Influencer and Partnership Outreach ----------------------------------- Focus your promotion activities on partnerships. We've been doing this a long time, and have learned that they give you the best bang for the buck. ### CREATE A LIST OF ALL THE PLACES AND PEOPLE YOU'D LIKE TO REACH To determine the best options for partnership, explore your audience's media landscape and build a list of dozens of groups, organizations, and media outlets that will give you access to their ideal clients. Next, research popular podcasts and blogs for guest appearance opportunities, also building a list of key influencers while you're at it.  We identify influencers in batches of a hundred, taking care to note which persona and pain points they target in our clients. If their focus is the same as ours, but our target audiences differ, we always focus on those influencers first. That way, they aren't direct competitors, so they'll be open to partnering. How to Outreach (The Right Way) ---------------------------------------- One man's blog post is another man's spam. And no-one likes spam. Even if you have the best influencer list and the right angle, you're not guaranteed a response. Your email could, for example, just be overlooked. Or it might not click with the person to whom you're reaching out. If you started with content marketing outreaches completely on your own, you'd have to do a lot of experimentation to see what works and what doesn't. Fortunately, we've done the experimentation for you. Here are the best practices that work for us. ### PIQUING THEIR INTEREST WITH A SUBJECT LINE The subject line is the first thing the influencer gets to see. It's also something that determines whether it's read or ignored. Something like "About your blog post" is too generic and spammy. While it might still be read, it's something that can be overlooked, since it doesn't really say anything. With the subject line, you want to do one (or all) of the following: - Add value - Challenge convention - Spark curiosity - Be personal **Adding Value** Did the influencer miss something important in their blog post? Maybe there's an easier way of doing something, or a new methodology that simply works better? All of these benefit them. So, let's say you're writing an article on email tracking and how it's useful for landing new clients. You find an article that talks in-depth on the topic, but missing something critical, like [DocSend](https://www.docsend.com/) for tracking sent documents. Your subject line could be something like: > "Re: Email tracking article: How to use DocSend to track documents" #### Challenging Convention Do you have a controversial opinion? Maybe something that contradicts the influencer's own thoughts? At a glance, it might seem like a bad idea --- who'd enjoy being emailed just to be told they're wrong, anyway? Well, in most cases, influencers discuss topics about which they're passionate. That is, it's in their best interests to be proven wrong; they'll come out of the experience smarter and more self-assured, regardless of whether you actually prove them wrong. For example, let's say the article is about how culture fit is more important than hard skills. You could spark their interest by starting off the email with a contradictory statement straight off. Something like: > "How & why hard skills beat culture fit" #### Sparking Curiosity If you're writing an article that's relevant to the influencer's [[Niching By Degrees|niche]] (which you are, or you wouldn't be emailing them in the first place), it shouldn't be hard to spark their curiosity. In this case, you can just go for whatever new information your article uncovers. For example: "Re: Recent changes to the Google algorithm" #### Being Personal This is where the "personalized line" on your Google Sheets comes in. If you tailor your email to the influencer's interests, you'll be significantly improving your success rate. For more guidance on how to write personalized emails, view our [Podcast Guesting Playbook](https://www.callforcontent.com/podcast-guest-playbook). [DOWNLOAD OUTREACH EMAIL TEMPLATES](https://land.callforcontent.com/AMP) #### Follow Up Even if you write the best email ever, it might just slip through the cracks. So it's always good to follow up, in case the influencer didn't get to see the email. Follow up just once, though. Any more than that and you'll risk ruining your reputation -- if they don't read this email, they might read the next. That won't happen, however, if you bombard them with emails. #### Track Everything Use analytics to understand which content resonates best with a target audience, then you can focus targeted content on a few communities. This system is designed to make the process of finding and engaging digital communities easier and more replicateable. Use group-specific links to content whenever possible, in order to increase data granularity and center in on the most valuable communities. See Also: - [[Tying Partnerships Into Content (10%)]] - [[What Defines A Partnership (30%)]] - [[Guest Placement Playbook]] - [[Guest Recruitment]] - [[Webinar Partnerships]]