Blogger Outreach

Although any of the steps involved in the outreach process are equally important, the amount of critiques, advice and chatter revolves around the pitch. PR professionals are trying to find the perfect balance between keeping it short and personal, but giving enough information, so the blogger can understand what the opportunity is about. Bloggers are usually complaining that the majority of pitches are poorly written, lack the personal touch and give no relevant information.

What’s to keep in mind is that the success of the pitch does not always rely on itself. Of course, it is extremely important to be well written, to address the bloggers in a friendly, yet professional manner, but if the targeting and research part are poorly handled the pitch loses its relevance. Be sure that nothing dooms a pitch as bad as the lack of relevance does.

Check out our 116th roundup for some great articles that can teach you what to aspects should be considered in order to improve your pitch to bloggers:

1. Everyone that had to deal at least once with an outreach campaign had to deal with lack of responses and feedback for a campaign.  Dave Clark helps us find solutions when we face that situation in his article: What to Do When No One Responds to Your Pitch Emails.
2. Bloggers’ inboxes are usually very crowded and most of them read pitches in a glimpse. Their eye is already trained to imediately spot those expressions that make them hit the ‚delete’ button. Wanna know which are those words and phrases that will doom your pitch? Read Russell Working article: 20 words and phrases that will doom your pitch.
3. Look before you pitch! The simplest and most valuable advice possible related to blogger outreach. Don’t ever forget about how important it is to be relevant to those influencers you want to engage in your campaign. It’s a waste of time and effort on both side to pitch bloggers that have nothing to do with your opportunity. Beth Benner gives us some tips on how to be efficient in targeting influencers in her piece: 3 Ways to Micro-Target Your PR Pitches

That’s it for this week. Enjoy reading the articles, learn from the authors’ experiences and share your thoughts.

Photo credits: shaundon 

If you know of a good article, or you’ve written an article that you think should be included, email me at marc[at]blogdash.com.

Hello everyone and welcome to our 99th week of roundup articles. We’re already caught up in the holiday spirit thinking about presents and family. And talking about family… that reminded us of how important and powerful the influence that others have upon us is.

That’s what marketers today have speculated and just like that a new form of marketing arose: influencer marketing. Bloggers are very important for a campaign. They leverage their influence to brands and can help them to engage with their target audience on a personal level.

However, without spending any more time emphasizing the importance of blogger outreach, let’s check out this week’s best articles!

1. Our first chosen article is Better Guest Blogging Through Smarter Blogger Outreach coming from Daniel Blinman and Social Media Today. Check it out to read how to employ guest posting in a smarter manner.
2. The title of Patsi Krakoff’s article speaks for itself: Tips for Better Blog Outreach and Blog Marketing, so we don’t even have to mention the reasons why you should read it.
3. As we stated in the beginning is getting harder not to admit that blogger outreach it’s not something to neglect for your marketing efforts. Let’s see How Important Is It To Engage With Other Bloggers? coming from Dan Smith.

That’s it for this week. Enjoy reading the articles, learn from the authors’ experiences and share your thoughts.

Photo credits: Potatojunkie

If you know of a good article, or you’ve written an article that you think should be included, email me at marc[at]blogdash.com .

Hi everyone and welcome to our 98th week of roundup articles. This week we picked our articles in such a way that they’ll address the three most important problems faced when dealing with blogger outreach: how to target exactly those publications that best serve your campaign, how to structure your pitch and how to improve your chances in obtaining a guest post.

Check out our picks and learn how to deal with weak spots in your blogger outreach campaign!

1. Make the right call on which publications to pitch in order to get the best results for your outreach campaign. The Muck Rack Blog gives great advice in their article: How to know which publications and blogs to pitch.
2. Read 8 Tips for Structuring Your Blogger Pitch coming from Bianca Bartz and make sure that your pitch is perfect for opening your way to great collaboration with bloggers.
3. Guest posting is one of the best ways of online promotion, but it requires greater effort for finding and earning such opportunities. Learn which are the most common mistakes made in pitching for a guest post by reading Susan Gunelius’ article  10 things you should avoid in your guest post pitch.

