Influencer Outreach: How to do it Effectively and its Importance in SEO

05 - May - 2018

Search Engine Optimization

adnanaqeel

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introduction to influencer outreach, what is influencer outreach, influencer outreach in seo, influencer outreach for digital marketing, how to approach influencer

Hey Guys! Hope you are doing great. I always aim to keep you updated with useful information that aligns with your field of interest. Today, I am going to uncover the details on Influencer outreach and its importance in SEO and Digital Marketing. This is the eleventh article covering a complete SEO series. You can also have a look at my previous article on Guest Posting. With the inception of internet technology, marketing strategies are not same as they were before. Without an online presence, you can't even think about growing and flourishing your business in the real world. Internet technology allows you to get rid of the hectic marketing strategies where you used to meet customers personally and convince them to buy your products. Things are changed now. You can approach targeted visitors online and convince them to buy from you if you come up with a lot of positive reviews and referrals pointing towards your products. Influencer Outreach is considered as a marketing strategy where you approach the influencers, build a relationship and inform them how your product or blog can bring value to their audience. Influencers are the people who have enough knowledge and skills in their field of interest and come up with a large number of audience. They have already built a reputation and got enough trust in their audience by providing flawless service.

If you succeed in convincing the influencers by your content or services, they feel no hesitation sharing your work on their platforms.

You must have a look at a complete guide of SEO Tutorials where I have listed all articles pertaining to On Page and Off Page SEO.

What is Influencer Outreach

Influencer Outreach is termed as a process where you approach the influencer or bloggers that come up with high traffic and ask them to refer your products or content on their platforms. There are many factors making influencer outreach effective and useful, that not only allow you to bring your product in front of a number of people but also help in bringing more traffic to your blog.

Things to do Before you Approach Influencer

There are many things you'd be doing before you approach the influencer. If you really want influencers recommend you on their platform, then you must highlight the value of the product and how your content is going to benefit their visitors. Let's dive in and start exploring the things required before you outreach influencer.

1. Start with Keyword Research

Start keyword research if you intend to target a relevant audience as your field of interest and services. There is no need for creating a content that doesn't align with the needs and demands of the visitors. Before you create a content, you must do your homework in order to find the nature of audience you intend to target to.

You can't choose any keyword and make a post around it. Doing this is the first rule to ruin your hard work and affect your reputation at large.
The base of the business or blog built on the random keywords will be on shaky grounds. There is a lot to do before you are confident to put your words online.

The keyword research has been evolved over time. Earlier you would do keyword research and mention keywords multiple times in the article. This approach doesn't work anymore; as Google considers it as a keyword stuffing and you may face a penalty unless you are too lucky to get caught by the search engines and manipulate their algorithms.

This is where keyword variation comes into play. Now, you have to use keyword variations to make Google aware your content is quite in line with the demands and needs of the visitors. You'll be producing a content not only keeping in view of the keyword research but you need to pay special heed what visitors actually mean when they type certain keyword.
Using longtail keywords that come with low competition and more traffic give ultimate results than targeting keywords with high competition. Suppose, you are writing a post on Guest Posting, you can use an alternate keyword instead of guest posting in the article like guest blogging, write for us or blog contributors. This is the smart way to make your content aligned with the demands of the customers. And doing this practice multiple times will help search bots aware you are expert in your niche so they direct the visitors towards your content.

There are lots of free online tools available you can do your keyword research on. Following are the free tools you can do free keyword research.

a. Google Keyword Planner

This is a free tool used by most of the bloggers, especially who are in the early stages of their blogging journey. It comes up with limited features but it proves to be handy for most of the new bloggers.

b. Google Auto Suggest

Google works smartly and intelligently when it comes to finding the solution to the specific problem.

As you type two-three words of your problem, Google immediately comes up with the relevant terms visitors are searching for.
In this way, you can anticipate, what are the problems visitors are facing that are quite in line with your search. You can build your content around any of these similar problems with the chance of approaching on the top of search engines.

c. Google Searches Related To

Google has made our life easy by providing easy and flawless service where it tries its best to provide quick and most relevant content you look for.

When you type certain keywords on the google and scroll the page all the way down, you'll see the other keywords that are relevant to the words you just typed.
These keywords show that the query you are looking to get a solution for, already been searched for other similar keywords too. I have typed "how to start a blog" and come up with these keywords at the bottom of the page.

d. KeywordTool.io

This is another smart tool which is equally handy for keyword research, especially for new bloggers who can't afford to pay for the paid keyword research tools.

An amazing thing about this tool is that you can look for the keyword relevance in any country. Better is ranking for the google.com. However, if your business is country oriented you can target the specific country of your choice like googl.com.in (India), google.com.pk(Pakistan).
One drawback of using these tools is that they don't show the search volume of the specific keyword. Things are not going to work if you don't know how many times the specific keyword has been searched on the google.

e. Serp Keyword Research Tool

If free tools don't meet your requirements and you want to get the exact results, then you must use this tool called Serp where it also shows how many times specific keyword gets searched on google.

f. SEMrush Tool

If you can't do keyword research properly, the chance of your blog getting appeared on the top of a search engine is rare. Among all the above-mentioned tools, SEMrush stands the best. Good news is that it comes with both edition i.e. free and paid. You can use free edition for limited research and paid edition allows you to do more searches per day.

Whenever you type a certain keyword, it will show the search volume of that word immediately. If you are running a business, this tool is really worth the cost. If you'd be using this tool perfectly, you don't have to rely on other tools. This tool will meet your demands quite well.

Tip: If you are going to start your blog from scratch, then start with longtail keywords that come with low competition and high traffic. In the start, it doesn't matter how many keywords you target and how many times certain keywords would appear in the article.

