The research is done, the content has been created, and a finished product is ready to live its life online. All outreach hopes to maximise effectiveness through engagement. No matter how visually stimulating the infographic, nor how many great witty quips you've included in the content- it will not attract traffic, links and shares if you don't prepare for scalable outreach to a targeted audience.
1. Don't try be one-man-band
Trying to manage a balancing act of outreaching x amount of bloggers with six different blogs is not going to work. Outsource your outreach. Make a plan for outreach strategy and set individuals both internally and externally to carry out basic tasks. Understand the capabilities of teams within and not within the business and allocate accordingly. Employing someone externally to create a list of 100+ blogs (on Group High) saves the reserves of members of the team with different skills, such as relationship builders. A well-crafted e-mail can be replicated and used as a template to send across to a large enough audience within a given time.
2. Co-ordinate Outreach
Have a figure head to check all the channels of communication. As well as dealing with business queries formatting and logistical aspects of publication, someone to be on hand to see the task management is running smoothly.
3. Hit the right targets
For maximum conversions, finding the right types of blogs and websites are important. There's no point contacting a dating website with an infographic about Mountain Yettis and Dragons. As well as using analytics, such as moz rank and domain authority and other social metrics, it's importance to target blogs and websites which are socially engaging. We have seen debates sparked out of a published infographic. Evaluate targets of power.
4. Fish for Food
Outreach before the infographic/content is published. This builds trust, and offers a degree of exclusivity. Only hit reputable blogs so its's worth giving them a 'sneak preview'. One site with a high ranking is worth more than 10 dormant blogs.
5. Helpful Tools
One tool that an outreach exec can't live without is google+ canned response. It's quick, easy, moreover, it's repeatable. Another handy tool is the yesware software, relatively cheap and it allows you to see when your e-mail is opened. This can be really useful, so you can send follow up message and track history. It can also be a good way to gauge the effectiveness of your subject. If more people open and read the e-mail, it suggests they are gripped by your headline. You can also use Boomerang for GMAIL and schedule emails to be sent at a later date. This is always good when you are e-mailing our international contacts. Also there are specific times where your e-mail is most likely to be read.
6. Building contacts and making friends
There are reasons people are compelled to share your infographic.
- The content
- Personal relations with the content creators or members of agency
- Benefits to the linker
These 3 aspects need to be met for successful scalable outreach. Personal relations are not easy to build through a string of e-mails, but it is possible. Engage with the content of the blogger, show interest but don't overdo it.
Keep a list of those who have been outreached in the past and e-mail again with your latest creation. Garnering a relationship with a small number of influencers can be milestone step for the outreach process.
To summarize- the key to successful scalable repeatable outreach is:
Outsourced outreach matched with a strong strategy with tracking of all stages through tools and task management and use always remembering to build relationships with influencers. Ideally, we can look at Pareto's law for motivation - 80% of an output from 20% of the input. In terms of infographics, this translates that by featuring on large influential placements, it will continue to be shared organically and take life forms in all sorts of places you would never outreach normally.