That’s it for this week. Enjoy reading the articles, learn from the authors’ experiences and share your thoughts.

 Photo credits:  floato

 If you know of a good article, or you’ve written an article that you think should be included, email me at marc[at]blogdash.com.

The things that often get overlooked are usually the ones that we consider we know the best. We are telling ourselves that we have done them a million times before and somehow we forgot to give them the needed attention. In blogger outreach it seems that those mistakes are often related to pitches and engagement.

There are plenty of articles written by bloggers or PR pros related to this topic, and for our 86th week of roundup articles we choose the latest and the best of them. Enjoy!

1. The perfect choice to begin this week’s roundup is Ibtek’s article that comes with a straightforward and self-explanatory title 11 Dumb Mistakes to Avoid When Doing Blog Outreach. Check it out to read a great collection of traps that even the most experienced professionals risk to fall in.
2. The second choice reveals a blogger’s perspective upon some bad pitches. Stoofies’s article 5 Ways of Killing Your Pitch to a Blogger should be an interesting and useful reading for anyone wanting to engage with bloggers. Her suggestions are quite well describing a lot of reasons for a blogger to turn down a pitch without any regrets.
3. As we stated the last week, pitching for guest posting is almost another breed of blogger outreach, so it needs even more attention and involvement from your part.  As there is no such a thing like too many pieces of advice when it comes to guest posting, we invite you to take a look at Gary Shouldis’ article How To Successfully Pitch Your Next Guest Post.
4. Last, but not least of this week’s roundup is Holly Dawson’s article Sowing The Seed – How to Get Your Content Placed. This reading is great for those who are making their first steps in pitching bloggers, providing some great and useful guidelines for writing a pitch.

That’s it for this week. Enjoy reading the articles, learn from the authors’ experiences and share your thoughts.

Photo credits:  Joaquin Villaverde Photography

If you know of a good article, or you’ve written an article that you think should be included, email me at marc[at]blogdash.com.

Hello everyone and welcome to our 84th week of roundup articles. As always we have scoped out the Internet to find the latest tips related to blogger outreach. We have found some really interesting suggestions that can help even the most experienced marketers to avoid falling into most common traps. Don’t forget, you need to be realistic about your promises, customize your pitch and always read the blog you are pitching!

So, let’s get down to business. Enjoy!

1. Is blogger outreach becoming a „spray-and-pray” tactic? Well that’s a pretty good question and Arik Hanson provides a really good answer. His article highlights some of the most important reasons for bloggers to reject a pitch.
2. A great down to earth approach on Pitching for Bloggers comes from Melissa. Her article can be easily considered a complete guide on how to better engage with bloggers and will certainly improve your outreach activity.
3. Learn how to send an introductory email to a blogger, that could save you a lot of trouble later! For that, check out Mike McGrail’s article What Does A Great Blogger Outreach Email Look Like?
4. As we said in our previous roundup, knowing how to read bloggers’ personalities is a valuable talent in blogger outreach. Here’s an article from Versa Marketing that describes the Three Common Types of Internet Bloggers and will help you to better empathize with them.

That’s it for this week. Enjoy reading the articles, learn from the authors’ experiences and share your thoughts.

Photo credits:  Tambako the Jaguar

If you know of a good article, or you’ve written an article that you think should be included, email me at marc[at]blogdash.com.

Engaging with bloggers it’s an activity that requires flexibility and a good eye for spotting each blogger’s personality and interests. Blogger outreach campaigns often need ongoing adjustments, because the effort needed for building strong professional relationships it’s not actually something you can accurately measure and predict.

Welcome to our 83^rd week of roundup articles, we hope you’ll enjoy reading the latest tips & tricks in blogger outreach!

