Outreach: How to find and work with influential bloggers

If you take fashion bloggers, for example. The large majority of the blogs share very similar layouts, fonts, design elements. Similarly, the content between them is often indistinguishable. Cameras on smartphones are improving constantly, blogging platforms such as WordPress are becoming easier to use. The problem: it is no easy task to spot whose influential and who isn’t anymore. Anyone looking to build their brand through blogger outreach methods, must do so diligently.

Using metrics such as trust and citation flows offers a way of separating the bloggers worth working with from the ones who aren’t. Although this can be an additional, time-intensive step it is worth it. There is no worth in spending hours developing relationships with bloggers only to receive very limited exposure and poor quality link building. The reality of blogger outreach is that it’s a highly time-intensive method from start to finish.

One of the biggest temptations is to bulk-email long lists of bloggers with a stock email. Successful bloggers receive a huge amount of emails from prospective brands looking to work with them. You can guess which emails are chucked into the trash first.

Take the time to research each blogger, and tailor your communication with them. Mention that you liked their last review, or that you had always wanted to visit that city they recently went to. Simple but effective. Blogger outreach is primarily an exercise in building relationships, so make the effort to introduce yourself properly.

Having distinguishable objectives is a vital component in any blogger outreach campaign. If the aim is link-building then make it clear in your communications with bloggers that you would like X amount of references to your home page, or product page. If you want to generate attention around a new product, offer them out for review. If you want to grow your mailing list, or gain more followers on your social media channels, make that clear in your communications. Blogger outreach is far more beneficial when it can be measured and quantified.

Although blogger outreach can seem tedious and time-consuming, it’s worth making the effort. Valuable long term working relationships with bloggers that can be utilised multiple times are far superior to poor quality link-building exercises sustained through mass-emailing.

Or, in short, to borrow Hunter S. Thompson’s words: ‘Anything worth doing, is worth doing right…’