Sometimes, it can seem like no matter how much effort you put into creating great content, it doesn’t really make an impact.

How can content marketing be noticed? How can you be ranked among the best marketing professionals and swim with the sharks!

You can ride on the shoulders of influencers and be your best option.

My team and I reached hundreds of marketing professionals to compile a list of unique tips for creating compelling content.

This guide will help you get started.

What is influencer outreach?

Influencer marketing and outreach are designed to increase sales and leads for your company.

People who have a large following that you are interested in marketing to. They are most often found on Instagram. The term “influencer marketing”, which is now used to describe all social media networks, has been popularized. This is influencer marketing, where you collaborate with these influencers in order to promote your product. Influencer outreach is reaching out to these influencers to make a deal.

You will see an increase of leads which in turn will lead to an increase in revenue. Influencer marketing is a great strategy to use to grow your business.

A poll conducted on the Tomoson found that 59% of marketers plan to increase their influencer marketing budgets in the next 12 month.

According to the poll, influencer marketing was also rated as the fastest growing channel for customer acquisition. It can also be the most affordable if used correctly.

There are many other reasons than the fact that influencer marketing is being used by other marketers.

Adblock has been used in an exploding way in recent years, making it harder for businesses to rely upon traditional paid media.

Adblock is expected to increase 30% annually, making it highly probable that online ads will soon be extinct. Even though they are a good option, it might not be the best use of your marketing budget.

Brands such as TapInfluence are now capitalizing on the influencer marketing boom by creating an engine that fosters connections. They have also seen impressive results.

Few strategies can achieve such dramatic results with a single type of marketing.

Next, you need to find the right influencers who will bring your business the customers it wants.

Start with a project that is worth it

You have to ensure that your content stands out from the crowd. There is a lot of data available. If your project is not well-designed, you won’t be able to get much engagement from other influencers.

How can you make a great project?

Start with a great idea and plan well. Make sure you have a clear direction for your project from the start. Get creative with your projects.

Begin by brainstorming as many good ideas as you can.

This is just the beginning of your planning.

You can find inspiration from other brands online if you are having trouble finding good ideas. There are many online marketing ideas lists.

Take as many pictures as you like and note the top ones.

Once you have compiled your list, determine if there is a clear winner or look for unique hybrid ideas that can be leveraged by influencers.

In your planning, remember that you should always use influencers in unique ways. Hubspot asked for advice from influencers in 2014 to create an infographic about influencer marketing.

They took the advice of top-level experts to create a visually appealing infographic, much like our final influencer project. They were able to stand out among the many other content being shared and created alongside this project.

Once you have determined the scope of your project, it is wise to set realistic goals and map them out over time. I prefer to use the SMART methodology .

This method is loved by marketers all over the world and will help you to have a clear path for any project you attempt.

These are some goals that you might create for your project.

1. The influencer marketing campaign will increase conversion rates by x% within a given time period.
2. I intend to spend $x for research, design, and distribution.
3. This campaign will take me x time and keep me active for y time.

Be sure to align your project with the needs of your influencers and your ultimate goals.

Once you have decided on a project, you can now decide the format that you will use for your final piece of content.

We had many ideas and angles to consider when we created our expert tips project.

Were we limiting our focus to content? SEO? Their best marketing tip?

Which format is most appropriate for our purposes? Were we looking to create an infographic Blog post? Slideshare? Ebook?

Throughout the entire process, we assessed whether the influencers that we chose accurately conveyed the message we wanted to communicate to our audience.

We had decided to use a two-pronged approach, which allowed us to create an infographic as well as an eBook. This was the best way for us to offer value to our audience as well as the audiences of influencers who replied.

You are now ready to begin focusing on your influencers.

Find the right influencers

It can be difficult to find influencers.

You may have been given the tools to find leads when you first started your outreach strategy. But you are still learning the details.

Finding the right influencers is easy if you have a good understanding of your target audience. This will allow you to create a pitch that will appeal to them and convince them to buy your idea.

When my team and I planned our content roundup, it was clear that we needed approximately 50 expert tips to include into our ebook.

We would be able to access such valuable insights and create a piece that many marketers would love to have.

We knew that we wanted to target content marketing professionals who are looking to optimize their content for search engine optimization.

