b3 seminar: advanced outreach & niche profiling - joe griffiths

Advanced Outreach & Niche Profiling

Advanced Outreach & Niche Profilingby Joe Griffiths


Introduction• Penguin has made everything harder

• Rankings and link acquisition has never been so difficult

• Everyone has upped their outreach strategies


What I’m going to talk about• Niche profiling

• Advanced outreach

• How these work together

• How to scale them for day to day use (throughout)


Key Concept: Mutual BenefitBloggers know the value of links

They also know how powerful their influence is.

Even recognised by Barack Obama who gave the keynote speech at the Blogher conference.


Key Concept: Mutual BenefitThe foundation of getting a good link.

It’s our job to create a win-win scenario.

This doesn’t have to be a monetary incentive


The Ideal Outreach Process

Niche Profiling

Create Mutual Benefit

Outreach Campaign Evaluation


Niche Profiling: Why?If we know certain characteristics of a niche, outreach success will improve because we will know the kinds of incentives that will appeal to the sites within that niche.

It’s a good compromise between profiling bloggers individually

So how do we profile a niche?


What We Want To Know How is the niche broken up

What does the niche share

What kinds of content do they post

Tone of voice

Are they open to guest posts?

Ultimately: How do we get a link


Breaking Down A NicheExample – Film and movie bloggers:

• Film news• Independent film• Horror• Action• Film reviews• Film making

A generic approach simply wont cut it across all of them, we need to tailor our outreach efforts differently to each of these mini-niches


Putting Together Your Profiles


Research SampleCould be labour intensive so we need to scale this down.

Scale down to samples to research.

Sample size: minimum of 5 sites – I usually take around 10


Shared & Linked To ArticlesWhy do we need this?

The most important element of the profile

If we know what articles are shared and linked to – we can tailor our content and outreach hooks around this

There are a few ways this can be done for different budget sizes…


Open Site Explorer


Turn into a table and sort by social metrics or link metrics – note down both


SearchMetrics

SearchMetrics is by far the easiest tool to do this.

These are the top, socially visible posts.


Importing XML Sitemaps For this you will need:


Type in the URL of the sitemap you want to

import


Check the top left square and import.


Run SeoTools Social function to get the social data for each entry.


Analysing Popular PostsPopular medium e.g. Twitter, Facebook?

Is there a common theme of popular content?

• Breaking news• Humour• How-to’s & Guides• Lists

Now you have an insight into what kinds of content their target audience likes, and where they concentrate their presence online.


Blog ToneThinking of outreach - Indicates the tone that should be used in the outreach template

Also give indication to the right content to fit the niche


Guest Post Friendly?

Have guest posts been posted previously?


The Finished Product


Why Is All Of This Important?Upping your outreach success rate

If an approach is tailored in a way that offers them something they actually want they are likely to bite first time.


Niche Profiling




Creating Mutual BenefitNow possible to create a ‘hook’ to lure them into responding to outreach emails.

Just as a business needs a USP, an outreach email need a hook.

When deciding on these, bear in mind the popular content from their site


All Links Are PaidThey cost time and effort

We just need to dress up how we incentivise bloggers in a way that is Google friendly


What Hooks Work?Any brand can offer a blogger a great hook – it just needs to be targeted.

Here are some hooks that can be used by anyone to reach a blogger – the trick is picking which one will work for your profiled niche.


Event InvitesHosting an event?

No events coming up? Host an “exclusive” hangout event on Google+

Unable to do this? Buy them tickets to attend another industry event and review that for you.


Free TrialsOnline based business? Offer a free trial.

Don’t have anything to trial? Pay for them to trial something relevant that isn’t connected with your company.


Infogr.amCreate an Infographic in minutes

You could offer to visualise posts that were popular for them

If that doesn’t work data is also freely available at lots of governmental websites


Product ReviewsStill work really well.

Generic review sites aren’t ideal in the long run,try and keep the sites as targeted as possible.


Competitions & GiveawaysTried and tested

An opportunity for bloggers to engage with their existing readership and gain visibility to extend their reader base


High Quality Guest Posts

Still works IF you use the profiles to tailor the content and pitch around them


Creating Guest Posts Using The ProfilesMini-niche related keywords (e.g. horror movies) and content types (e.g. videos) – input these (and variations of them) into the following sites:

• UberSuggest• Quora• Yahoo Answers• List sites

Always pitch a few ideas of posts in the outreach emails.


How-to GuidesCreate a how to guide from some of the questions answered on Quora and Yahoo.

The content will be in demand.


Niche Profiling




OutreachIts all about getting a high success rate, by putting in as little time as possible

Use the details of the profiles to determine your ‘hooks’ and scale your outreach attempts so they can be automated as much as possible by using customisable templates


Objectives

Any outreach campaign needs specific objectives.

E.g. number or quality of links, anchor text, cost per link.

Try and keep them SMART.


Customising & TrackingTemplates for mass outreach and tracking the success rates of these can be scaled by using a couple of different tools:

• BuzzStream• ToutApp


BuzzStreamStore contacts and send emails through BuzzStream


ToutApp

Real time analyticsIntegrates with Outlook


AB TestingEvery niche is different and responds in different ways to different things.

AB Testing success should be measured against response and success rates of emails.

Start with the big stuff then hone down to the specifics until you know what works inside out in the target niche.

• Long vs. short word counts• Subject lines• Hooks • Signatures• Client description


Writing Outreach TemplatesWe can use the details from the profiles in order to customise the outreach templates that we plan on sending out

Prospect your link targets and categorise them into the mini-niches determined in the profiles

Each of these will receive a template with the pre-determined hook(s)


Template tone.

Spell out the benefits of the hook that has been pitched.

Use the features from BuzzStream and Tout to personalise your outreach

If contacting the sites that were analysed in the profile, you can go really specific with your outreach.

Writing Outreach Templates


Always Follow-upFollow-up emails give us around a 20-30% better response rate

Set calendar reminders so you don’t forget

AB test these templates too


Handling RejectionRejection is an important part of link building, it only improves outreach success in the long run.

The point of AB testing is to see what fails.


Niche Profiling




EvaluationGo back to the objectives and see if they were fulfilled.

Also analyse:

• What was good?• What was bad?• Could the bad have been avoided? • How?


Maintaining RelationshipsCheck in a few weeks down the road, get back in touch ask how the blogger benefitted

Was it enough?

Link building isn’t a transaction based practice, good relationships breed benefits in the long run


[email protected]://www.branded3.com/http://bivvyseo.com/@joe_griffiths2

Questions?

b3 seminar: advanced outreach & niche profiling - joe griffiths

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