If you’re a community manager tasked with building relationships through blogger outreach, you might find yourself wondering what the most effective ways are to get started. Fear not, with quite a bit of blogger outreach under my belt, I’m here to help!
Whether your community is teachers, those in the public service sector or college students, there are a few things these bloggers have in common: a passion for their area of expertise.
Here are a few of my personal tips when you’re reaching out and making new BFFLs (Best Friends For Life):
Find The Right People
You could craft the best email in the world, send out the most viral tweet of your life, or comment in the most sophisticated way, but none of that matters unless you’re reaching out to the right people. What I mean is: bloggers who are active in their community, are open to others posting on their sites, and are willing to communicate (like write back to you) at all. Once you find these people, keep track of them. My favorite tool is Buzzstream.
Know Your Audience
This may seem obvious, but not all bloggers that post about a general subject have the same opinions or views. Take time to understand the person you are reaching out to. Do you have anything in common? Maybe you went to the same college or grew up in a nearby town, maybe you recently attended a concert that they were at too, or maybe you both have a serious obsession with bull dogs (shout out to Erica Moss)…whatever it is, take some time to understand the person you are reaching out to so you can offer them something they’ll actually want.
Read Their Blogs
I can’t stress this point enough: READ THEIR BLOGS! (Sorry for the shouty capitals.) If you’re reaching out to a blogger that is super passionate about homeschooling their children, it’s probably best not to pitch them about the school of education you wo srk for, unless of course you’re sharing a piece of content that may be a relevant resource. Also, be careful not to pitch topics they have recently/already written about—this is a sure way to show you didn’t actually read anything on their site. Read their blog, reference posts you like and communicate what you’re looking for.
Be For Real & Personal
Tell the blogger who you are: “A little about me… It’s important to be a person and not a robot. Let the blogger get to know you and connect yourself with them in a real way…perhaps connect them to your Twitter account or professional blog. Avoid starting an email with a sales pitch and put yourself in their shoes. Ask yourself, “What would I think if I received this email? If you wouldn’t be flattered or excited to connect, then you’ll want to switch it up.
Care About What You Do
I know every community manager doesn’t work in their industry of choice, but every community manager has an innate sense of caring about community and connecting. Use your passion of connecting with people to drive your blogger relations—it will come across in your outreach, I promise!
Offer Something of Substance
Why are you reaching out? Do you want to guest post? Connect on social media? Add a resource link? Share an infographic or other piece of content? After you’ve been super real and drawn connections, tell them why you so badly wanted to reach out. Honesty really is the best policy.
The Art of Follow Up
Follow up! You’re not be annoying (unless you do it 5 times in a week). Your original email could have gone to spam or maybe the blogger you reached out to had the busiest week of their life. Don’t be scared to give a little nudge: “… I just wanted to make sure you got my initial email since I haven’t heard back. ↠it’s all you have to say! And if the blogger does let you post on their site, share a resource, etc – Thank them! A simple thank you can go a long way and may even help you in the future.
The above approaches are only a handful of the many different ways to effectively connect with your blogger community—I didn’t even brush the surface of content, but it’s a start! What other approaches have you found effective? Have you done something super awesome? Let me know!
Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of articles about blogger outreach. Stay tuned next week for the next installment: how to keep bloggers continuously engaged.
Sarah Fudin works in community relations at 2U, which partners with University of Southern California's online Masters in Education program allowing current and aspiring teachers to earn their special education certification. She has recently begun working with 2U's partner, the George Washington University School of Public Health, as the community manager for their online MPH program. In her free time Sarah enjoys running, reading and Pinkberry frozen yogurt! Follow her on Twitter @sarahfudin and Google+.
I dig the article and the series concept – would like to hear how you choose which bloggers to target. Certainly, finding influencers or hubs with a high degree centrality is important – as well as those folks who are not as well connected but who represent network intermediary possibilities (connections from one group of people to another through some strong relationship) – are the goals. But how do you go about identifying those people?In my experience, there are a few ways – one is just flat-out observation. This is useful for folks with not a ton of resources at their disposal… a small team or just individual grunt work. Not that this is a bad thing, in this case, this is a relationship building opportunity – but identifying which relationships will yield the most beneficial results is the goal, and must be done using… best judgment – which is only as strong as the individual wielding said judgment (and let’s be honest, there is a business-related mind-set behind this activity, and not some best friend hunt). Another is X web resource- some sort of authoritative ‘Best bloggers in X industry’ type of starting point… someone will have put this up as a blog post or may even run a website that lists these blogs. I’m thinking something like … technorati, Klout (this is me retching) or even a blog roll sitting on the side of some well-known industry blog…And another is X platform – some sort of analytics program – or influence measuring algorithm that is built into something that you probably have to buy… something that companies or well-endowed (monetarily) entrepreneurs might be able to afford.What would you suggest, Sarah? For me it’s been a mixture of the first and second option – I think it’s probably that way for a lot of community managers/social media professionals.
