Blogger Outreach is the process of connecting with bloggers for the purpose of promoting a brand and increasing it’s visibility to a niche audience. There are also SEO benefits from a well executed blogger outreach programme.
These lie primarily in the fact that when bloggers talk about your brand, they will most likely link to it. These valuable links from trusted relevant sources improve the authority level of the site and reflect positively on the rankings.
So how do you go about planning and executing a blogger outreach programme? Here are the steps to get you going:
1) Buzz monitoring: You start by listening to the buzz around your brand and identifying the source of this buzz. However not all buzz is equal. Some sites are more influential than others. You need to identify the influential sites that speak about your brand and keep a list.
2) Contact. Before you contact the bloggers, you need to have a story to tell. What is your proposition? Why should the said bloggers cooperate with you? The best type of approach is one where you provide the blogger something in return for them writing about you. For instance, if you have a new product launch, send a free sample to the blogger before launch and ask them to review it.
3) Monitor. Once you’ve established the relationship with the bloggers, monitor the traffic you receive from each of them. Delve deep into the analytics stats to try and get a feel about which bloggers have sent the most targeted traffic. Once you have that piece of information, focus on these bloggers and build relationships with new ones.
Here are some more resources on blogger outreach:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/18793026/Blogger-Outreach-101
http://www.prblogger.com/2008/03/the-seo-benefits-of-blogger-outreach/
http://moblogsmoproblems.blogspot.com/2007/09/how-to-launch-successful-blogger.html
http://www.crayonville.com/blog/?p=345
http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/116560
