Building relationships for the purpose of sharing relevant content that delivers mutually beneficial results, brand visibility/developed thought leadership status and for the website, more traffic and more great content! Perfect!
But, how can you actually get the attention of the bloggers? Here are our 3 best approaches to building relationships with bloggers.
It’s fantastic if you manage to obtain a link to your site from a highly authoritative third party website naturally, but if that’s all you’re after when you approach bloggers, then you’ll never be successful a successful outreachmarketer. The aim is to provide relevant and interesting content to the blogger, to help build your brand awareness and thought leadership, of course, but to ultimately provide the readers with something of value!
Knowing the name of the person you need to speak with, is a crucial first step to building your relationship. With bloggers receiving sometimes hundreds of emails a day, from brands wanting to collaborate with them, it can be difficult to set yourself apart. We’ve witnessed so many generic emails, with the name of the company just cut out and replaced with the company they’re contacting!
Top tip: Putting time and effort into research all of your outreaching opportunities will definitely help set you apart from some companies. To really set yourself apart from others, you need to wow the blogger with a fantastic PR idea, something they really want to be a part of. Inviting the fashion blogger to take a look at your latest collection photo shoot, or even getting them involved in the photo shoot, could be a good idea to start with.
Taking an interest in the blogger’s content, can help you build that initial connection. You’re expecting them to share your content, so why should they share yours if you don’t take an interest in their posts? Most bloggers spend hours and hours a day on their blog, making sure their content is perfect for their readers, so you need to understand that they probably won’t accept a post straight off the shelf. You need to respect the amount of work and effort they’ve put into this blog to build it up to the high standard that it currently is.
Top tip: Follow all the bloggers you’re interested in working with and starting taking a genuine interest in their posts and social media community. Then, once you approach them, they might already be familiar with you from your interactions and interest with their blog. If they’re not familiar with you, no worries, your conversation will still be a lot more natural when you talk about how your content will perfectly fit with their blog, you can start pulling out content you loved on their blog from months ago!