It is okay to keep the keyword density around 1% and keyword variation appears once in the article. Avoid keyword stuffing and put keywords in the context where they sound natural and truly resonate with the tone of the article.

2. Quality Content

Congrats! You've done your research so far. Now you are ready to build a post around certain keywords. Poorly written content can scare the hell out of your visitors. Doing keyword research would be of no use if you can't produce quality content that fulfills the needs of the visitors.

Producing quality content means, crafting the content around the focus keyword with the intention of touching one main problem with the number of solutions.
Use short and sweet sentences in your article in order to avoid grammatical errors. Edit and proofread your work before putting it online.

3. Who is your Target Audience

Make sure, who your audience is. You can't make a general post for a larger audience and hope to jump up in the top searches. You must be sure, who your audience is, what they do, what they truly need and their field of interest.

Mention in the article, how your work can benefit the customers and why they should prefer your content and products over others; where big fish are already there to soak you up in the first place.

4. Who to Approach

You can't pick any influencer and ask for a referral. How would someone refer you if their field of interest doesn't resonate with your products or content?

Do your homework and filter the influencers that are relevant to your field and come with the same audience of relevant interest. Approaching everyone that comes in your way is not the right way to make influence outreach successful. Instead of approaching a number of influencers, it is better to reach a few influencers that fall under your niche and field of interest.

How to Approach Influencer

When you have done your homework, this is the time to approach the influencer. This can be done in multiple ways. Not every method is equally beneficially for everyone. What seems beneficial to you, stick to it.

1. Break the Ice

Marketing is not about selling your product only, but how you maintain the relationship with other speaks a lot about you. Before you reach the influencer right away, start with building a relationship. Easy and quick way to do it is by following and taking an active part in the discussions on their blogs.

After reading a couple of blog posts, comment on them and show how their work helped you in solving your problems. This way you will get noticed before their eyes, showing your interest is quite in line with their field of interest. And you give more value to building a relationship instead of achieving financial goals.

2. Shoot an Email

Once you are done appearing in front of the influencer's eyes, next thing is to approach them personally. Now is the right time to shoot an email. The words you pick in the email and how you address the influencer set a tone for getting recommended by the influencer.

Don't get too rude or friendly in the email. Start with greetings them with their names. Don't get too friendly to write emoji or exclamation mark after the completion of the sentence. You can use emoji or other expressions once you get familiar with each other.
Before you mention the reference they used in the article, make sure, you haven't just scanned the article or jumped through the words and headings, but you read it entirely.
Some influencers are difficult to reach and don't appear too often. They have a virtual assistant who handles the things on their behalf. In this case, you can approach the writers who write for them. If you are approaching the writers, avoid addressing the influencer for greetings, instead, you can greet the writers by their names and ask for referrals for your products or content.

3. Follow Up Email

Influencers are busy people and don't respond to every email that comes their way. It doesn't mean they ignore you or they are not going to refer you. Follow up email from your side can work wonders. This will show your passion and interest, how you are deeply interested to get recommended by the influencer.

Still, if you don't get response or recommendation, it doesn't mean you stop building a relationship with the influencer. Try to engage yourself with the influence and take an active part in the discussions initiated by the influencers on their platforms.

4. Guest Posting

Guest post is the post you write for someone else's blog and you get the backlink in return. This is a great way to outreach the influencers where you offer free content to them and ask for the backlink. This is a win-win situation and benefits both the writer and publisher.

When you guest post, make sure to pick the topic that is missed on influencer's platform. Writing a post that is already posted online makes no sense.

5. Social Media

This is another platform to approach the influencer. Some influencers are more active on their social media platforms than answering the emails. Follow same things as you do in shooting an email before you send the direct message.

Approaching through social media is little different than reaching through email. The words you use for the direct message must be precise and sound to the point. Again, don't forget to greet them with their names. Highlight the main features of your product and they can solve the particular problem of their audience.

6. Giveaway

Giveaway is the gift you give to the influencer in exchange for getting a referral from them. This is one of the best ways to get the attention of the influencer.

When you start your business from scratch, you can give a gift to the audience your influencer shares your content with.
Everyone loves gifts especially when they resonate with their field of interest. Or you can give a major discount to the early birds. This will help you appear in front of the number of people.

Role of Influencer Outreach in SEO and Digital Marketing

Influencers are the people who have a lot of followers. When you approach the influencer, you knock the door with the hope of appearing on a large number of audience with relevant interest as yours. If you solely depend on your blog, especially that you start from scratch, your chances of growing and flourishing in your business would be rare and it takes more time to make a reputation and gain the trust of the visitors.

Approaching the influencers right way and getting endorsed by them would require less hard work and cost than required for all the other marketing strategies combined.

Influencer outreach has a wide impact on your overall SEO. When your blog is recommended by the influencer, Google counts it as a vote where the number of votes does matter but who votes you indicates the ultimate value of your blog. When the number of influencers recommends you, your blog with come up with the higher chance of appearing on the top of search results.

Final Thought

Influencer marketing and businesses go side by side. Before you reach the influencer, make sure your content is worth sharing that comes up with relevant keywords, gives value and helps solve the problems of the visitors. Target influencers who are relevant to your industry, so they feel no hesitation sharing your content on their platforms. Focus on building a long-term relationship instead of just meeting financial goals. This will help to build your reputation at the start. Don't panic if you don't get recommended by the influencer you approached. Still, you can maintain healthy relationships and contact back again in case you feel influencer has given a green signal. That's all for today. I hope you have found this article useful. In the next post, we discuss SMO and how it, if done a right way, can be a good fit for your blog growth. If you are unsure or have any question you can ask me in the comment section below. I'd love to help you in any way I can. What are your thoughts and experience about influencer outreach?