We asked these questions to each influencer:

• What’s your tip for creating great content?
• What is the #1 SEO tactic that has proven successful?

We could create a guide for a lot of people if we had 50 views and responses to these questions.

Two different methods were used to track down influencers.

The simplest and most straightforward option is to Google the keywords that you are looking for.

These keywords were SEO experts and content marketing experts in our case. There are also general variations such as content marketing insights and SEO tactics.

Stryde had published a list of the top 50 marketing professionals. This was a great start.

Another search led us to a list of Forbes created by Sujan Patel.

There was a lot of overlap between the lists.

It was proof that the individuals listed were influential, and it also indicated that they were willing to share their knowledge.

A Buzzsumo search for influencers was the second method I used. To find more SEO and content marketing influencers, I used the amplification tool.

As you can see, this allows you to create a personalized list of people related to your search terms. (I used content marketing). You also have quick access to their website and social media pages.

I added all these influencers to a spreadsheet and tracked their names, companies, websites, blog posts, articles, and email addresses.

Some of the influencers were Kevan Lee from Buffer, Barry Feldman, Feldman Creative, Michael Brenner, NewsCred, and many others from companies such as Wordstream, Hubspot and UperFlip.

Not every project needs to rely on prominent influencers to reach its goals. In fact, most don’t.

This is the practice of using niche-specific micro influencers with smaller online followings. Their following is still substantial by some standards, but they are smaller than high-profile influencers who have millions of followers.

This is a good thing.

They found the “sweet spot” for comment activity and following in the 10-100k follower window.

You’ll still be able to generate a lot of buzz and have a great conversation with the biggest audience.

However, does this really help your project?

All evidence points to an overwhelming “yes”.

ExpertVoice discovered that micro-influencers can increase your conversion rates even more than regular influencers. Micro-influencers had 22.2 times more conversations than the average when they recommended products.

It’s quite impressive, right?

They also found that 82% consumers said they would follow a recommendation from a micro-influencer.

Are you starting to see how a micro-influencer could be a powerful addition for your project?

Take a look at the way Jord brands tap into micro-influencer content using strategic YouTube features.

Although this channel has only 23,000 subscribers, Jord’s influencer-video got over 13,000 views. This is a huge boost in traffic and a positive review by a leader of an online community. It’s worth every penny.

In just five minutes, these viewers were captivated and became more interested.

It is highly unlikely that you would see this YouTuber on a list with Link and Rhett. She could be missed by a mile. This would mean that you’d lose thousands of impressions on your project.

Jord does not just focus on one group. YouTube alone has hundreds of thousands of reviews about this company.

Do you know any other brands that have thousands of user reviews?

They’ve caused quite a stir by simply relying upon the goodwill of micro-influencers. They don’t stop there.

You can also find a promotion code with influencer giveaways, as shown in this example.

Jord is not just looking for a positive review but they are also trying to incentivize the influencers’ audience to try their product by offering a discount.

The benefit for the influencers? They receive a nice watch. This campaign is an excellent example of how micro-influencers can be used in a large campaign.

How do you find these influential people?

You won’t find them on any list of the top YouTubers, as I mentioned. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t on some list.

A service such as this can help you to speed up your search for micro-influencers.

You can search for potential influencers regardless of their audience size. You can narrow your search by demographics or audience.

If you are looking for influencers that help their followers be more productive, you can type “productivity” into your search engine.

These are the results.

Chances are, you won’t be able to land any of these influencers in your campaign. Although we all would love to see Elon Musk influence our campaigns, he isn’t the right fit for this “micro” role.

How can you refine your search for micro-influencers to make it more effective?

You can follow our sweet spot earlier, but you should keep the limit at 10k to 100k.

Looks much better, right?

Although they might not be as well-known as Elon Musk and Xbox, these individuals can still provide an audience for your project. Click on the profile to find out if they are a good match for your goals.

This will give you a quick look at their audience and provide you with an indication of how active and engaged they are.

This information will help you decide if you are a micro-influencer.

You can use micro-influencers in any way you like. However, you can see the success of Jord simply by looking at his numbers. They can help you influence YouTube or Snapchat , and even Instagram.

Before I get on to the details of how to pitch your influencers, here’s one last thing to keep in mind.

