Why Networking with Bloggers Is an Essential Marketing Tactic
The term "blogger outreach" came into vogue a few years ago when PR firms realized that the popularity of many blogs had outstripped that of traditional mainstream media sources.
So, identifying and reaching out to influential industry blogs became a common pitching practice in the PR arsenal.
As blogging continues to expand and content marketing becomes a foundational element of marketing for every industry, the need to connect with other bloggers goes far beyond that of a public relations tactic.
Blogger outreach isn’t some narrowly cast marketing tactic. In fact, it’s not really even about blogs and blogging. It’s simply a way of addressing business practices that deliver highly relevant marketing results today.
Blogger outreach is simply the act of finding other relevant content producers and networking with them in ways that create mutually beneficial relationships.
Blogger outreach plays a central role in your content marketing
I’ve long advised content marketers to consider a total body of work approach that amounts to determining landmark themes and committing to those themes for each month of the year.
With your twelve landmark themes in mind you can identify theme related guest bloggers, guest blog opportunities, podcast guests and even long form, ebook style content to map out and fill your editorial needs.
Blogger outreach is a crucial aspect of your SEO and link networking activity
One of the best possible links back to your website is one that appears in the body of a blog post on well read industry blog.
By establishing guest blog opportunities and providing space on your blog for guest content you can build very useful organic links to your content.
Your blogger outreach activities can and should be extended to the sharing of relevant content in social networks and distribution of relevant blog content in your regular email newsletters.
Blogger outreach is vital in developing strong strategic relationships
Once you start to develop relationships with other blogging organizations through your outreach work you have the grounds for potential strategic business partners.
Quite often these relationship can turn into awareness through webinars, co marketing of ebooks, affiliate and referral relationships and even joint ventures.
Below are five tools that can help you get started identifying, pitching and managing blogger outreach for your marketing and content efforts.
Use these tools to research and build lists of blogs that create content that is relevant to your major content themes. Follow, comment and share content from these blogs to start the process of building relationships and providing value. Once you’ve done this start to invite some bloggers to write guest posts for your site.
Consistently working on building relationships with other content producers is some of the most potent networking you can do today.
