Getting the right people to really notice your content

Going beyond the outreach email

When it comes to approaching influencers, we’ve already talked about how to do effective outreach that aims to build meaningful and lasting relationships instead of just inundating people with content and asking for shares and links.

However it’s often the case that your content needs to be seen in more than one place before the influencer decides they want to interact with it and start a conversation with you.

Sending more and more content to someone via the same channel without ever receiving a response is not the right solution - in fact it can have the opposite result.

So how can you approach influencers and increase the possibility of them noticing your content if they’re not replying to your carefully crafted, personalised and caring email?

Find where your influencers are hanging out online

The Google+ example

Let’s assume that after having mapped your online community, you’ve put together a list of Google+ communities that are relevant to your target audience. In addition to that, you have a group of 20-30 influencers you would like to reach out to.

If apart from your outreach email, an influencer also sees your content submitted in a Google+ community they are a member of, there’s a higher chance that they will interact with it.

Search through your selected Google+ communities’ members lists to check if any of your influencers belong there. If they do, then bingo! (friendly note: if there are no hits at all, maybe you’re not looking in the right Google+ communities..)

For example, that’s me as a member of the Content Marketing World Google+ community (why my surname is spelled ‘Smpokou’ instead of ‘Sbokou’ on there is a story for another time. The troubles of having a Greek impossible-to-pronounce surname you see.)

The LinkedIn example

Now let’s talk about LinkedIn. Did you know that most people show LinkedIn groups they are members of in their public profiles?

What you need to do is check each influencer’s profile and create a list with the groups they belong to (of course, only the ones that are relevant to your content. You don’t want to start a discussion around pension planning in the Harvard Business Review LinkedIn group). This way you might also come across LinkedIn groups that weren’t previously in your list maybe because they’re smaller and more niche and thus get lost in a sea of search results.

The highest opportunity lies within the groups where more that one of your influencers are members. Make sure you become a member too as well as an active contributor (not spammer).

In all cases, look for posts by your influencers and leave comments, interact with them. Start building the relationship on there, too. It will be easier to pick it up with an email later if needed.

Find the connections between the influencers

Let’s say someone sends you a cold email to introduce their new photo sharing app. Later that day, you’re having lunch with your colleagues and ask them if they‘ve heard about it. Wouldn’t you be more inclined to download and try it if you got a couple of ‘yes’s? (especially if you’re like me, this is the exact point when FOMO starts kicking in)

It’s the same with your content: if you send it out to people who are ‘connected’ with each other, there’s a higher probability that they will interact with it. If a food blogger receives an email with a link to your latest article on ‘healthy snacks based on superfoods’ and they then see a food blogger they follow tweet about it, they are more likely to share it with their audience or link to it in one of their upcoming posts.

So how do you get started with mapping these connections?

Followerwonk is a great tool for this. You can analyse the tweets of your 20-30 target influencers and see which users they mention most in their tweets. This way you’ll start mapping a ‘network’ that will help you focus your outreach and achieve better results.

Hopefully you’ll find these tips useful. And if you do try any of the above and have questions or want to share your experiences and how well they worked for you, do leave a comment or tweet me @nextzaira.

The article Getting the right people to really notice your content was originally published on Blonde's blog.