You should also consider how you will “compensate” your influencers when you are considering your influencer consideration. The project showed that attribution and some extra exposure are sufficient. However, this won’t always work. 

It is not the only way.

The truth is, influencers would prefer to receive monetary compensation in exchange for their services.

This makes perfect sense. You want to ensure that people who are expressing positive feelings about your brand or lending their expertise to your efforts get something in return.

Be positive, however. Don’t be discouraged, even though your influencer may prefer financial compensation. There are other ways to reward your influencer for their contribution.

Here are some other methods of “compensation”.

1. Shout out – Our method of attributing industry experts’ advice is undoubtedly the best. They were recognized for their expertise and their ability to use our content in their own endeavors.
2. A giveaway or product discount – Giving away a discounted service, especially to a micro-influencer could be a great way for your brand to gain more exposure.
3. Commission – A commission is a good idea if you have an influencer who keeps returning to your efforts and leads into bigger sales.

Don’t be discouraged if none of these methods work. There are many creative methods to compensate influencers. You can find what works best for your influencers and then create a customized compensation package they won’t accept.

We had nearly 140 marketing professionals at the end of the process, so we were ready to move on to the next stage: the pitch.

The pitch

There are many resources available for advice on how to pitch influencers. But how do you determine if they are right for your situation?

Every pitch is unique. You can look at templates if you wish, but I wouldn’t recommend using them for copy-paste purposes. 

No matter what route you choose, tailor every pitch to your audience. It is important to be specific about each influencer.

Any other advice that I might give is more general, but still within the realm of best practices for approaching influencers.

Personalize the pitch. Your pitch letter should not be addressed to “Dear blogger” or any other “Dear influencer”. This will just make your recipients forget about you.

It is also not a good idea for your first conversation to be about you and how amazing you are or how important this opportunity might be for them. Instead, focus on building a relationship with your influencer.

Once you’re done, let them know what you think about their work or expertise. It is a great idea to refer to a podcast or post that resonated with your thoughts and the reason you decided to reach out.

Keep your pitch short and sweet. Your offer should be simple and clear.

Don’t hide the amount of work that the influencer will need. Their time is valuable.

Your influencer will be more inclined to respond positively if you make it easy for them. Give them examples of content or images they can refer to.

Don’t make them feel like a burden.

Lastly, follow good email etiquette:

1. Keep it short and to-the-point.
2. Don’t mass pitch.
3. Get their attention.
4. Don’t let yourself be taken advantage of.
5. Tell them why they should endorse you.
6. Your audience should know about the benefits of your project.

It takes some practice to create the perfect pitch.

My first email pitch was horrible. Looking back, it was too long, preached, and too “pitchy”.

It’s easy to identify what works and what doesn’t when you have a lot of content pitches.

Keep your emails short and to the point. Here’s how I reached Guy Kawasaki.

Takeaways:

1. Your subject line should be vague enough to pique interest. However, it is important to address the person directly by name so it feels personal.
2. Show them you are friendly by greeting them. Keep it brief and sweet.
3. You can either introduce yourself at the top of your email or sign off at the end with the name and company.
4. Make sure you research the person you’re reaching out to and tailor your pitch accordingly. Do not just send out a generic email template. They are experts and will tell if you’re going for the easy route.
5. A pitch or ask should be limited to a few sentences. Do not go into detail about your company’s history, philosophy or other details. Let’s get to the point!
6. Offer the person what you know they are looking for. You have a good chance that any marketer or entrepreneur who you reach understands the importance of being featured in well-researched, promoted content.

You will get your tip at the end

Guy Kawasaki is not the only one who will be polite and endearing.

To get people’s attention, it takes persistence.

These influencers are busy and will likely get a lot of spam emails. It is important to demonstrate your commitment to grabbing their attention.

Are you still having problems? You might be a spammer

Many of your questions will end up in spam filters, regardless of whether you like it or not. Even big brands can end up in spam filters. My Twitter alerts are sometimes caught in the spam filter.

What can you do to check for spamming tendencies?

There are seven main errors many people who tap into the influencers’ audience end up making.

1. Do not do a “1-2 punch.”
2. There is no follow-up, or too many emails.
3. Too many emails.
4. Unclarified asks (or none at all)
5. Use a one-size-fits all approach.
6. There is no clear goal
7. It is impossible to quantify the relationship.

