I received a few more lame guest post pitches this morning.
Note; I have compassion for these bloggers. I have been in their shoes, struggling to grow my readership.
But wasting your time doing silly stuff like blind pitching strangers adds years to your blogging learning curve. Never mind the struggles you face doing such fear-based stuff.
My friend Alonzo Pichardo and I recorded our latest online success chat – keep an eye out for the Online Success Chats Podcast coming soon – to help you connect with online influencers.
Watch it here:
We explain how to connect with influencers effectively by helping them without looking for anything in return plus we discuss how to keep things personal and why this benefits you.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is all the rage these days.
But most people do influencer marketing all wrong.
Take the lame pitches I received today. Strangers to me with few writing skills – based on the pitch emails – tried to land guest posts on Blogging From Paradise.
This is like a Junior Varsity, unskilled basketball player calling the front office of the New York Knicks to ask for a spot on the roster.
It takes years of practice or even over a decade of practice to become an NBA player. It takes months and years of writing practice and promoting me without asking for anything in return to appear on Blogging From Paradise.
Just like the writers at Forbes don’t hand away guest posts like candies to a baby I don’t allow any old body to guest post on my blog.
I tell people; landing a feature on my blog is incredibly difficult. After honing my writing and networking skills for 10 years you need to prove to me you have practiced your writing and networking skills for years. Being featured on Virgin, Fox News, Entrepreneur and Forbes, I get it; my blog has aligned with world famous brands. I treat it as such.
How to Impress Influential Bloggers the Right Way
Help top bloggers without asking for anything in return.
Retweet their latest post. Publish a 3-4 paragraph, personalized comment on their blog. Share their latest post on Facebook.
Help bloggers for weeks, then months. Ask nothing of them.
Over months, you will begin to impress influential bloggers. Impressed big dawg bloggers will count you as friends.
Example
Thinking of an example of how to do influencer marketing right I went right to the solid proof: the blog comments field at Blogging From Paradise.
Anybody who persistently comments genuinely on Blogging From Paradise without asking for anything cares about me. These people are my friends.
I hook my friends up.
Joy Healey always publishes genuine, engaging, candid, helpful comments on my blog. She is generous, offers value through blog comments and tirelessly promotes me on social media.
Joy even accepted a recent guest post of mine that goes live in a few weeks.
Of course I will feature her on Blogging Tips. I take care of my friends!
She helped me without looking for anything in return, persistently shouting me out and commenting on my blog. She was genuine. Joy gets a shout out here, helping expand her brand awareness on an authority blog.
See how that works?
Keep Things Personal
Chatting about life away from the laptop is another way to impress established bloggers.
This shows you don’t want to use some pro to advance your business ends but actually want to get to know them over time by finding shared interests.
Alonzo Pichardo and I connected chatting about old school rap. We struck up a chat on Facebook.
Keep it light guys.
If you want to connect with top bloggers make it personal, not about business.