The Socialarc Process: Adding a Personal Touch
- Details
- Author: Michael Lee
- Tuesday, December 06, 2011
One of the main services we offer here at Socialarc is outreach execution. However, execution can mean different things to different people and agencies. When it comes to our approach, particularly outreach to bloggers and moderators, we hold ourselves to a very high and specific standard.
Before we even compose an email for outreach, at least two of our Digital Outreach Coordinators spend time reviewing the target site for relevance and any potential conflicts of interest. We aim to keep the best interest in mind for both our clients and the bloggers we’re reaching out to. Is this something the blogger would want to post about? Is this something that would resonate with the blogger’s readership? Is this something our client would want that blogger to cover? These are questions we always ask prior to outreach. Only after the site passes our internal review do we outreach to the blogger, editor or moderator.
We find sites by either doing manual site selection or pulling from our existing database. We have over 50,000 sites to select from – including blogs, groups and forums – which have been screened for inactivity, appropriateness and topic. Each site also has their full contact history tied to it, so we can see at a glance if a blogger or moderator enjoyed hearing about one kind of promotion over another.
Additionally, we pride ourselves on the personal touch we add to our emails. We are not a newswire, nor are we astroturfers. We do not automatically send the same message to hundreds of bloggers at once. Instead, we take 15-20 minutes to read through each blog’s content, ensuring the site makes sense for our outreach. We often reference a general topic or a specific post as a way to explain to the blogger why exactly we are outreaching to them, and why they should care. We know bloggers pour a lot of energy, time, and passion into their blogs, so it’s important that we not waste their time by sending them an irrelevant message.
If we feel that the blog isn’t a fit, we don’t contact them. There have been times, however, when we’ve made mistakes. Sometimes, even with our rigorous screening, we’ll end up outreaching to a site that isn’t interested in our proposal or doesn’t want to be approached by outside businesses. We are constantly looking for ways to improve our processes so that we only reach out to people who would be happy to hear what we have to say, and we always respect a blogger’s wishes should they not want to receive any future correspondence.
Just as there is a person behind every blog, there is a person behind every outreach message we send at Socialarc. Social media is about connecting, and that’s what we want to do most with our outreach – connect with others. We look forward to making your online acquaintance, and hope you’ll be just as eager to make ours.