These mistakes will result in you being thrown out of your influencer’s trash or spam folder. There is still hope.

Quey continues to discuss three powerful ways that you can transform your email’s destiny, and reach your target influencer.

1. Your mindset needs to change. This is not networking. Instead, build a relationship.
2. Do more than your influencers expect.
3. Find out why they didn’t respond to you or denied you. This will help you to improve your position for the next time.

You may need to start over if you suspect you are in the spam folder, or being ignored. Although it is not the best option, it is better than creating a low-quality project.

Preparing for rejection (persistence, persistence, persistence)

You may recall I said that we had compiled a list with almost 140 marketers. However, our final piece of content contained only 46 expert tips.

This is because most people don’t respond to my emails no matter how charming or direct they are.

This doesn’t mean I didn’t try and get in touch to those who didn’t respond.

Our expert tips ebook would not have been possible if I gave up after the first round.

My pitch may have been lost in their inboxes because they likely receive so many emails daily.

What do you do?

You can either send them a follow up email and hope for the best or contact them through other channels. Twitter was my preferred method of communication.

Tweets are a great way for you to remind someone that they have sent an email. This indicates that you still await a reply.

Every time someone tweets me to inform me they have sent me an email, it’s a great feeling.

Tweeting to someone is a way to let the world know what you are up to.

This can be daunting for some people, and may lead to a premature reveal of their content plans.

Sometimes, however, you can build anticipation for your future projects by talking about them more.

Twitter allows you to communicate with people more quickly and directly (here’s that word again).

Neil Patel was, for example, the most difficult person to get an answer.

I tried to email him several times, but he did not respond. Next, I tweeted him and then finally I sent him a message via Quicksprout’s contact form.

Finally, I got a reply:

I felt confident after this success and tried to get Chelsea Peretti a tip.

She didn’t answer. It’s okay, though, because I still received my marketing tip from Neil!

Rejection is not something to be taken lightly.

The process can be viewed as a difficult game. You can try a different strategy if one doesn’t work.

Send a second email if your first one is not received. If that fails, you can try different channels to reach a person.

Every tip I received from an influencer was like a powerup, or a gold coin. You will eventually succeed but persistence is key. 

You might have some fun with your influencer outreach.

Complete your content

It is important to remember that influencer outreach means that you must be able to offer something to the person you are reaching out to that they cannot refuse.

How do you make sure they are satisfied with what you offer?

As I have mentioned, many marketers consider a solid backlink and promotion to be an ideal prize.

You must deliver on your promises in a way that exceeds expectations. Deliver A+ content if you promise A-level content.

This is done not to impress every expert in your roundup, but to make everyone jealous. Even the ones who didn’t notice you.

First, trim the fat

After we had received all the tips within the deadline, it was time to get some more.

We were provided with just a few sentences by some influencers, while others provided us with pages upon pages of content.

We wanted to highlight some key points for those who are interested.

To encourage more people downloading the ebook, it would include all responses (which you can do by clicking this: 46 Expert Tip Ebook).

Second: Design the content

Once we had all the condensed tips compiled, it was time to design the infographic.

Two designers were available, so one could work on the ebook while the other worked on the infographic. The entire process took approximately a week.

The infographic was created using our infographic maker tool. Parts of the ebook were also made with that tool. Adobe Illustrator was used for the rest.

You can either use an online tool or contract someone from a site such as Upwork if you don’t have in-house designers.

A tool allows you to easily create infographics and simple imagery quickly and inexpensively.

Let’s suppose you want to create an infographic from your data. Canva offers a variety of templates to help you create the perfect look and feel for your final product.

These templates can be modified to suit your needs. You can transform a template into useful content with a little love.

Click on the template you want, and then click “use this template”.

You’ll then be taken to Canva’s online editing platform. You can edit colors, images, and copy to meet your needs.

After you have created your content, save it and then download it. You can also use Canva’s autosave to make changes to your project.

Third: Revise, revise, revise

It is crucial to read, reread, and have someone else review your work.

You will be eager to publish rich, text-heavy content as soon as you can.

Eagerness can quickly blur your vision and prevent you from seeing what might appear obvious to others.

Even though we were almost ready to publish the final version, there would be major mistakes that we needed to correct.

