Effective Outreach & Relationship StrategyBy Selena Narayanasamy

(@selenavidya)

What’s the secret to outreach?

First off, there isn’t one.

▶Time▶DATA▶Relationships▶VALUE-ADD▶Truly enjoying conversation▶Hyper targeting

What’s the secret to outreach?

FIRST: Identify Your Value-Add. Not all outreach revolves around pitching content.

Is it unique data or studies? Is it expertise? Is it an exclusive? Is your website or product an excellent resource for their audience?

Identify your topics and initial content ideas FIRST

Identifying Potential Targets

▶ Mine your existing backlinks & “mentions”▶ Mine your competitor’s backlinks▶ Mine the publication’s backlinks

As a final tier, mine the backlinks of the backlinks of blogs/websites you choose. Curate that list.

Stalking Websites

Notice: I didn’t say just bloggers or publications

▶Who are they?▶What’s their motivation behind their website or blog and why does it interest you?▶What’s their audience makeup?▶How does their content perform?

What’s the secret to outreach?

SECOND: Use data to identify strongest targets & authors

▶How much engagement their content gets socially▶Average backlink generation for posts, and which author that is.▶What topics or ideas performed strongly.

The Authors are the Bridge

▶ Identify the publishers that focus on your topics- Mine their authors.

▶ Manually search for authors by topic/news (Google)▶ Gather their info and author info like a P.I.

The Authors are the Bridge

▶ Who are they?▶ Where else do they write & what topics?▶ What are their interests?▶ What networks are they active on?▶ What’s their temperament?▶ How well does their other content do?

Author Reach & Engagement

What’s the secret to outreach?THIRD: Make your cold market warm.

▶Find ways to connect elsewhere (social networks, comments, sharing)▶Find common interests▶Spend time communicating about non-pitch related things.▶When finally approaching them, approach it as a collaboration to help their needs.

Helping with Success- Content OutreachDO….▶Share across relevant networks and other authors who may be interested.▶Boost a post w/ the link on Facebook, promote it on Twitter.▶Create a relevant post on your blog, reference the publication’s post, boost post on Facebook. ▶Discuss future needs for collaboration.

Helping with Success- Content OutreachDON’T….▶Be demanding and ask for multiple links.▶Cut communications after they post your content. Keep connecting.▶Offer exclusive data or content similar to your last piece to other authors or publishers.

TOOOOOOOOOLS!

Backlink Data▶Majestic SEO: Majesticseo.com▶Open Site Explorer [Moz]: Opensiteexplorer.org

TOOOOOOOOOLS!

▶ BuzzStream- Outreach & relationship building▶ BuzzSumo- Find influencers, get data on topics &

content▶ Meshfire- social relationship management▶ GPlusData- Data on authors▶ SharedCount- Social metrics (post level)

SELENA NARAYANASAMY@SELENAVIDYA