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Edinburgh Social Media Meetup 20 June 2013
Online PR and Blogger Outreach
Hugh Anderson & David Cumings
• 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”
• 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
CONTEXT:
The changing world ofconsumer consumption
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?
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
Why blogs matter
• Earned media = Trust
• Consumer point of research
• Engine that drives ideas on the Internet
• The realm of experts
• Panda/Penguin updates
Benefits of blogger outreach
• Precise: rifle-shot target audience
• Create loyal communities & brand advocates
• SEO performance
• Measurable: campaign & business
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
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.
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
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
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?
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
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!
Types of content• Videos
• Infographics
• Ebooks
• Interviews
• Surveys
• Event invitations
• Samples
• Etc.But, make it really genuinely useful. And make it compelling.
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
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
Example
• ‘The Best Practice Guide for Effective Blogger Outreach’ eBook
• Released July 2012
• 12 main influencers
Audience Participation 3
• Experiences of measurement?
• Anything beyond mentions (google alerts)?
• What other metrics?
• What other tools?
• What client experiences/expectations?
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.
Hugh Anderson David [email protected] [email protected]@hughforth @davidcumings
Thank You!
www.inkybee.comhttps://www.facebook.com/inkybee.outreach