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As a marketer who isn’t necessarily the most well-known business personality in the world, the challenge of appealing to a big time blogger can seem intimidating at first. However, after you’ve started communicating with them and have learned how to word and format your pitches, it really isn’t that difficult to network with people who are themselves trying to network with as many people as possible. See, the beautiful thing about networking is that it is almost always mutually beneficial – the blogger gets their perks in the form of more traffic, a new acquaintance, and inside access to yet another area of the niche, while the marketer or business gets to essentially use the blog as a platform for promotion. Guest authoring is one way to have a brand mentioned on a blog, but how do you take it a step further and get the chief blogger to talk about your business themselves?

Engage in Blogger Outreach

You’re not going to get very far just waiting around for bloggers to randomly discover your product and extol its awesome advantages from the mountaintops. A proactive approach is necessary and is best facilitated by a comprehensive blogger outreach campaign. Basically, you’re going to be sending the blogger a nice, non-spammy, personalized email that either pitches an idea for a blog post, offers a free piece of content for them to publish, enquires about promotional opportunities on their blog, and/or offers them something. Unfortunately, there’s no set template you can follow to achieve optimal results, so some creativity and communication skills will be needed.

Offer Freebies or Discounts

One of the best ways to appeal to a blogger is to offer them something free or at a highly discounted price. If what you’re offering is at all worthwhile to the blogger, they’ll usually agree to write a review about it. Be aware though, many bloggers will be completely honest and unbiased in their reviews, so don’t expect every blogger to paint your business as the best thing since sliced bread. Exposing some of the cons of your product/service (if there are any) is sometimes part of the game, but on the bright side it’s also a great way to gather feedback and make improvements.

Become a Mutually Beneficial Affiliate

By “affiliate,” we’re not talking about the conventional definition of the term, where you earn commissions for promoting a product or service, we’re referring to the act of becoming affiliated with bloggers in a way that provides benefits to their blog. How can you suddenly make a difference for a blog that is already getting plenty of traffic, you ask? By providing content that the blog’s readers will like and share. If you’re constantly giving a blogger access to great content that is only serving to increase the popularity of their site, and you’re offering them freebies and discounts as per the previous tip, you’re pretty much guaranteed a foot in the door at any given moment.

Overall, the more you stand to offer a blogger, the more likely it is that you’ll be able to build a long lasting relationship with them. Just as in any other industry, sometimes you’ve got to give to get.