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Blogger outreach is a term that is often vaguely thrown around during marketing discussions. In fact, many people still confuse blogger outreach with guest posting, even though the two are entirely different (yet closely related) branches of promotion. To define it in a sentence, blogger outreach is the practice of reaching out to bloggers and blog owners in an attempt to have them develop and publish a review, news story, journal entry, article, infographic, or other piece of content on their blog in order to directly or indirectly promote and/or link to your product, service, or site. Guest posting is similar, as you’re also reaching out to bloggers, but instead of asking them to produce the content, you’d be the one to supply it as a guest author. With that said, here are the main processes involved in blogger outreach:

Building and Filtering a List of Prospects

The first step most marketers take when getting ready to launch a well-rounded blogger outreach campaign is to build a list of authoritative blogs that publish content relevant to the target audience. The act of discovering new blogs is typically done through a combination of keyword research tools, brainstorming, manual web searches, browsing directories and social media, and taking note of new blogs as you go along. Organizing and filtering the list is usually done using the column sorting features in a spreadsheet application like Microsoft Excel, with attributes like domain authority and inbound links being some of the criteria used to refine the list.

Developing and Delivering the Pitch

Once you’ve prioritised your outreach efforts and have decided who you’re going to reach out to first, it’s time to develop a cordial and convincing pitch that will establish contact and make your intentions known. In most cases, simpler is better, but it’s always best to avoid using an exact template every time and to customise each pitch so that you’re not flagged as spam. The most common method of outreach is via email, although it is also possible to conduct blogger outreach via social media, contact forms, and phone.

Network Expansion and Maintenance

Once you’ve started making progress in a campaign, the process becomes as easy as following a set schedule. As you browse the web, you’ll inevitably come across new outreach opportunities, and staying active on social media will increase your chances of stumbling upon great blogs that you normally might not encounter. Be sure to stay in touch with the most influential bloggers in your niche and focus on producing content that shows you have something to contribute.

Rinse and Repeat

So that about sums up the marketing method we’ve come to know as blogger outreach. After you become proficient at the three processes above, all that’s left to do is to continue refining your list and looking for ways to promote existing pieces that were produced as a result of your outreach campaign. Driving traffic to the blogs will show bloggers that you’re serious about promoting their posts, which will make them more inclined to collaborate with you again in the future.