Waasss… my comment deleted?
Pitching was such a pain in the behind. Thankfully I’ve gotten past most of it and I’ve created a nice community of bloggers for the company. They’re all nicely connected in a FB group I run. Not to mention they’ve offered up the most input and feedback on blogger outreach/relations and how to run blogger programs that work with them. I’m interested to see what the next piece will offer up. Keeping them continuously engaged is the fun part.Â
Jmodio Thanks for comment! FB groups definitely offer a great place for community — but what about new linkbuilding and relationship opportunities? That’s where I think blogger outreach comes into play.
Ryan Crowe sorry I didn’t see your comment — what’s up?
(reposting) I dig the article and the series concept – would like to hear how youchoose which bloggers to target. Certainly, finding influencers or hubs with a high degree centrality is important – as well as those folks who are not as well connected but who represent network intermediary possibilities (connections from one group of people to another throughsome strong relationship) – are the goals. But how do you go about identifying those people?In my experience, there are a few ways – one is just flat-out observation. This is useful for folks with not a ton ofresources at their disposal… a small team or just individual grunt work. Not that this is a bad thing, in this case, this is a relationship building opportunity – but identifying which relationships will yield the most beneficial results is the goal, and must be done using… best judgment – which is only as strong as the individual wielding said judgment (and let’s be honest, there is a business-related mind-set behind this activity, and not some best friend hunt). Another is X web resource- some sort of authoritative ‘Best bloggers in X industry’ type of starting point… someone will have put this up as a blog post or may even run a website that lists these blogs. I’m thinking something like … technorati, Klout (this is me retching) or even a blog roll sitting on the side of some well-known industry blog…And another is X platform – some sort of analytics program – or influence measuring algorithm that is built into something that you probably have to buy… something that companies or well-endowed (monetarily) entrepreneursmight be able to afford.What would you suggest, Sarah? For me it’s been a mixture of the first and second option – I think it’s probably that way for a lot of community managers/social media professionals.
sarahfudin Ryan Crowe Theeere we go, reposted it!
sorry for the weird words running together, had to copy/pasta and the formatting got a little strange…. just imagine that it’s perfect.
sarahfudin As Jenn was my guide, she introduced me to Buzz Stream. That’s my tool for keeping track of everything. I don’t necessarily do link-building for us because the blogger programs we run are on behalf of the clients we’re working with. In my time I’ve put together around 800 bloggers. The FB group right now is around 150 of the one’s I’ve worked with the most and I’m the most engaged with. I actually designed welcome cards for the FB group that we have in the office. When I add someone to the group, I’ll write a personal message on the card and send it in the mail.
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Jmodio sarahfudin Like what you mentioned every community manager don’t get to work within the industry of their choice. How do you think outreach strategy can be implement when managing and growing client’s community? Should community managers be impersonating the client or building a relationship with bloggers as themselves with an intention in a transparency process?
sookieshuen It’s a mix of things. You need to look at the client you’re working with and the voice they portray. Ideally, it’s great to have a mix of your voice while representing the client’s voice as well. That’s why the CM needs to be the right fit before hand. Especially in blogger outreach, conversation should come natural, you shouldn’t be struggling to find a voice when contacting complete strangers.It also depends on who you’re doing outreach to and the type of personality they might have. I work with a lot of parents and moms, so dialogue in my outreach is a lot more casual and personable. One of my bloggers went as far to ask for my boss’ email to let them know how great I was with the group. That might not be the case if I was I reaching out to someone in say politics. Then it’s not so much about your personality, as it is a more professional demeanor. It’s still great to be relatable, having invested time in research about that particular blogger and hitting on that. All in all, there really isn’t a one size fits all. You need to know both sides and what they’re looking for, how they talk, act, and respond. Knowledge is power, the more you know going into it, the better your chances at success coming out. I’m not sure how helpful this was. It’s still early. Feel free to reach out to me on twitter if you’d like. This is my handle.Â
Jmodio Oh, Joe. That’s indeed very helpful. I guess it’s all still quite new to me, and it’s a learning curve throughout the way. I’m glad I saw this post, and would love to keep in touch via Twitter. Have already followed you 🙂 Thanks again, Joe!