5 Steps to Blog Outreach

• July 19th, 2007 /
•  Blake Killian

The marketing department is in full swing here at siteMighty, so I thought I’d take a moment to share our latest strategy leaving the nest. Blog outreach.

We learned a lot from launching Huckabuck (our very cool Google-killer), but the thing I learned the most was how to engage blogs and get their authors to write about us. In my experience, it’s no easy task, but when it happens it’s well worth the wait. The goal here is to get a mention or review in a popular blog.

Here’s how we do it:

1. ID Blogs: I started the discovery phase of the blog outreach by going to Technorati and searching around. In the past, I would have searched for subject specific blogs, but I decided to take a look at the most popular blogs and was amazed at how many entrepreneurial blogs there are. Way more than a year ago when we were launching the Huck.
2. Make a list: You can make a written list on paper, or make a spreadsheet. I’ve even found it works to bookmark blogs and keep them in a folder on my computer. This time around, I’m using netvibes. Now, on a single tab, I have my first round picks and I’m ready to monitor.
3. Monitor the posts: This is you, in a helicopter, monitoring a high-speed chase. Just watch, take notes and report on what you see. You’ll find that if you screened your blogs correctly, they’ll blog on a theme and it’s that theme you’ll want to align your product with.
4. Comment, Post & Link to: By monitoring the blog, you’ll get a feel for the blogger’s voice and the types of people that read the blog. Become one of those people publicly. Start commenting on the blog, and really bring value to the conversation. The whole reason you monitor is so you really get the blog and can actively and legitimately participate. You should also start posting on your own blog and link back to the blogs you’re monitoring as much as you can.
5. Approach: I want to believe that if you do the above things well enough, you’ll never have to ask someone to blog about your company, product or service. But if you do it right, getting something from a blogger when you’re a real member of their community is going to be much easier.

I’ll keep y’all updated on the progress we make with siteMighty.

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