1. First article that caught our eye is Will Ockenden’s Engaging with Bloggers – dos and don’ts. Follow his advice and you’ll certainly enhance your blogger outreach campaign’s chances for success.
2. A bad pitch will always be the no. 1 reason for a blogger to reject a collaboration proposal. Brittany Klontz offers some very good examples of ineffective pitches. Check out her article, 4 Pitches That Any Respectable Blogger Will Always Ignore.
3. It seems that in the world of blogger outreach everything revolves around the almighty pitch. Read Martin MacConnol’s article How Not to Pitch in order to make sure that you will not be the victim of common mistakes.
4. As we said, blogger outreach campaigns require fine-tuning, so here’s a chance to improve your strategy by reading Will Francis’ article, 10 Tips for Better Blogger Outreach.

That’s it for this week. Enjoy reading the articles, learn from the authors’ experiences and share your thoughts.

Photo credits: C.P.Storm

If you know of a good article, or you’ve written an article that you think should be included, email me at marc[at]blogdash.com.

Blogger outreach is an effort that will pay off once you overcome the basic level. This week we focused on how to make the best of your already built relationships, how to manage a community of bloggers and blogger outreach campaigns and how to avoid social media traps.

Welcome to our 81^st week of roundup articles. Hope our picks will help you reach a new level in pitching bloggers!

1. Our first choice is an article that features a mix of opinions and advices on how you can build a community of bloggers and keep them engaged continuously over time. Check out Jenn Pedde’s article Building Community in Blogger Outreach to read some precious insights!
2. Building a blogger outreach campaign can be a tricky thing, but Heather Whaling offers us a tip that cannot fail. Read 5 Core Elements of Blogger Outreach Campaigns to find out how important keeping your inquiries relevant is.
3. A  niche perspective on blogger outreach comes from Donna Kastner whose article 5 Tips to Boost Blogger Outreach for Your Conference focuses on how to target the “Power Players” of your industry in order to amplify reach for your conference marketing campaigns.
4. A blogger’s power lies in his network and that’s why there’s a huge temptation for them to try and make their network appear bigger. Unfortunately, artificially inflating the number of followers is alarmingly easy to do, but Sally Whittle’s article Social Media Fakers provides good advice on how to detect this sort of frauds.

That’s it for this week. Enjoy reading the articles, learn from the authors’ experiences and share your thoughts.

Photo credits: artnoose

If you know of a good article, or you’ve written an article that you think should be included, email me at marc[at]blogdash.com.

Relationships can improve our lives or, on the contrary, can give us some hard times, but when it comes to blogger outreach there is no doubt that building trustworthy relationships with the bloggers you are pitching to can make your life a whole lot easier. Anyway, you don’t have to trust our word, just read the roundup articles from our 76th week together!

1. The first article that caught our eye is Perfect Examples of Bad “Mommy Blogger” Pitch Emails from Robyn’s Online World. The article provides two very relevant examples of “don’ts” practices when pitching a lifestyle blogger. She also points out the bad habit of using stereotyped and sometimes offensive calls, a mistake that will surely end a possible collaboration right from the start.
2. After some really good examples of bad pitching it was time for us to search for some relevant advice on how to successfully pitch a blogger. This is what Steve Radick’s blog post it’s all about. In his Why I Hate the Word “Pitching” he discusses his disappointment related to the general bad opinion about pitches PR people do and argues that the cause of it is their lack of interest in building a relationship with the bloggers before trying to “sell” them something.
3. Our third choice, SEO 101: 5 Tips for Great Blogger Outreach is also related to tips about blogger outreach. CHEE provides a simple, yet insightful mapping on how pitching efforts should be deployed starting from finding suitable blogs for the content you want to promote, till the importance of maintaining the relationship with the one that helped you.
4. We will end our roundup, as most relationships tend to end, in a slightly snarky tone with Chris Abraham’s article: The bloggers are the victims of bad blogger outreach. This reading highlights some really down to earth aspects of mistakes that both PR professionals and bloggers do in their endeavors. Acknowledging what you do wrong is the first step for improving your further actions.

