Menu
No minimum spends, no contracts or hidden costs
Simply put, blogger outreach is a branch of digital marketing involving the identification of, and building relationships with online publishers and content creators with the aim of achieving a specific end result. The end result may be promoting a new product or service, distributing a press release or building links to boost search engine rankings.
In practical terms, blogger outreach includes:
A carefully planned blogger outreach strategy can help you to improve your search engine rankings, increase awareness of your brand, and ultimately increase your sales.
There are many benefits to collaborating with bloggers from direct to the more subtle. Below we outline some of the most sought after.
Inbound links to your website is a key factor in where a site appears in search engine results pages. Both the number and quality of these links is important. It is common practice to partner with bloggers to produce engaging, relevant content including links back to your website.
Another benefit of placing links on third party sites is that they can direct traffic to your site, in turn this can boost engagement and sales. Traffic is also known to be a key factor in where a site appears in search engine results pages.
If you are launching a new product or have some important messaging to share with the world, blogger outreach can help you secure coverage on popular blogs in your specific niche and reach a relevant audience you may otherwise miss.
Do you want to put your product or service in front of potential customers? Of course you do! With blogger activation methods like reviews you can gain visibility by securing product-focused posts which showcase your merchandise. By collaborating with bloggers in your particular niche, you are promoting to an relevant audience.
The majority of bloggers are very active and engaged on multiple social media platforms such as Twitter, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram to name a few. A major benefit of blogger outreach is the potential for amplification of messaging and distribution of content across their social following which can boost visibility for your business.
Although most blogger outreach campaigns are short lived, the lasting benefit of collaborating with content creators is the long term relationships you can build. By cultivating positive connections you will have a network of engaged advocates who will be ready for when you want to kick off your next campaign.
You will find that each blogger will have their own fee structure depending on their blog and social metrics as well as other factors such as niche, experience, their standing in the blogosphere and what deliverables you are looking for.
We believe that bloggers should be properly recompensed for their time and effort, so recommend fair payment in return for work.
The minimum ranges below are based on one main metric, domain authority, and we usually suggest the following ranges to brands using our blogger outreach platform for collaborative blog posts:
You may wish to offer more or less depending on the complexity of the campaign. For example, if you wish the blogger to write a post, style and take unique photographs and share the post and photos on their social media you may wish to consider offering a competitive rate for this package of work.
If you use an outreach service there may also be service fees to consider.
There is a wide range of ways to collaborate with bloggers. Your brand, product or service will dictate which method is the most appropriate.
Suitable bloggers are sourced and brought on board and briefed to create unique and engaging content for their readers focusing on your brand, product or a relevant topic. The bloggers can include key messaging, for example, brand mission statements and unique selling points alongside links to your website.
Bloggers are invited to take part in relevant, fun activities and are briefed to write about them on their blog, which can include links, and share on their social channels. The experiences will depend on your products or services but the best experiences relate back to your brand or niche.
Products or services are given free of charge to bloggers and are briefed to produce honest, engaging reviews detailing their opinions and experiences on their blog, which can include links, and shares on social media showcasing it to their audience.
Bloggers are recruited to host a giveaway or competition on their blog for which you supply the terms and prize. The hosts often include links to your site and share the competition on their social media to boost participation. The entrants are usually encouraged to take several actions to take part, for example, sharing the competition on their social media or visiting a specific page on your site.
Bloggers are invited to be educated in brand relevant subjects at in person (or virtual) events for example a talk or workshop. Events work best when there is a relevant activity, refreshments, goodie bags and follow up information packs including information about your brand and professional photography.
If you choose to collaborate with bloggers it is important to understand the legalities of online advertising. In the UK you should particularly look at the regulations put into place by the Advertising Standards Authority that lays down rules for advertisers, agencies and media owners to follow.
The ASA states that if a blogger or social media influencer is given anything (payment, product etc), in return for coverage then a disclaimer must be used to ensure their audience are aware they have been given something in return for promotion. We strongly recommend you take the time to fully understand the requirements.
In other countries there will be different regulatory bodies and different regulations you will need to follow. Be sure to do your research to avoid issues down the line.
There are many elements to take into consideration when choosing bloggers to collaborate with. These will mainly be determined by your overall goals.
Relevancy is key. You will want to make sure that any bloggers you are working with have an interest in your niche, and ideally have published content on similar topics before. Many bloggers cover a range of topics, such as lifestyle bloggers, whereas others are focused on one topic such as finance, travel or food.
If you wish to build links to your site you may prefer to look at domain authority or trust flow but if you are looking to build traffic to your site you may want to look at traffic or social media following.
Here we will summarise some of the most commonly reviewed metrics for choosing a blogger for blogger outreach.
Developed by SEO software company Moz.com Domain Authority (DA) has served for years as a predictive measure of ranking ability for domains enabling search marketers to more accurately judge the value of a site and their work. Domain authority is an overall score out of 100 with higher scores indicating a higher likelihood of ranking in the top positions of the search results pages.
For more details see our blog post here.
Developed by SEO software company Moz.com Spam Score serves as a metric to determine the quality of a domain based on comparison to domains that have been found to be penalised or banned by Google. A score of 1%-30% is considered a low Spam Score, 31%-60% medium and 61%-100% is considered a high Spam Score.
For more details see our blog post here.
Trust Flow is a trademark quality metric developed by software company Majestic.com to perceive the quality of a website based on the quality of its backlinks weighted by the number of clicks from a seed set of trusted sites to a given URL, or Domain.
For more details see our blog post here.
Citation Flow is a trademark quantity metric developed by software company Majestic.com to predict the quality of a website based on its popularity – or the number of links pointing to it. Every link pointing to a site has a Citation Flow value between 0-100 with a higher number indicating a higher quality value. Citation Flow also determines the link equity or influence your site has and may pass on.
