Four essential components to building an outreach strategy
Written by Helen Jackson, Content Marketing Executive, HitSearch
On face value, it can seem as though building a successful outreach strategy is simple. You just email a few websites here and there, write a generic blog post and hope for a link back, right?
Actually, there’s more to outreach than might first meet the eye. Creating a piece of content specifically for the industry website’s target audience, keeping them engaged and interested, can be a tall order.
Here are 4 essential components to building a successful outreach strategy from Hit Search…
1. Your primary objective shouldn’t be to obtain a link
If you approach any third party website with the aim of gaining a link, this objective will inevitably come across in both the piece you’re wanting to share and the content of your initial email. You need to change your entire outlook on outreach if this is your main objective.
The more naturally written pieces that aim to genuinely interest and engage the website’s audience, should be your new objective. There’s a higher chance if you create something worth sharing, your company can obtain natural backlinks. Surely educating the audience about your brand’s knowledge without over-promoting your brand, is much more valuable than a link within a generic blog post?
2. Utilise a solid outreach platform
There are so many outreach platforms out there for your brand to take advantage of, but why bother, there’s Google, right? Google – or any search engine for that matter – can only give you so much. Who has the team resources to whittle the hours away manually searching time after time for new opportunities, when there are platforms that are designed for that purpose alone?
Not only can you group contacts together so you can send a targeted press release, but you can also search by industry and make sure your team know exactly who is contacting which publications or bloggers.
3. Make sure outreach isn’t an afterthought
Once you’ve got your content strategy in place, you need to start sourcing new content outreach opportunities. Approaching bloggers with pre-written content is a big no, no and shows you don’t really care about their audience enough to write a unique and tailored piece of content.
Therefore, including the blogger in the decision of the topic or angle of the piece is a must! If it doesn’t fit in with their blog you shouldn’t try and make it fit – in this case, it’s not meant to be so move along!
4. Make your approach stand out
In research conducted by Econsultancy, it was reported that over 65% of bloggers surveyed reported that they were contacted several times a week and – furthermore – a massive 52% of bloggers prefer to be contacted by email over any other form of communication. This highlights the significance and importance of your chosen communication tactics, and the impact it can have on your chances of working with a particular blogger.
What makes your business special? You need to highlight the benefits of your content and how your content would perfectly engaged the blogger or website’s audience.
