5 Tips for outreaching your ideas and content

So now you have been inspired by how to write a brief and brainstorm ideas that are memorable – now you need to make sure people are going to read or view your content!  If you are a huge brand, this is no problem, it is still important to have a strategy, but it is more likely to be able to naturally gain momentum. For the rest of us, we need a very clear strategy, below I have included the top tips of what to think about.

1. Think social, think influencers

Social media is a huge opportunity for your content to be viewed, depending slightly on the topic – but remember there are social networks and groups for everyone. This needs to come back to your audience profiling as discussed on Monday as to where your audience are likely to be found.

Social media is full of influencers, there are many ‘online celebrities’ in all fields, they may not have the followers that say the Kardashians have, but if chosen correctly, they will have real followers interested in your topic. Therefore it is extremely important to do your research, find the individual influencers, find the groups and make contact – ensuring the message is around content, not a sales pitch. At this point you will be proud of your content and excited to share it with like minded people, so ensure this is what comes across.

If you have a good social following for your brand, then this is an obvious channel to share the content. But do consider what you share – images work well, so how can you sum up your content well visually and with a short message? Ensure you use shorterned URLs that can be tracked, think about data capture – is your content totally free or is there a point where you need an email address to read on?

Remember, as with all of these outreach opportunities you can start this before your content is complete – as outreach is all about building relationships. If you can get buy in at an early stage you will have more chance of the content being used.

2. Think PR, local and national

Does your content have a news edge? Is it something that local or national news will care about? If so – talk to them! Find the right journalists, do your research, check previous articles, check Twitter, find whatever you can to help make your approach more personal and thought out. If you are a small brand, don’t think just because you are small you can’t feature on big news sites – you can! We have done it before for clients, so it does happen.

3. Think websites – UK and worldwide

Again, thinking back to your audience profiling, what other sites are your audience likely to be found on? Look at the websites in question, is it likely they might feature your content? Have they featured similar content before? Pick up the phone and talk to them.

4. Think Bloggers

Bloggers are awesome at featuring content, so ensuring you find the right bloggers with a relevant audience.

5. Outreach rules

• Pick up the phone, do not just rely on email

• Sell your idea – not your services

• Don’t be afraid to request a link – this is needed to benefit your SEO strategy. Ideally only share with them part of your content so that they have to link to get the full story.

• Make sure it is relevant – there is no point in wasting time trying to get a link from an irrelevant website.

• Do not pay for links.

• Consider using paid for services such as Taboola and Outbrain to amplify your content.

Once your content is out on the Internet and you have started to outreach the content you need to keep an eye out for links, as some lovely website owners may link to you and not tell you! Easy ways to do this include:

• Set up Google alerts for the brand the content is about or the title of the content.

• For images such as infographics – do a reverse image search on Google.

• Use software such as Moz, Majestic SEO or our friends at Authoritas to keep check of links.

• Use Google Search Console.

• Check incoming referral traffic in Google Analytics.

Through doing this you may also find places where your content has been used without a link, be sure to follow this up and try and get that link included – after all, they are using your content!

Happy outreaching!!