That’s it for this week. Enjoy reading the articles, learn from the authors’ experiences and share your thoughts.

Photo credits: Jeff Carson

If you know of a good article, or you’ve written an article that you think should be included, email me at marc[at]blogdash.com.

Hey all and welcome to the very special 69th round-up. This week we’re not getting high on our laurels. Instead we’re bringing you the finest blogger outreach how to’s from around the blogosphere. So sit back, relax and enjoy the wisdom:

1. How to speak blogger comes to us from Thomas Hynes, at PR Week. Apparently “about 100,000 blogs are created every 24 hours. Now, most of those blogs will be about people’s cats. But, a fair share of those will influence the conversation about brands.“ So take a moment to read what Thomas’s advice is for filtering through the noise, getting to the bloggers you need and actively engage them.

2. How to Pitch Your Local Food Writer is brought to our knowledge by Abbi Whitaker. I’m betting most of us love our food and our food bloggers. This is a tightly knit community and getting to one of the influencers and sounding real is a bit of a challenge. Read this article for some important do’s and don’ts.

3. How to pitch bloggers and gain free exposure is a new article from Creative Boom’s Kathy Cowan. First of all, I can’t help but wonder how many people call her Conan. Awesome name, Kathy! Second of all, she reminds us once again of the benefits of contacting bloggers and implementing effective blogger outreach campaigns. Sadly, it’s not something most companies are aware of, so do read on. There are also some pretty great how to’s in there.

4. Okay, I Sent my Pitch off! Crossing my Fingers! Uh, Now What? – the brilliance of this comes from Jena Coray. There’s a whole lot of planning involved before contacting bloggers: who to write to, what to offer, what to ask for, what to expect… But what happens after this is all done and the bloggers are all contacted. Do you sit idly or is there something more you can do? Check out her guest post to learn more.

5. Not-for-Bedtime Blogger Outreach Horror Stories brings you the reality of blogger outreach campaigns gone bad. Yes folks, this can happen! Try to mass email a bunch of bloggers without any consideration for their blogs? A whole lot of bad can happen to your brand. So don’t take blogger outreach lightly, as it can easily backfire. Read the article to see what mistakes you should be avoiding.

Hope you enjoyed this week’s post! We had some pretty good material to work with. See you all next week!

Photo cred: Peter Anderson

If you know of a good article, or you’ve written an article that you think should be included, email me at marc@blogdash.com.

Hello and welcome to our 64^th week of blogger outreach round-up articles. This week we’ve searched the web for the most useful articles on how to pitch a blogger and were impressed with what we have found.

Here are this week’s top 3 blog posts:

1. Our first pick for the week is Isabelle Fredborg from Famous Bloggers with 5 Tips to Cold Pitch Interviews for your Blog. For those interested in bringing fresh perspectives to their blogs and learning about how to convince specialists to say ‘Yes’ to interviews check out Isabelle’s tips and advice.
2. Mike McGrail’s article The Worst Blogger Outreach Email Ever? comes second this week. His post is a dissection of an uninspired email pitch send to him with Mike’s comments and “how not to pitch bloggers” tips attached. Using unrefined or impersonal phrases and distancing from what are the blogger’s interests are just some tips on how not to pitch bloggers.
3. Last, but not least comes Bola Ajumobi from Launchgrowjoy. Her article 4 Mistakes Small Business Owners Make When Conducting a Blog Giveaway details how blogger outreach and giveaways campaign should be done to get the most of your invested resources. For those of you that are SMB owners, we think this article might shed some light on the subject.

These are the articles we wanted to share with you this week. Enjoy reading them, learn from the authors’ experiences and share your thoughts.

Photo cred: Lars Kristian Flem

If you know of a good article, or you’ve written an article that you think should be included, email me at marc[at]blogdash.com.