Content shock has been a thing for almost a decade, and as we move into 2023 – it’s getting harder and harder for companies and content creators to stand out from the crowd and create an impact.
This is where blogger outreach comes in. With the right strategy and approach, you can connect with influential bloggers and influencers in your niche, build relationships with them, and leverage their audiences to reach a wider audience for your own content.
To make things easier and less confusing, I’ve created this blogger outreach guide to help you reach your goals in 2023.
What is Blogger Outreach?
Blogger outreach is a type of outreach marketing strategy that connects companies with influential bloggers to promote their site, product, service, brand or event. Companies in every niche use this tactic because it’s a great way of connecting with your target audience more naturally.
This outreach strategy is also a widely popular way of building high-quality backlinks. The outreach campaign focuses on reaching out to authority sites and getting guest posts to help increase domain authority – a key SEO factor when it comes to building organic traffic.
In fact, that was the way I was able to grow my domain authority from 0-41DR in a short period of time.
Here are several reasons why you would want to contact bloggers and influencers for collaboration opportunities:
- You have launched a new product and need to promote it;
- You want to reach new audiences;
- You’re expanding into a new local market and need exposure;
- You want to improve your brand’s online presence and become a staple in the industry;
- You want to promote an event;
- You want to build backlinks.
Naturally, reasons will vary from one business to another, but these are the most common motivations for starting a blogger outreach campaign.
Now, just as with any digital marketing strategy, blogger outreach has its good and bad sides. So let’s take a look at both of them.
Advantages of blogger outreach
- It helps bring exposure to small businesses;
- It allows you to reach a very targeted audience;
- It will help increase brand awareness more organically;
- It’s ideal for when you need to promote a new product or service;
- It will help you build relationships with bloggers and influencers in your field;
- It’s not expensive and has great ROI;
- It will bring more traffic to your websites;
- It will bring quality backlinks naturally.
Disadvantages of blogger outreach
- Cold email outreach can be hard if you’re not experienced;
- Many influencers refuse to partner with competitors of someone they already represent;
- Inconsistency is a general problem since, most of the time, you’re not the one writing the content (blog posts, product descriptions, promotion pieces, etc.);
- Most influential bloggers have busy schedules, and it takes time to make the deal and publish the content.
Can you use blogger outreach in B2B content marketing?
When most professionals hear the term blogger outreach, they think about B2C and e-commerce brands. However, the truth is that established bloggers and relevant influencers exist in every niche.
The last thing you should do is limit yourself to how your business can gain exposure in the online world. If you are looking to boost your B2B content marketing efforts, then blogger outreach is a great way of doing so.
5 Steps to do Blogger Outreach
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to blogger outreach, as every business will have different goals and needs. However, there are some general steps that you can follow when creating your blogger outreach strategy:
1. Define your Goals and Target Audience
Look, I know it’s not super exciting.
But in my experience, this is key to a successful blogger outreach campaign. It’s the difference between a successful campaign that brings great results and a campaign that simply fizzles out.
Start by taking some time to define your goals – what are you trying to achieve?
For example, are you looking for more brand awareness? A boost in sales or traffic? More backlinks from high authority sites?
Make sure you set specific, actionable, and realistic goals. As an example, with my blogger guest post campaign, I had a very simple goal of wanting to get to 40 DR in less than 6 months.
Now, if you know anything about link building, having a DR goal is hard to measure (as it’s more complex than a 1 link = 1 DR point increase).
But I knew that having higher DR links to my site helped increase my DR faster.
So my goal became very specific: get 10 70+DR backlinks every month for 6 months.
That meant I had to write at least 60 guest posts published on 70+ DR sites in 6 months.
Simple, actionable, and realistic.
Next, identify who your target audience is. Here are 3 things you should consider.
- You want to reach out to the blogger that creates the type of content that aligns with your goals and values.
- You want to reach out to the blogger that has a big enough reach or audience in your niche. You may look at social media followers as a metric.
- You want to reach out to the blogger whose audience is also YOUR target audience.
In my case, it was very simple. First, I’d reach out to top marketing blogs that accept guest