested in your product• People who are asking questions you can answer

Recruitment17

Recruitment18

A few shortcuts19

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About Influence

How do we measure online influence?

• Klout score• Twitter followers• Facebook presence• Blog interaction• Noise

Approach

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• Tailor your message• Don’t copy paste• Keep it short• Be honest• Spell out why it’s of value• Be polite• Be accurate

Approach

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Don’t pitch me. Instead, get to know me, and build a relationship, leave comments on my blog, join the conversation. Find out what I’m interested in. Read my blog, examine the keywords, read the about page, my focus is on Web Strategy, find out what that means!

www.web-strategist.comAs a blogger myself, I am so much more inclined to want to work with someone who tells me “Never heard about you until yesterday, now I love you” than someone who starts out by saying “I love your blog,” then transitions in Paragraph 2 to the standard form letter pitching the product.

Kristen Havens

Approach

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Hi Thebloggess.com,

Hope this note finds you well and you are enjoying your Wednesday. I also wanted to say what a fabulous website!!! I really enjoyed going through it, especially the “You would see the biggest gift would be from me and the card attached would say “Thank you for helping me dig up my dead dog”.” post. Being a mother to a 2 year old and now pregnant with twins, I am constantly searching for valuable information to use from the blogosphere community. It is always neat to hear other mother’s/father’s perspectives. Isn’t being a parent so rewarding!!!

Working with bloggers24

• Be patient• Send follow-up emails• Thank them even if you don’t get a positive response• Follow up positive replies quickly• Think about how you present product samples etc.• Be clear on timescales• Have content ready• Remember you don’t have editorial control

Payments and incentives25

• Check bloggers’ policies• Require disclosure• Look for PR badges

Monitoring26

Outreach done well27

HP ‘Days of the Dragon’

84% increase in HDX Dragon sales

10% sales increase14% traffic increase

… and done badly28

ConAga Foods/Marie Callender

Q&A29

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