The world of blogging has grown incredibly and has developed into something we now know as the blogosphere. The blogosphere is a community; it’s one that could be the size of a large country. Thought to be almost 200 million in total, blogs have become entire empires and SEOs should recognise the importance of building relationships with these micro-journalists. Because the blogging population is not about to slow down.
What began in the 1980s as virtual bulletin boards and forums, has now developed into something very sophisticated. Everyday people – who simply have a passion for whatever they are blogging about – are building and designing the most stylish websites.
Guest blogging for scalable link building is not a myth. It’s very real and if you want to build natural, high PR, high authority links, it’s time you dipped your toes into the world of guest blogging. But there are ways to do it properly.
7 Top Tips for Blogger Outreach
Blogger outreach is easy. If you get it right. By that, we mean it’s not rocket science, but you have to invest a little bit of your time into doing it well. Here are 7 fantastic tips on how to administer successful outreach to bloggers.
1. Use social media as a form of contact – have you noticed how some web owners restrict their email address to the Contact Me page only, while their social media buttons are sitewide and at the bottom of every post? As a general rule, it seems that bloggers prefer connecting through social media. But contacting someone cold can still seem contrived, so building a relationship important.....
2. Build relationships through social media – Twitter and Facebook are the easiest platforms for building connections. You can very easily share other people’s links and posts, provide shout-outs and mentions, join conversations and debates and provide flattery without overdoing it. It does take time and you have to be patient, but this is a great way of warming up before you seal the deal with a guest post offer.
3. Find opportunities through social media – if you’re yet to find authoritative blogs that are relevant to your website, using Twitter or Facebook searches can be a good start. Using the Twitter hash tag (#) can help you tap into the trending topics as well as the subject matters which relate to your company. Facebook groups and fan pages open up a further network of connections, and just by simply socialising and interacting with other people, you will come across some great opportunities.
4. Use Twitter lists to organise your contacts – for some, the function of Twitter lists is dormant. But there is a great use for these lists as they can organise your contacts. This way, you will always have a pool of bloggers that you can turn to when you are looking for a link. There are ways to be discreet about this; even better, turn your list into an ego massage by naming it ‘favourite blogs’ or ‘the best bloggers to follow’.
5. Tailor your approach for every blogger – this is much more time consuming, especially if you’re accustomed to sending out blanket emails. But the generic approach doesn’t work well with blog owners and you will get much better response when you spend time researching their favourite topics. Suggest a few article titles which are relevant to the blog owner, or maybe even suggest a response / follow up article to one of their existing posts.
6. Establish common ground with the blogger – going in cold and introducing yourself can seem very forced, but if you can find common ground and start a conversation about something you both love / hate or perhaps even disagree with the blogger’s views, you can start a meaningful conversation. Both flattery and controversy can help you grab attention, so researching your blogger will pay off.
7. Comment on blog posts – every blogger wants more to build more comments on their blog posts. If you comment on people’s posts, you can get yourself noticed in the blogosphere, make your thoughts and opinions heard, and appear genuinely interested. There are many commenting platforms out there such as OpenID.net, IntenseDebate.com, Disquis.com and Gravatar.com which allow you to have globally recognised avatars for blog commenting. Use a real profile picture because bloggers like to interact with human beings, not companies.
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