Content Marketing (or call it blog outreach) is one of the most effective tools in improving traffic and page ranking nowadays. The tactic includes guest posting, where an author (mostly ghostwriters) write for their target blog or websites as a guest or a contributor.

Guest posting started a new trend in content marketing ever since Google announced content as one of the primary criteria for search engine optimization. It had become a craze that everyone tried to do. Unfortunately only a few succeeds. Below are the five basics of blog outreaching with the spices to win.

Actionable Steps to Win Big in Blog Outreach…

Carefully Pick Your Target Blog Owners

In the process of picking blog owners, you must carefully consider their Domain Authority (DA), Traffic, Trust Flow (TF) and Citation Flow (CF) you can also add all necessary SEO standards you may want to add, but most depend on these four basic rules to make things simpler.

The main responsibility of a Blog Outreach is to link building, and in doing this, you want to have links that are from reliable, established blogs on their specific niches. You certainly want your great content to have as much exposure as possible, but you don’t want to compromise the quality of the link. So make sure your target blogs meet all the necessary requirements.

Customize Your Sheets

In gathering blogs, you must have a comprehensive sheet that allows personalized email blasting later on. This means that you must have a customized sheet, allowing you to list all the necessary information such as; (1) Name of Blog Owner, (2) Title/s and Link/s to their previous article that you want to relate to your pitch, (3) Link to your own blog that relates to the article you also linked, and (4) if possible add their emails.

You may think that this will make your sheet quite messed up, but you will all see the beauty of this later on. Make sure that you get this information right because you will need this on the next step.

Personalized Email Blasting

This is the reason why you want to customize your sheet. Nowadays, blog outreach is no longer new, and most of the blog owners would only see your email on their spams. So how do you get your emails acknowledged?

The answer is to go personal. Avoid looking so spammy in your email. Make your subject line catchy, personal and controversial. One example to this is to have the name of the blog owner on the subject line, that will give an impression that the sender is probably an acquaintance even though your email is not familiar to them.

If you don’t have their names personally, you can put the title of their recent published article on the subject line. It sounds like crack, but it works.

Avoid using words that are so fancy sounding, if you find the first two samples time consuming, you can also just directly tell them your intention- just cut to the chase. As blog owners who have high traffic, they are so used to receiving emails from blog outreach managers who want to have a guest post on their website.

It’s not something new, so chances are they receive hundreds if not thousands of emails everyday. Making your subject line unique and personal gives you an edge over others who just sent their emails in bulk. This may consume time, but as they say, “slowly, but surely.”

Include Links to Your Already Published Articles and Blog

As mentioned in the second step, include a link to their recently published article in your email, this gives them an idea that you went to their site, showing them genuine interest on doing guest posting.

If your subject line tells them you like their recent article, make sure to add that to your email text. If you want to go the extra mile, add a link to one of your blog posts that relates to theirs. Not everyone does this, so you’re going to stand out.

After establishing genuine intention, pitch your article idea and ask them for any article they might like to have on their blogs. If you state their direct benefit right away, they will surely be waiting for it. You can also tell them you have content ready and ask them if they want to check it out.

Maintain a Reliable Social Media Profile

Do not forget to maintain a reliable social media profile. This is basic, but some people fail to keep this in mind. Places like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Klout and LinkedIn are just a few of the social media avenues you can freely take advantage of.

Because of familiarity, blog owners want to see your genuine intention to have a guest post on their website. They also want to make sure they are talking to real people, having a social media account they are assured that you exist and that you’re a real expert in that field.

Your first strategy is to build a genuine relationship with blog owners. Adding a link to your social media account on your ending signature is a total plus!

Send Great Content

This is where everything boils down to. The content you send should be the content you agreed to send to them, and it should be fresh, not a rehashed, generic topic that doesn’t talk specific samples.

Try to question the prevailing trend and create a good headline. This is the writer’s responsibility, but if you give the writer the exact parameters of the article, your chances of getting a live guest post are higher.

Before sending your content make sure that the text and the pictures being used have copyright permission.

Takeaway

There’s no secret to successful blog outreaching; it’s just a matter of great communication and keeping to what you said you are going to do.