For more details see our blog post here.
Authority Score is a quality metric developed by the online visibility management platform Semrush.com. It is a metric used for measuring the overall quality and SEO performance of a site, based on quality, popularity, and backlink signals. Authority Score is measured on a scale from 0 to 100, with the higher scores being the most authoritative.
For more details see our blog post here.
Traffic from Semrush.com is an estimated count of visits, unique visitors, page visits and other engagement metrics for a domain as determined by Semrush. It is considered a market intelligence and competitive research tool. Semrush uses its own machine learning algorithms and trusted data providers to calculate this metric.
For more details see our blog post here.
Domain Rating (DR) is a quality metric developed by SEO tool company Ahrefs.com to determine how authoritative a domain is based on its backlinks. It is visible in the majority of reports produced by Ahrefs. Domain Rating takes into account both the quantity and quality of the links pointing to a domain.
For more details see our blog post here.
Google Analytics is a free web analytics tool offered by Google that tracks and reports a complete view of website interaction, including website traffic, user experience, user behaviour, device functionality, online content and audience demographics among other useful information.
For more details see our blog post here.
Each social media platform offers the opportunity for users to follow other users, creating an amplification network which can be leveraged to promote content. Different platforms offer different formats and mediums, so it’s important to select the appropriate one for your business, product and overall target.
It’s totally free to create a job in the Get Blogged Marketplace and receive unlimited responses from our bloggers.
Just detail what you’re looking for (DA30+ UK beauty bloggers to publish a guest post, just for example) and you’ll receive proposals from our creators explaining how they can help you, with their best fees.
Select the bloggers you’d like to work with, and they’ll get started straight away. We take just a 20% fee on any work that’s commissioned via the platform.
Carrying out your due diligence before you make a decision on the bloggers you want to work with is absolutely essential. If you’re new to the process then you might be feeling a little confused about the factors that you should consider, why they’re important, and how you should ultimately choose between the various sites that you think could potentially be a great fit for your campaign.
Knowing what to look for though, and the factors that you should consider however, can be tricky. Things to look out for include:
We have put together a handy blog post highlighting 12 red flags to beware of to ensure that you’re selecting high quality, genuine, and legitimate blogs that will help you to reach your outreach goals.
Looking for UK based bloggers to work with? We've got you covered.
Discover the wide range of Irish bloggers that you can start collaborating with today.
Our USA bloggers write about every subject imaginable, and they're waiting to collaborate with you.
Blogger outreach can be broken down into three stages: sourcing, contacting and reporting.
This stage will take the most time. Unless you use a blogger outreach service you will need to dedicate hours to manually searching for suitable bloggers. There are a few different places to find bloggers to collaborate with, here are some of the most common ones:
Search engines - using search engines like Google to find suitable bloggers. You might search “UK Food Bloggers”, or “Mummy Bloggers”. We recommend using search operators to help narrow your search and find the most relevant bloggers for your campaign.
Social media - using popular hashtags and searches to find bloggers on Twitter, Instagram etc. Hashtags might include #blogger, #lifestyleblogger or #ukblogger
Top 10/ 100 lists - take some time to find top blogger lists, you might try searching for “Top 100 food bloggers” or similar to find a list of blogs in your niche which you can potentially contact.
Word of mouth - ask bloggers you are collaborating with to recommend other bloggers, or pass your contact details on to other bloggers.
While you are undertaking your research in the sourcing stage make sure you collect details for the bloggers you want to reach out to. An excel sheet will do. We recommend recording the blogger’s name, email address and niche. You may also wish to note down any metrics you might be interested in.
Once you have a shortlist of bloggers you wish to outreach to, we recommend writing a brief introductory email which outlines who you are, what you do and what your campaign is about. You will want to let them know what you are looking for from the collaboration and what they will receive in return.
Make sure to include enough information so the blogger can decide whether they want to take part or not from the off - this will avoid any confusion and wasted time for you and the blogger down the line. It should go without saying that all communications should be concise and friendly.
When you start receiving responses we recommend you turn your sourcing excel sheet into a tracking sheet where you can record responses and update the status of each collaboration.
The majority of bloggers will understand exactly what you are looking for and will only need minimal contact, whereas others may need some more support. You may find some bloggers will want to negotiate the terms of the collaboration whereas others will be happy to start straight away.
If you are unable to come to an agreement be sure to politely inform the blogger you can’t move forward this time. However they respond, be sure to keep your tracking sheet up to date.
Don’t forget that you may need to send one or two follow up emails to bloggers who don’t respond to your first email within 7-10 days. We recommend not sending more than 3 emails total to avoid being flagged as spam, or being seen as too over-keen.
When the blog or social media posts start going live from your collaboration you will want to record them. We recommend adding this to your tracker sheet so all the information is in one place. You will then be able to track your success via the goals you set at the start of your campaign; this may be links built, traffic earned or engagement on social media channels.
But wait! You said three stages! Well this fourth stage isn’t technically part of your campaign, however, we recommend you take the time to build a relationship with the bloggers you have engaged with during your campaign.
Keeping in touch will mean you have a great foundation for your next campaign. You could set up an opt-in newsletter and invite bloggers to sign up so you can keep them up to date about your company, products or services. Don't forget word of mouth is a great way to be introduced to new bloggers, so following up really does have some worthwhile benefits.
For blogger outreach to be done properly and for high success rates you will need to dedicate time and resources to the four stages we have outlined. You may be worried that you might not have the ability to undertake blogger outreach yourself, and that’s ok.
There are many blogger outreach services available today. Here we will run through the pros and cons of using a blogger outreach service.
