Before you can start pitching bloggers, you need to figure out which bloggers are worth pitching to. Just because someone has a blog in the niche you’re targeting doesn’t necessarily mean you should spend your time building a relationship with them and pitching them. Yes, smaller blogs can still offer good PR opportunities, but there are also a lot of blogs out there that just have no audience and carry no influence.
So, the first thing you need to do when planning blogger outreach is to identify the influencers. Which bloggers are worth reaching out to? To answer that question, you need to stick to the following tips:
- Create a list of bloggers in your target subject area — The first thing you need to do is narrow down the list of blogs that you might want to consider targeting. That means choosing the niche you’re focusing on and building a list of all the blogs in that niche. This is definitely a labor intensive process, but it’s necessary. The easiest ways to find blogs in a given niche are to search Google, take advantage of Technorati’s blog directory, and use Alltop to find blogs in your target area.
- Pay attention to posting frequency — As you begin to identify and visit the blogs in your niche, pay attention to posting frequency. How often does the blogger publish new content? Are they very active or does it seem like they’ve let their blog go? The more active a blogger is, the more opportunities you will have to share your message.
- Look at their readership — While small and up-and-coming blogs can present good PR opportunities, there is such a thing as too small. After all, how can a blogger be influential if no one reads their blog? To gauge a blog’s readership, see if they post their subscriber numbers, look at how many shares their posts tend to get, and see how many comments their posts get on average.
- Subscribe to the blogs of potential influencers — As you begin to narrow your list down, it’s a good idea to start subscribing to the blogs of those you think might be influencers. This is important for a few reasons:
- It allows you to open the lines of communication
- It lets you learn more about the blog and the blogger
- It allows you to ensure the blog is relevant to your interests
- It allows you to better gauge the blogger’s level of influence
- Keep refining your list — Your list of influential bloggers should be constantly evolving. As new influencers emerge, you’ll add them to your list, and as you discover certain bloggers aren’t as influential as you believed or simply aren’t relevant to you, you’ll remove them from your list.
Once you’ve done these things, you should have a pretty good list of influential bloggers to start with. Now, it’s up to you to take the steps necessary to start building those relationships!
This article is written by Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases (https://www.ereleases.com), the online leader in affordable press release distribution. Download your free copy of 8 Shocking Secrets Press Release Distribution Firms Don’t Want You to Know here: https://www.ereleases.com/landing3.html