The Secret Weapon to Content Marketing: Outreach Emails

I want to share something to you. In one of my blog posts, I talked about 17 SEO Resources. Looking

back, I admit that it is one of my worst blog posts. Despite this, the post managed to get shared 645 times. I also earned 10 thousand visitors for my website. Here I realized that I knew the secret to that particular post's favorable outcome: outreach e-mails.

I talked to about 17 people telling them that their story was to be included in my blog post. I advised them that I have written something that involved them.

Outreach

The best lesson you can take away from this example is not the promotional value that I earned through those e-mails but the good relationship that I built with my influencers went a long way. Remember that good relationship is the key to a good content marketing and it usually starts with one e-mail.

Let me tell you how I have come to be good at creating outreach e-mails and how it helped me earn great relationships with different content marketers all over the Internet. Offer them help before you expect to receive help.

Even though that post's content was excellent and drew a lot of traffic, let's remember that that won't last forever. You should never stop writing better posts with even better content that gets a lot more traffic. But from that experience, we learned that what lasts are the relationships that we create through a simple e-mail.

Building Meaningful Marketing Relationships

Although your goal is to help, you can't spend all of your time promoting other people's work. You have other things to do, other work to write. The same goes to the people in your circle. You have to find value for both parties to make it work.

One thing you can do is to think about what you can bring into the table.

Propriety data: The value of your content immediately increases if you have certain information that nobody else has.

Complementary Resources: Find someone in your circle who is working on the same material you are interested in and that lacks resources that you have.

Unique Expertise: It would help your content value if you are an expert in at least one field.

An Offer to Contribute: People appreciate knowing that someone is simply looking out.

Cold Outreach: Finding Influencers and Contributors

There is a long list of influencers out there. You need to filter your search and these tools will help you do it:

BuzzSumo is where you will find people and websites that are contributing and engaging to one another in a community. It makes it easier for you to use targeted searches and niches you prefer.

There is also the Google query. Go online and binge-search blogs that has the same niche as your target. It is easier to look for the information that you want these day so there would always a way for you to learn new knowledge.

Try using LinkedIn or a simple e-mail. If it does not work, you can mention them on Twitter or Facebook, although it would be harder to contact them this way. Never give up.

Creating and Maintaining Relationships

Don't start building a relationship as soon as you need a favor from that person. You should start reaching out long before there's a need.

In my situation when I e-mailed those influencers, it was not because I needed the shares, although it did not hurt. But it was my excuse to contact them and be in their radar. You should start the friendship without needing any favors from them.

Be helpful and karma will work its magic.

Friendship does not grow immediately from a single e-mail. You need to maintain contact to each and everyone you think would help market your content and stay in their radar until you have established what you bring to the table.

Remembering every name and correspondence is not easy. So, I owe Boomerang a lot in this respect. It helps you take control of inbox management and also to circle back with certain people at certain times.

Some of the Pitfalls of Outreach

There are pitfalls in outreaching that people can fall in if they are not cautious. One of these is focusing on quantity over quality when it comes to the influencer's network.

Knowing this, you would be better off paying a professional promoter to promote your products or work to their flock of followers. Just make sure that they enough influence that satisfies your preferences.

There are no shortcuts in building a relationship. Do your outreach properly and you will sure get a more satisfying reward than when you tried to shortcut your way into other people's Twitter mentions.