Influencer marketing is no new thing. We have been influenced by others for as long as the human race has existed. It is not influence itself that is new, but the advent of the social media influencer which has changed the way in which businesses leverage influence to their benefit.

Before, those with significant influence were few and far between and insanely difficult to reach. But social media has changed the entire landscape, drastically increasing the networks of previously ‘uninfluential’ individuals AND making them significantly easier to reach (DM’s, comments, emails etc).

Those that jumped on the trend for influencer marketing early saw HUGE success as a result – check out GymShark or Daniel Wellington if you want a couple of examples.

However, as more businesses join the influencer marketing party, influencers attention is becoming stretched, making it increasingly difficult to grab their attention and get them to collaborate with your brand.

In this article, we take a detailed look at how to get influencers to engage, how to write an awesome influencer outreach email and what to do next…

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Do your influencer research and engage

When it comes to successful influencer outreach, the better you know your target, the higher your chances of success.

Spend time researching and understanding the influencers you want to work with:

• Follow their accounts
• Read their blogs
• Like their stuff
• Post relevant comments
• Share their content with others
• Reach out with questions and ideas
• Basically, make sure they know you exist before you reach out with an unsolicited proposal. This process is time-consuming, but you would be surprised by how much of a difference it really makes. Plus, on occasion influencers will spot you and your brand and reach out about collaborating – ultimately putting you in a much stronger position.

The information you gain from these types of interactions not only makes the influencer familiar with your brand but allows you to further screen the influencer and assess their suitability to work with.

Kiss (just a little) influencer butt

Nobody likes a suck-up, but everyone loves being recognised and praised for their efforts and creativity.

When communicating with influencers don’t shy away from mentioning some of their achievements, some of the content you love or something they have achieved that you would also love to do.

Note: If you can’t find anything nice or relevant to say – do you really want them representing your brand?

Don’t go too far with this, but be specific.

“I love your stuff”

Doesn’t quite have the same clout as…

“I was just reading your latest blog post on why dogs are better are humans…I have to say I totally agree and you present it in a way which I am sure is going to convince others to think the same – great job”.

Align your goals and vision

So you have caught the influencer’s interest by giving genuine praise of something you love. Now you need to convince them of the values of your brand and why they align with their own values and goals.

Ask yourself what you are trying to achieve as a business. Perhaps you have a mission or vision statement which will help you do this. Then ask yourself how you can align with what the influencer is looking to achieve.

Take for example that you are a male skincare brand, that has a mission to spread the word of ethical and organic skincare products amongst men. Are you looking to work with influencers that have the same or similar goals? Perhaps they are trying to build a name for themselves in the same space.

Make it clear in the email why you think there is good alignment between your business and the influencer. Again, if you can’t match your mission to the goals of the influencer you should really question whether they are the right influencer for your business.

Don’t (always) show them the money

Whether you should be paying an influencer is a subject that deserves its own series of blog posts. For now, let’s assume that you have a budget that can be used to facilitate influencers to create content with your brand.

This may be a controversial point, but from our experience, we VERY RARELY mention money in the first email. The initial email should be used to judge the suitability, availability, alignment and willingness of the influencer to work with your brand.

This gives you the opportunity to test whether the influencer is in it for the art or the dollar. Although a reply email will very rarely not mention payment or value exchange of some sort, there are two common replies to the initial outreach email which are cause for concern:

1. Their reply does not contain any mention of your brand, why they agree with your points on partnering or even any effort to highlight why partnering would be a good idea.

2. They simply send you their rate card and very little else.

This being said, if the influencer makes some effort in the email, it Is less concerning if they ask about your budget or what other value you bring to the table. One statement that we often use in initial influencer outreach emails is:

“We do have a small budget for this project, but we are currently just judging interest at this time”

This allows influencers to naturally mention potential fees or ideas in the reply but also acts as a subtle way to remind them that is they do not show some interest then they aren’t the right match for you.

Again, whether you should pay influencers or work on other exchanges of value is a whole topic which we could (and will) go much deeper into detail on. Understanding the value that you bring and that the influencer brings will help you at this point.

For example, when working with micro-influencers who may be starting in their content creation journey, you are likely to be able to find a reasonable value exchange. Working with larger or celebrity influencers will almost certainly require some sort of financial incentives.

Be clear on what you are looking for

What do you want to achieve from working with an influencer? Is it to leverage their expert knowledge, their highly relevant content or their reach into your target audience?

You need to make it very clear in your initial outreach email what your motivation is to work with them. Some of the wider elements of this will become clear when aligning your values. However, you should also take the opportunity to explain the specific steps you are hoping to take with them.

This saves both you and the influencer a considerable amount of time. They can review your thoughts and weigh up whether they have the time, energy and inclination at this point in their journey.

REMEMBER: When working with influencers for their expert skills in content generation, it is a bad idea to maintain too much control over the content they generate. Although it can be a good idea to present some ideas, make it clear that they will maintain a good level of creative control over the content and that you would love to hear their ideas.

What next?

This is an obvious one which so many people seem to forget.

At the end of your email include a call to action highlighting exactly what the influencer needs to do next. It may be as simple as:

“Please reply to this email with your ideas for moving forward”

or

“Please give me a quick call on [….] as we need to get this project moving asap”

If the next step isn’t clear, you are going to lose the interest you have fought hard for through the initial outreach email.

Influencer Outreach: In Summary

Writing effective influencer outreach emails is a fine art which requires constant adaption, research and testing to get right. Influencers tend to be very busy people and you will often need to reach out a number of times before they get back to you.

By following the influencer outreach principles we have highlighted in this article you give yourself the head start you need to get the job done.

