I often receive emails from folks asking to get featured on Blogging From Paradise.
My Domain Authority on BFP was 50 the last time I checked. 18,000 plus links in.
I have been featured on Virgin, Forbes, Entrepreneur and Fox News.
The reason why bloggers and their outreach teams want to get featured on my blog via guest post, interview or quick hitter mention is because I built this blog up over 3 years and I’ve built my friend network up over 10 years.
One shout on Blogging From Paradise broadcasts your message to 60,000 plus folks.
Good deal.
But many outreach teams screw up the process terribly and fail miserably.
Let’s revisit a common scenario.
Blogger Outreach Fail
A blogger reaches out to me cold. I have no clue in hell who they are. Stranger Danger, usually.
Said blogger complements:
- my blog
- a specific blog post
- me
In most cases, this is a robotic process. I get it. Following the outline. Fine. Even if you are being as genuine as a snake oil salesman, I get it; you’re struggling. So I listen.
Said blogger looks forward to my response.
I email said blogger, thanking them for reaching out to me. Then I explain this is what you need to do to get featured on Blogging From Paradise:
I send them this link.
1 out of 50 bloggers thanks me for the link and begins building a friendship with me. These are future blogger leaders.
Most bloggers never respond to the email.
3 out of 50 bloggers respond with: “I am sorry; I just do not have the time to do what you are asking, as me and my team are busy and need something from you before we can invest that time.”
If these 3 out of 50 bloggers would read the email to themselves before replying to me, of course they would realize how selfish, greedy and outright loony such emails sound.
But this is the ultimate blogger outreach error: allowing fear to call the shots.
Trying to manipulate people with a team of 4 to quickly get what you want out of a top blogger, trying to use them, leads to endless failure and struggle. We can smell your desperation from 10,000 miles away because we have smelled it 10,000 times before during prior lame pitches.
Blogging Mastermind Walks
My wife Kelli and I joke about the pitches we receive regularly for guest posts and other features on our blogs during our evening walks.
She is an established personal development blogger at Life Made to Order so she also receives a high volume of these lame pitches.
During these blogging mastermind walks we chuckle at the silliness but also know that there is a real need to address this influencer marketing lunacy; folks have no clue how to do it right.
Look at my friend Maxwell Ivey if you want to see a blogger do influencer marketing properly.
He doesn’t do influencer marketing though. He just makes friends by generously helping folks, patiently and persistently.
By the way; Max is blind. I have met the man in person in New York City. He displays superhuman patience in all he does, from day to day offline stuff, to creating blog posts, to networking on social media. Try doing all this stuff with your eyes closed, guys, and you’ll see what real patience is.
More than the tens of millions of bloggers out there, he would have a legit excuse of not having the time because stuff that takes most of us a second to do may take him a bit longer to do. But he blogs from the heart, builds genuine friendships and this is why he is becoming more successful, more well known and more of a blogging influencer every day.
This is how it’s done; enjoy helping people, have a blast making friends, then your friends will expand your reach like my stomach after a trip to a Buddhist Vegetarian restaurant in Thailand. Talk about filling fare!
The Correction
Instead of impatiently failing, relying on the desperate efforts of you and your tiny team, try this: patiently build bonds with top bloggers over months by helping them without looking for anything in return. Then your seemingly piddly team of 3 folks will become a tribe of 50 friends, over months.
Then as you keep giving freely, your tribe of 50 friends promotes you, endorses you and hires you, spreading your word, featuring you, offering you guest post opportunities and being loyal brand advocates.
I have a 60,000 member community because I did things patiently and persistently, helping people without looking for anything in return. Doesn’t a 60,000 member blogging community sound better than the efforts of 3 people? Especially when you don’t have to manipulate these folks to share your content; they love doing so and share your posts freely.
Patient bloggers tend to become highly influential bloggers.
Impatient bloggers flame out and fail or work so hard trying to succeed that they never enjoy the journey.
I’ll take the fun, patient, generous way to being an influential blogger, thank you.
Video
Watch as I discuss this concept via video.
Cats will appear.