A Guide to Pitching Bloggers
From an SEO standpoint, the blogosphere is a goldmine. It
provides the opportunity for marketers to build targeted natural “in-content”
links which are not only great for increasing search engine rankings, but also
can drive significant amounts of targeted traffic.
Yet building links and traction within the blogosphere is a
tricky process. There is a lot of competition. Bloggers receive dozens of
requests for links and can choose to be very selective in what they cover and
link to. Hence, as someone who has received hundreds of pitches as a blogger
and built dozens of links as a marketer, I would like to share just a few of my
tactics.
Unlike other posts on the subject that give a list of dozens
of things you should make sure to do when pitching bloggers, I would like to
take a different approach. I will go trough the process step-by-step giving pointers
along the way.
Initial Contact
It is very important that you make initial contact with a
blogger before you ask them to talk about your products and services. The most
crucial factor to pitching successfully is undoubtedly how well you know the
blog/blogger and your relationship with them. Hence, before you make your
pitch, send an e-mail to the blogger introducing yourself, sharing what you
like about the blog, and/or asking a basic question. It is important that you
get acquainted before you ask them for something. You need to have a genuine interest
for this to work properly because bloggers have enough experience dealing with
marketers to see through anyone with solely ulterior motives
The Pitch
After you have made initial contact and built a rep with the
blogger, you can make your pitch. There is no magic format or template that
will get your story published. Instead, you need to make sure that what you
have is related to the blogger’s niche and has some credible news value aside
from marketing your company.
The initial pitch needs to be short and sweet with just the
basic information. If they are interested, they will ask for more information. Unfortunately,
a lot of pitches go unanswered so that it why it is important that you build a
relationship first. People are more likely to ignore a random pitch then they
are a pitch from someone they know.
Take a few lines to share who you are and a VERY brief
overview of what you are working on and what you want covered. Make sure to
stress the aspects of your project which relate to the blog’s niche to show why
it is relevant and why it should be covered. Stress the “news value” of your
story. Pitch your story in such a way that it could easily be written into news
articles you see in any major newspaper. If the blog has covered other
products/companies in the past, see how these posts are structured and pitch
your story in such a way that it could be easily turned into one of these
posts.
The overall pitch should be short, no more than six or seven
lines. Like I mentioned before, bloggers get hundreds of e-mails and scan
through them, not read them judiciously. Use small paragraphs and make the post
as e-mail as scannable as possible (use headings if need be, short sentences,
short paragraphs).
The other important aspect of the pitch is the subject you use
for the e-mail. Again, try and keep this short (just a few words) and as
descriptive as possible. For example, if I was pitching the launch of a new
cell phone to a gadget blog, I would not set the subject to “Company X launches
revolutionary cell phone with x, y, and z features”. Instead, I would send something
along the lines of “News Tip: Company X Launches Entry Level Smartphone”
The Follow-up
Once you have made the pitch, its time for you to play the
waiting game. All you can do now is wait for a response. If you don’t get one
within three or four business days, you can send a follow-up e-mail, but I
advise you not to send more than two follow-ups. If a blogger doesn’t respond,
9 times out of 10 they are not interested.
Summary
The key takeaways of this post are that it is very important
to build a relationship (even if it is a small/short one) with the blogger
before you make a pitch, to keep the pitch short and direct, and to avoid
sending too many follow-up e-mails. Pitch a newsworthy story that relates to
your company but adds value to readers not looking to pull out their credit
cards and you should receive some positive responses.
Aditya Mahesh started his first business, a public relations firm targeted towards small business and web start-ups, in 2004 and has since started a number of online start-ups. He is currently founder and CEO of ZapPrep, a college admissions consulting company targeted to helping guide high school students through the application process.
Aditya currently teaches at an entrepreneurship course at UC Berkeley, UGBA 198 Entrepreneurship Crash Course: Starting a Business, and was the founder of the school’s largest undergraduate entrepreneur association.
This is a great article. The ideas behind approaching bloggers are pretty intuitive but still great to see written out. Thanks!
I fully agree that how you approach the initial contact is key. You may even want to post a few comments to show that you truly respect the blog before sending the first email
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