What Is Blogger Outreach & Should I Be Doing It?

Ready to take your company’s social media to the next level? If you haven’t already, expand into the world of bloggers. As social media continues to grow, there are now bloggers covering every topic imaginable–from tech to fashion! Companies everywhere have no excuse for not performing blogger outreach, no matter their industry. These influencers are the new celebrities and tastemakers impacting people’s buying decisions, thus converting to sales. Working with bloggers can now make or break your brand as the benefits of an active campaign are immense.

Keep reading for the best tips and practices to run a successful and influential campaign.

So…What Is Blogger Outreach?

Blogger outreach is the process of reaching out to influencers proposing the opportunity to work with your brand on a gifted or paid campaign across their social media platforms. By doing this, each party is helping the other out. It’s a win-win situation.

The strategy of working with online social media mavens will help your business by building a partner network, reaching new customers, building brand awareness, and gaining user generated content (UGC) for reposting.

Why Perform Blogger Outreach?

The best part about blogger outreach and campaigns is that there’s nothing to lose, you can only gain!

Working with influencers will help your company achieve:

• Brand exposure and awareness
• Access to niche audiences
• Followers
• Targeted traffic
• Conversion
• Quality content
• Secure, trusted relationships
• Etc.

How to do Blogger Outreach

The two typical ways of reaching out to influencers are as follows:

• Send your product with a personalized note via snail mail and cross your fingers hoping they post about you!
• Email or DM the influencer asking to participate in a  
  • Gifted campaign
  • Paid campaign

Deciding whether you should do a gifted or paid campaign relies on many aspects. Is the influencer you’re working with micro or macro? Does your campaign entail them posting multiple images or videos? If so, you should probably go the paid route. But if you’re sending a micro influencer a product that fits perfectly with their personal brand for just one post, some may agree to the gifted option (sans payment).

Blogger Outreach Best Practices

But wait! Before you click that ‘Send’ button or ship that package, make sure you have all of the following checked off of your to-do list!

• Have a Goal
  • What do you want out of this campaign? Are you looking for more quality content to fill your feed? Or do you want to reach a larger and more niche audience to bring about greater brand awareness? Having a goal and purpose will direct you to choose the best influencers for each of your campaigns.
• Know Your Brand and Audience
  • Be aware of your target market. If you are selling a product that consists of alcohol, you don’t want to work with an influencer whose followers are under 21 years old. You’d want to work with influencers who are 21+ years old and LDA compliant. Recognizing your brand and its audience–both their demographics and psychographics–will lead to a more successful outcome.
• Understand Your Influencer
  • Do your research and set your targets smartly. Know their personality, what they enjoy posting about, and how your product/service can help them and fit with their personal brand.
• Keep It Simple
  • When emailing an influencer, stay concise and direct. Get to the point and keep it easy to understand. The quicker and more straightforward you explain your product and campaign, the more likely an influencer will want to collaborate.
• Build Trust & Relationships
  • After multiple communications, don’t disappear. Instead, stay connected. See how they’re doing and what opportunities they have on the rise. Maybe they’ll be traveling in the near future, and this would fit an upcoming paid campaign. Or suggest you meet over coffee or drinks. Establishing strong personal relationships open the possibility to work together again in the future.

Performing outreach can be difficult in the beginning but if you follow the steps and strategies above you should be on your way to becoming a blogger outreach master!

Have any other questions or tips? Let us know on twitter @socialfly.