If in doubt, wait for a day and then go back to the content again. You may be surprised at what you discover.

To help you with editing and revision, I recommend Grammarly. This tool will allow you to fine-tune grammar, spelling, and vocabulary and also perform final checks on your content.

You can upload your copy to this platform and receive instant feedback regarding revisions. You can see that Grammarly had something I could change almost instantly when I uploaded this post.

It is not a good idea to publish something, then have an influencer email you claiming that they mistyped their name or used a wrong picture.

To avoid embarrassment and impress everyone who sees your work, be thorough

Fourth: Post Strategically

It’s not possible to create great content with the help of your influencers and then not make it visible in the most effective places. It’s a waste of time and money.

Where do you put your content? It depends.

discovered that Facebook and blogs are the best places to share influencer content.

As you can see, other platforms have had measurable success with influencer marketing campaigns. Jord is an example that comes to mind immediately.

I’d suggest that B2B players also include LinkedIn high up on their list. It’s an emerging leader in this space. To find additional ways to leverage your content, you can also use a hashtag search tool.

To sum it all, I suggest doing some research on your audience, niche, and influencer audiences in order to determine where you should be posting. You will get better results the more you know.

Round two of outreach

Now that you have published your post error-free, you can relax and watch the shares and backlinks skyrocket. Wrong! But you’re not finished yet.

This is where you will need to conduct your second round outreach. To prepare my outreach, I used Brian Dean’s Skyscraper technique.

Skyscraper is a three-step process for creating and sharing content that will produce the best results.

Step 1: Locate link-worthy content.

Step 2: Create something even more.

Step 3: Contact the right people.

You can see by my bolding that this section of influencer marketing focuses only on the third step of the technique.

This means finding potential entrepreneurs and marketers who might be interested in your content and telling them before you publish it.

Start building their anticipation, and then contact them when the content is available. Our outreach was done in two phases.

1. Get in touch with all experts who took part

I began by emailing each participant expert individually (not merging them all at once).

If they spread the word about your post, you have a good chance of getting lots of traffic to it.

They will share posts from both their personal and business social media accounts.

We had already received over 200 social sharing requests within an hour of the initial batch of emails being sent.

Here’s my email to experts:

Takeaways:

1. All participants should be re-emailed individually.
2. Include a link in the email to remind them about the study.
3. Describe to them how you helped
4. We are grateful for their help again.
5. Ask them to share (and then re-post!) content with their followers.
6. End with a note that provides further opportunities for collaboration.

2. Send it to everyone else.

Next, we will send emails to people who expressed interest in the Skyscraper Technique.

You just need to remind them that they are following up on their requests. This should be done manually, so you can contact each person individually.

After that, you can email a larger list of contacts (which can be done using a mail merge), as well as your blog subscribers.

You can contact anyone who has done previous collaborations or co-marketing.

Last but not least, send the following email to your contacts:

“Also, we would love to feature you in future roundups. Send me a message, and I’ll keep in touch!”

This will get other influencers excited to be contacted and many will also want to share your content to show their support.

In just a few days, we had 16 backlinks to our original post and rank now on the FIRST TWO PAGES OF Google for the terms addictive and addictive content infographic and expert content tips.

Every day, I get notifications about more people linking to the content and people sharing it on social media.

To build lasting relationships, use your successes

Building long-lasting relationships with influencers is always better for your brand, your brand and even the influencer. Relationships are more important than campaigns.

As part of your long-term strategy, think about how you can collaborate with your influencers throughout your project. These influencers should be aligned with your content and audience. They also have valuable experience that is worth sharing.

Incentivize influencers to stay with your company for the long-term by finding innovative ways to do so. Keep them coming back as often as possible. The mutual growth potential can be explosive if you are able to prevent burnout and keep your ideas moving.

Conclusion

If influencer outreach was ever a mystery to you, I hope you now have some understanding.

Influencer marketing allows you to build stronger relationships with people who can help your business grow.

These people can help you find more customers who may be interested in your products or services.

You can reap the amazing benefits of influencer marketing by creating the right project, finding and sharing the most influential people, and creating rich, high-quality content that is worth reading and sharing.

Reaching out and engaging with influencers is a great way to create rich, high-quality content that your audience wants to read. Influencer Marketing is effective.