So, you’ve been optimising your site, it’s full of great, interesting, useful content – now, we just need that extra push to really get it out there. NO – I am not referring to any practice of black hat SEO here (we say no to black hat SEO), I am in actual fact referring to blogging influencers!
In today’s society, blogging is considered a huge word-of-mouth engine, being recognised as a strong platform, not only for customers to find out more information on the latest products and services, but now even more so for companies to promote their product and service offering (Li, Lai & Chen, 2011). It is crucial for companies to find a blogger with great marketing influential capabilities in order to get their product or service visible to a large amount of people in a little amount of time (Li, Lai & Chen, 2011).
So, think of an “influencer” as your new crush. You really want to build a long, loving relationship with a blogging influencer as they are your golden gateway to reaching out to the world!
Ann Smarty (2015), a hubspot marketing blogger, views influential bloggers as trusted voices who get the buzz going around your product or service or even just you brand in general. She goes on to say that if you invest the time and effort, blogging influencers can turn into your brand advocates. So, the main goal here is to gain influencers endorsement, that way his or her thousands of followers, who trust his or her every word, will trust his or her approval and recommendation of your product or service. These people will then go to your website / blog page, this greatly increasing traffic, improving your search engine ranking and hopefully converting into a transaction or two – Ding! Ding! Jackpot!
But, of course – it’s not that straight forward – when is any relationship that straight forward?
You won’t find the love of your life by expecting them to come to you. Get out there and look for it. You need to find the perfect one… the right blogging influencer for you – let’s be honest, if you own an argentine steak restaurant, reaching out to a vegan blogging influencer is probably not going to be ideal. Ann Smarty (2015) gives some great tools and programmes which you can use to find your match made in heaven, read more here.
First you need to initiate contact.
Find them on social media channels, retweet them, share their blogs, favourite their tweets, like their posts, leave comments on their posts (you get the picture, right?) – You basically want to be on their radar.
The key thing to remember here, as Susan Payton (2015) so rightly points out, is that you want to find influencers that will benefit from your product or service as this will encourage them to write more passionately and therefore work in your favour too.
So, you’ve found “the one”, you’ve made the initial social media contact, you have reason to believe you are on their radar – maybe they favorited your retweet of their article or they responded to on one of your comments – well, now it’s time to bring out the big guns and make your move. Send your pitch in an email. Payton (2015) gives some great pointers to help you structure your email, read more here.
So, a lot of grafting is put in here to get the “perfect one”, but it is all worth it in the end… right?
Well, what Payton (2015) and Smarty (2015) don’t seem to take into consideration, is the actual value that a blogging influencer brings to the table. I find myself coming back to this key concept that seems to be ever present in digital marketing – QUALITY OVER QUANTITY! Are we associating the power of the influencer by their volume of followers? Of course, increasing brand awareness of your product or service is key, but at some point we all want to see an up on the conversion rate too.
Let’s take Life Hacker this blog site gets over 23,250,000 estimated unique monthly visitors (EbizMBA, 2015) so it might cost you a few pennies, but getting your product or service featured on their blog would be “out of this world” right? I mean, look at how many people you are reaching out to all over the world – “amazing”! But, who is to say that people actually trust this blogging influencer? People know they are getting paid, so who is to say that they are telling the truth about the product or service they are writing about? Are they just in it for the money? Who knows!
(Source adapted from Life Hacker, 2015)
Now, The London Word has only 1,873 subscribers – a considerable amount less. So, does this mean that these devoted residents and established enthusiasts are not influencers because they aren’t as well-known as Life Hacker? The London Word is written by people who have visited these “amazing” beer gardens and therefore have first-hand experience, aren’t these people as Smarty (2015) says –“trusted voices”?
(Source adapted from The London Word, 2008)
So, back to the conversions point- at the end of the day, of course we would all love clicks to convert into sales, but we know it doesn’t work like that. All I’m trying to say, is when you are choosing your “chosen one” don’t be deceived by their following and always remember – QUALITY over QUANTITY! Are people going to follow up on the recommendations of the jack of all trades? Or are they going to go with the recommendations of an enthusiast who has first-hand experience? I know which blog post I would take advice from.
References:
Life Hacker (2015) ‘Best UK Beer Gardens: Top 5 Pubs with Amazing Beer Gardens’ [Online] <http://www.lifehacker.co.uk/2015/04/24/best-uk-beer-gardens-top-5-pubs-with-amazing-beer-gardens> [accessed 27 April 2015]
Li,Y., Lai, C. & Chen, C. (2011) ‘Discovering influencers for marketing in the blogosphere’. Information Sciences, [Online] Vol 181 (Issue 23). p5143-5157, <http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/science/article/pii/S0020025511003550> [accessed 25 April 2015]
Payton, S. (2015) ‘How to Connect With Social Media and Blogging Influencers’. [Online] <http://www.cision.com/us/2015/01/how-to-connect-with-social-media-and-blogging-influencers/> [accessed 26 April 2015]
Smarty, A. (2015) ‘7 Tools for Finding & Connecting With Influential Bloggers’. [Online] <http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/blogger-outreach-tools> [accessed 26 April 2015]
The London Word (2008) ‘The Garden State – London’s Best Beer Gardens’. [Online] <http://www.thelondonword.com/2008/07/the-garden-state-londons-best-beer-gardens/> [accessed 27 April 2015]