Content outreach is hard work. It often feels like trying to get blood from a stone.
It’s also boring work. You become a square-eyed drone after spending an entire day sending emails.
Then you wait anxiously, afraid that all of that hard, boring work will bear no results…
But when that first response does roll in, it gives you a feeling of pure elation. Yayy!
You need to know the best content outreach tactics so that you can feel the elation of a successful campaign more often than the bitter disappointment of a full day’s work with nothing to show for it.
Why is Content Outreach Important?
You can’t just expect people to stumble across your content anymore.
When browsing the web, is someone going to go and read a blog belonging to a random small business or are they going to head on over to Entrepreneur or Wired?
You know the answer.
You have to get your content out there in front of eyeballs. Not just that, you have to get your content in front of the right eyeballs.
That means influencers within your niche – you might not have an audience yet, but influencers do.
They have hundreds or thousands of people who read their articles and follow them on social media.
With content marketing, you can tap into an already established audience.
What’s more, this audience is already interested in your niche and so could be interested in the products or services you have to offer.
If your outreach results in a mention and/or link in an influencer’s post then that’s great, because the way people learn about businesses and products has changed…
According to The Content Marketing Institute, 70% of people would rather learn about a company through an article than an ad.
Readers trust the influencer’s recommendation and trust the content that they share.
So there’s that… and we haven’t even mentioned the fact that building links on high authority sites can make a huge difference in terms of organic traffic and your bid to scrape your way to the top of the Google rankings.
Content outreach needs to be a key part of your marketing strategy – a couple of shares on your company’s social media pages are not enough.
People need to see the brilliant content that you have produced. Then, of course, that content leads to sales…
Nine out of ten B2B buyers say that online content has a moderate to major effect on their purchasing decisions.
So here’s what you need to do to make content outreach work for you:
Plan Your Outreach Before You Create Content
There are tactical ways to create content in order to get the attention of influencers. One way you can get influencers to promote your work is by creating reciprocity.
In other words, if you link to an influencer’s site in your content there’s a chance that they will do something for you in return, e.g. a social share or even a backlink.
One fine way to mention influencer’s sites in your content is by interviewing and quoting experts.
To expand on this idea, you can purposefully use any kind of information in your content, such as a case study or statistic, with a view to reaching out to the source of that information when the content is published.
The more sources you add, the more influencers you can reach out to – keep your post looking natural though, obviously.
To this purpose, infographics work particularly well.
You can name a vast range of sources at the bottom of your infographic and later reach out to those sources.
The thing is, people like to see their work represented in a creative way and really appreciate what you’ve created with their data or information.
Whether you use an influencer’s work as a source within your content or when creating an infographic, all you need to do afterwards is simply reach out and say thanks.
Hopefully, they’ll be so flattered that they reciprocate with a share or link.
Here’s an example of an outreach email you might send:
Hi [name]
I just wanted to let you know that I used your excellent resource [Title or URL] to create a piece of content recently. It was fascinating, especially the part about [XYZ].
You can take a look here: [URL]
Thanks again and keep up the amazing work!
Generic vs. Personalised Outreach Emails
Naturally, the outreach template above is a personalised message.
But what about when you’re reaching out to influencers and sites that you didn’t use as a source in your content?
Should you create a basic email and send it to hundreds of blogs? Or take a more personal approach?
Well, sending the same email to all of the people on your outreach list will of course save time.
You might use a tool to fire out a tonne of emails.
Yet, you’re much more likely to get a response by making your email personal.
Take a look at the following examples:
Generic Outreach Email
Personalised Outreach Email
Which email would you be more likely to respond to?
The second one, right?
It’s way less spammy and shows that you genuinely take an interest in the recipient’s work and thus your content or request will be relevant to them.
Reach Out To The Relevant People
Now you know how to craft the perfect outreach email, you need to know who to send your email to.
As we mentioned, personalised outreach emails show the recipient how your content is relevant to them.
The keyword here is relevancy.
Reach out to relevant influencers so that you don’t waste your time, the more relevant and the more specific the better.
Kissmetrics has a great guide on how to work with influencers to boost your content marketing, along with advice on where to find them.
There are other factors to take into consideration too when performing outreach…
The blog or influencer needs to have a high domain authority and a large social media following.
You’re looking for high exposure and strong links after all.
Tools like Ahrefs and BuzzSumo allow you to search for relevant content and display the authority of a site along with the search results, which can speed up your outreach campaign.
Summing Up
Here’s a checklist to help you remember these content outreach tactics:
Share this Image On Your Site
So, you have three major steps here that will make your content outreach campaigns more successful.
The first is to think about the kind of outreach you’re going to perform before you even begin creating your content.
This allows you to integrate an outreach strategy into your blog posts.
Then you need to go ahead and send personalised outreach emails as opposed to generic ones.
Yes, it takes more time but it’s just what you’ve gotta do, you lazy marketer!
Finally, make sure the sites and influencers you’re reaching out to are highly relevant to your content.
It’s common sense really but should not be forgotten.