Presentation on blogger outreach and online PR to the Edinburgh Online Marketing Meetup group - a group of professional marketers, public relations pro's and SEO pro's.

1. Edinburgh Social Media Meetup 20 June 2013
Online PR and Blogger Outreach
Hugh Anderson & David Cumings

2. • Established in late
2010
• A technology company,
but not run by techies
• Scottish Enterprise
backed + one round of
seed investment
• Simple, online
marketing analytics
products
• Scalability to reach a
global audience easily
and cheaply
• Mantra: “Disrupt from
below with simplicity”

3. • Measuring online PR
(digital outreach),
discovering online
target audiences and
managing the process
• NOT social media
monitoring
• Focussed on bloggers
and blogger outreach
• Solving known pains :
inability to measure/
demonstrate value +
high cost or high
manual intervention
• Simple, user-friendly,
compelling and
affordable
• Full public beta
launched in February
2013

4. CONTEXT:
The changing
world of
consumer
consumption

6. Audience Participation 1
• How many people in the room write a blog?
• How many people in the room read blogs?
• How many marketers are in the room?
• Any experiences of digital/blogger outreach in
the room? Examples? Successes? Pains?

7. Why blogs matter: stats
• 78% of internet users conduct product research online.
• Greater than 70% of consumers state that blogs affected their
purchasing decisions.
• Trust in online customer opinions of 70%, vastly outstrips
traditional media.
• The average budget spent on company blogs & social media
has nearly tripled in three years.
• There are more than 180 million blogs globally
Sources: Hubspot, Econsultancy, eMarketer, Nielsen

8. Why blogs matter
• Earned media = Trust
• Consumer point of research
• Engine that drives ideas on the Internet
• The realm of experts
• Panda/Penguin updates

9. Benefits of blogger
outreach
• Precise: rifle-shot target audience
• Create loyal communities & brand
advocates
• SEO performance
• Measurable: campaign & business

11. Important points
• It's about developing relationships
• You need to be creating compelling content
• It's a two way process
• You have to have a lead capture strategy
• It requires an investment of time & energy

12. Process 1: Objectives
• Know your business objectives (how much
money do you want in the bank by what date)
• e.g. generate £4K of sales for ‘Our Debut
Album’ by the end of July 2013.
• How many physical conversions does this
translate into (total money needed / unit cost
price = conversions required)
• e.g. get 571 people to download ‘Our
Debut Album’ by the end of July 2013.

13. Customers
• Know your target customers
• Who are the people who are going to deliver
the business objectives by actually spending
their cash?
• Where do these people ‘hang out’ on the
Internet?
• Have some sort of a clue about why this
audience is going to care about your offer

14. Find the influencers
• Find the influential bloggers that your customers
follow
• Estimate the visibility they might achieve for you
• Big does not equal best; find the “magic middle”
• Assess engagement and other factors

16. Audience Participation 2
• Examples of outreach campaigns? Or business
development opportunities where bloggers
could be marketed to?
• Where does the target audience ‘hang out’?
• What do the target audience read about?

18. Reaching out
• Be sane and be normal
• Follow on Twitter
• Read their blog
• Retweet occasionally
• Get to understand them
• Comment sensibly once in a while
• Behave like a friend
• Keep a record of your level of interaction with
them

20. The content offer
• Devise and create a compelling content
offering that will appeal in the strongest terms
to your audience (customers and influencers)
• Teach, don’t sell
• Educate, entertain, and be relevant
• Think about the expertise you have and how it
will help your target audience.
• Prepare a content strategy that includes
anticipation
• No spammy emails or press releases!

21. Types of content
• Videos
• Infographics
• Ebooks
• Interviews
• Surveys
• Event invitations
• Samples
• Etc.
But, make it really genuinely useful.
And make it compelling.

22. But, to re-emphasise, success is based on
developing relationships and putting effort
into making really useful content
Neither of these is too hard to achieve

23. Measurement
• Weekly meeting (not sit down!)
• Visibility achieved?
• Engagement achieved with the offer?
• Conversions to leads?
• Are the numbers going up?
• Discuss ideas to increase conversion
• Assign actions to improve now before next
week

24. Example
• ‘The Best Practice
Guide for Effective
Blogger Outreach’
eBook
• Released July 2012
• 12 main influencers

29. Audience Participation 3
• Experiences of measurement?
• Anything beyond mentions (google alerts)?
• What other metrics?
• What other tools?
• What client experiences/expectations?

30. In Conclusion
• Embrace digital outreach - it’s here to stay;
• Think strategic goals, not tactical gains;
• Compelling content/story is key;
• Be human - it’s about relationships;
• Demonstrate value.

31. Hugh Anderson David Cumings
hugh@forthmetrics.com dave@forthmetrics.com
@hughforth @davidcumings
Thank You!
www.inkybee.com
https://www.facebook.com/inkybee.outreach