Developing an Effective PR & Outreach Campaign for Your SMB

There are a number of tactics floating around about how to improve your website’s visibility. Link building or blogger outreach are methods that have been found to be effective in increasing not only your brand’s SERP but also getting more traffic through to your site.

In order to get the best possible results, you need to have a clearly defined strategy. In this post, we will go through things to consider before starting out.

How Does Link Building Work?

Basically, it entails getting a link to your site or blog put on someone else’s site or blog. Usually, you will need to provide content or perhaps some free product for them to review. There are occasions where you pitch an idea, and the blogger will run with it, but these are rare.

Choosing the Right Partners

Sounds simple so far, right? All you need to do is to provide some content and get it published by someone else. Here’s where it gets a little more complex. You need to be somewhat picky about the partners that you choose.

While backlinks do count, what counts more is building quality links. If you inadvertently link to a spammy site, your site will be marked down by search engines by association. If you have authority sites linking to yours, like government sites, for example, you score better with SEO.

How do you know this at the outset? Check the site that you are considering. How well laid out is it? Are there typos? How neat does it look? What comments are there? Do they make claims without linking to authority sites to back the claims up?

Finally, what kind of influence will they have on your target market? According to Statista, around about 25.4% of businesses surveyed in 2017 admitted to reaching out to an influencer as part of their strategy. Influencers can drive quality traffic to your site.

Finally, ask yourself whether or not you would feel comfortable recommending the site you are considering. Does it match your brand and brand values? If the answer is, “No,” then skip it.

How Do I Reach Out?

Reaching out entails either you making contact with blog owners that might suit your needs, or making use of a blogger outreach service. A blogger outreach service might help you make contact with market influencers as well.

If you choose to reach out, look at the blog itself and see if you can find out who the owner is, or if there is an admin person to contact.

Whether you are choosing to reach out for yourself, or use a service, the links should send traffic to your site, or there is little point to the exercise.

What Content to Create?

The content creation is the fun part, and there are many different formats it can take. Always consider your target audience where the link will be posted. For example, a long-form article could work well on an academic site, but not as well on a fashion site.

Take a look at the type of content that is normally posted there and take your cue from that. Many blogs that encourage guest posting will provide guidelines that you should check really well before you submit anything.

Here are some of the forms of content that you can consider creating:

• Long-form: There are going to be times when a lot of written content does work. If that applies, focus on creating content that is impeccably written, engaging and that flows well.
• Video: Videos, in general, tend to have the highest rate of engagement. So consider creating video content and a short paragraph to accompany it.
• Webinar/ Podcast: These are good for getting a message across quickly and easily. It can be a great way to get professional people interested in sharing your content.
• Research: This is where you show how much expertise you have and back it up with valid scientific research. Take the stat that we mentioned earlier about how many brands used influencer marketing. You know we didn’t make it up because we have the link.
• Infographics: These can be a great way of adding value for the blogger without having to do tons and tons of work. Infographics involve the use of small chunks of information and visuals to break a larger body of work down simply and easily.

At the end of the day, the success of your strategy is all going to depend on how much work you put into it. Take time to research properly so that you find not only the right partners but also the right angle for them.

Prepare quality content that you are proud to have associated with your brand.