Want a helping hand? We have included a link below to two influencer outreach examples which we have tried and tested with great success. If you have any questions or need any support with your influencer marketing campaigns get in touch: hello@makeitmana.com

>>CLICK HERE TO GET 2 X FREE INFLUENCER OUTREACH EMAILS<<

  Search engine optimisation commonly referred to as SEO, is a powerful way to help you get your product or service in front of the right people at the right time.

SEO can be a bottomless pit of tiny tweaks and tactics, used to slowly increase your search engine rankings. If you want to rank highly for major keywords, it WILL take a considerable amount of effort.

But small businesses and busy marketers who don’t rely solely on SEO can still take steps to increase their chances of driving traffic from the big search engines if they take the right approach.

Most businesses already create content on their websites as a way to add value to their customers and position themselves as thought leaders. With a few pieces of valuable knowledge, this content can really drive a dramatic difference to your overall search engine performance.

Create Content Clusters

Too often we see businesses start creating content for content’s sake. Although this approach may lead to some individual pieces of content proving interesting and popular with your audience, it is unlikely to benefit you from an SEO perspective.

Realistically, taking a ‘scatter-gun’ approach to content is also unlikely to help you position yourself as a leader in your given industry. Using content clusters is a good way to develop focus within your content, as well as encouraging good SEO practices.

Content clusters are made up of the key areas your business specialises in. For example, a specialist flooring company may focus on:

• Hardwood flooring
• Carpet
• Tiles

Each of these areas would have a dedicated section on your website. These dedicated pages would then hyperlink out to other related content published on the site. So, hardwood flooring may link out to blog posts such as:

• How to pick a hardwood floor for your home
• How to lay hardwood floor
• Caring for your hardwood floor

This internal linking from one key ‘pillar page’ shows search engines that you are a specialist in that area, making them more likely to promote your website when someone searches for that specific term.

Understand Keywords

Researching keywords becomes significantly easier when you know which content pillars you will be focusing on. The keywords for your pillar pages are likely to focus on the specific subject of that page.

For your subpages picking your keywords can be a little more tricky. As these pages are more specialist, you will want to focus them on long-tail keywords. These keywords are much more specific than a typical keyword. They usually have much lower search volumes and as a result, are a lot less hotly contested.

For example, the keyword ‘hardwood flooring’ will be significantly more difficult to rank for than ‘sustainably sourced oak flooring’.

You can find examples and ideas for longtail keywords by using tools like Google Keyword Planner, which gives you helping information on search volumes and competition. For more specific longtail ideas you can also use the Answer The Public tool, which effectively gives you a cluster of ideas based on your main keyword.

Finding the best keywords can be a little labour-intensive for the busy business leader. But once it is done, it is done and you will be reaping the benefits for months to come.

Keyword Density & Placement

When you have your keywords, you need to make sure you use them properly in your content.

In the past, search engine optimisers would stuff the keyword as many times as they possibly could into content to get it to rank highly. In fact, some would even have lines and lines of the keyword printed on a page in white font (so you can’t see it). This is because ranking would be based on how many times you use a keyword on your page.

Google is now a lot smarter. Keyword stuffing is more likely to get you penalised for using dubious tactics that pushed up the rankings.

Although there are lots of numbers bounced around on what specific percentage of keywords you should use, nobody really knows the answer to this. A much better approach is to make sure that you use your keyword regularly, but only where it is natural to do so.

You should also include your keyword in your content title.

Create Quality, Link Worthy Content

Creating awesome content is all too often overlooked as a key part of search engine optimisation. Instead, optimisers spend their time working on the finer technicalities of content.

Quality is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, Google are always adjusting their algorithms to better serve its users. That means they are always seeking to serve them better content. Where once accepted techniques like keyword stuffing fall out of favour, Google will always find a way to promote great content.

When you create quality content, this will also encourage your readers to share it far and wide. Not only does this drive valuable traffic to your site, but links across the web also highlight the value of your content to search engines.

With this in mind, it can be beneficial to outsource your content writing needs to a professional. This can actually be more affordable than you think, with some professional and experienced writers starting at around £80 for 1000 words.

Create Evergreen Content

Although of-the-moment content can be great for generating interest and traffic to your website, search engines like Google are pretty good at identifying information that is outdated. This means that the effort you put to creating content can often be short-lived in these cases.

Instead, focusing on creating evergreen content can be a big benefit and have an accumulative effect on your search engine traffic. This also means crucial elements like backlinks can build up over time, increasing the chances of increased rankings.

Optimise Meta Descriptions & Images

A very quick win for those publishing blog content is optimising your meta descriptions and images.

Most CMS like WordPress, Wix and Squarespace make it super easy to create a dedicated meta description for your pages. When writing these ensure that you include your keywords and use up all the space you have. It is also worth thinking of your meta description as a mini-advert for your content. It should be compelling and intrigue someone who may read it in the Google search results to click through.

Using images is a crucial part of creating great content. But Google cannot see an image like you and I can, that is why they include ‘alt tags’. These are tags that help Google understand what the image is. For example, you may include an alt tag like ‘oak hardwood flooring’ so that Google understands how it adds clout to your content.

Not using your alt tags is missing an opportunity to increase how positively Google sees your content.

Consistently Update Content

Updating your content is a great way to drastically increase your search engine rankings with very little effort.

Doing this shows search engines that you are consistently reviewing your content and providing the most relevant and up-to-date information. This, in turn, increases the chance that they will promote your content to their users.

Try reviewing old content and updating it to make it more relevant today. For example, we may update this article in 12 months time to include new tips on increasing SEO through content creation.

Ranking on search engines can include a lot of leg work. But that doesn’t mean you cannot benefit from search engine traffic with just a few updates and tweaks to your current processes. Follow the tips we have outlined in this article to help your business get more from your content.