[Originally posted as Case Study: Long-Tail Blogger Outreach- Campaign Execution on Agencyside] Part 1 and Part 2 of this article series covered an overview of blogger outreach and then the research, message creation, and social media news release (SMNR). This third and last part will explain the actual execution of a long-tail blogger outreach campaign. As a reminder, the case study we’re using as an example is one we conducted for Kimberly-Clark Healthcare that netted the client 269 earned media mentions that we estimated resulted in about 8 million impressions.
Once we’ve got our final list of bloggers, our SMNR, and our email message created, we’re ready to send. While the prep work is of course really important, the outreach itself is where the heavy-lifting comes in. If a blogger receives an email and takes the time to hit reply, he or she gets a reply from one of our staff as quickly as we can, within the hour if possible. You can’t send emails asking bloggers to post for you and then fail to answer their questions for 2 days — do that, and you’ve very likely lost a post. While we rarely get negative replies from bloggers, if a blogger happens to get upset at our pitch, he’ll be more angry if we don’t get back to him right away.
One of our “secrets” is so obvious we can’t believe how many people fail to do it: ALWAYS reach out again! Always, always, always, email the bloggers who don’t reply at all at least one more time, maybe two. In fact, the second email outreach always garners the most posts, far more than the first. If you email only once, you are giving up halfway through the race. It is also really important to follow up, remind, and generally “nudge” bloggers who responded by email that they would post. Don’t assume they will. This kind of gentle and respectful follow-through converts lots of “maybe laters” to posts for our clients.
Here’s one final secret to our success: it is essential to treat every single blogger with as much time, attention, and kindness as you would lavish on mainstream media and the so-called A-list blogs and bloggers. You are asking these people to take their precious time to do something for you. Anything that wastes their time or takes them for granted is bad blogger relations and a disservice to your client. And always say thank you!
Depending on how big your list of bloggers is, you need to be prepared for all this responding, reminding, and thanking to take a significant time commitment. The reward, though, is also significant: widespread coverage of your client’s message across the blogosphere. [Originally posted as Case Study: Long-Tail Blogger Outreach- Campaign Execution on Agencyside] Via Marketing Conversation
