How do you connect with influencers online?

And does it matter if that person influences just 2 people or 20,000 people?

Well that was the subject discussed today on the For Immediate Release live show hosted by Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz.

The following article summaries the live conversation. If you just want to read my summary guidelines for blogger outreach go to the end of the article.

This is a very long article and for the benefit of some readers who may not be interested in the full story, I have split the post – so click on ‘continue reading’ if you want to access the full article.

BACKGROUND

The show came about as a result of an email that Gary Vaynerchuck of Wine Library TV has instigated (he asked a member of his team to send) inviting bloggers to connect with him around the launch of the first of his 10 book deal later this Summer. As a side note you will find Gary on Twitter – and he has approaching 600,000 followers!

The email, while sent in the first name to people was a form email and as a result John Cass posted the email in full on his personal blog criticising the email pitch. The post by John instigated a conversation online.

The conversations which also extended on Social Media Today where John’s blog is syndicated were less than positive and could have been considered by some to have negatively impacted Gary’s personal brand and reputation.

On the live show today with Shel and Neville were Gary and John and they were joined by Connie Reece (a previous guest on Biz Growth Live) and Kaitlyn R. Wilkins of the Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence Group.

OVERVIEW OF THE LIVE SHOW

John Cass was invited to outline the background to his blog post and commented that he had received an email from Gary’s publicist (who works for Gary’s company). John said that he usually deletes emails but the email got off to a good start with it being addressed to him personally.

When he continued to read the email it was clear to him that it was a ‘form letter’ and the person writing the email had not read his blog and therefore there was no connection to what was interesting and relevant to him.

John commented that he is interested in people connecting with him about case studies in marketing and PR and to hear of books in the areas of PR and social media and that as there was no attempt to personalise the email to his interests he decided to post the email to his blog and to comment on it as an example of what does and what does not works when undertaking blogger outreach.

Next in the conversation was Kaitlyn who outlined the background to the Ogilvy Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics. She emphasised that in terms of blogger outreach that it is important to :

• identify the right people to reach out to,
• understand why would someone would be interested in your content/product/service and then be inspired to share it with others in their community
• and thirdly plan to follow up and maintain a relationship.

(Side note: I recently received a great example of blogger outreach from the Ogilvy team in London recently yet a very poor example of blogger outreach from another of their offices today )

Gary then outlined that he is very passionate about getting his new book (Crush It: Why Now Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion) to as many people as possible -  that it is relevant to every niche. He apologised again on the show (as he had already done on John’s blog) for the content of the email which he agreed was not personalised to the people who received it.

Gary stated that his dilemma is that he wants to connect with as many people as possible – he doesn’t mind if they have a poor Alexa rating or only have 10 people subscribe to their blog and asked the call how best to outreach on a major scale.

What I was astounded by was the fact that Gary commented that he works 19 hours a day and responds to between 500-1500 people personally and wants to work even harder in connecting with people.

He commented that 200 people of 500 emails that had been sent out had responded in a positive way to the email, but he does want to connect with the ‘masses (my term for what he was saying).

The conversation in the Blog Talk Radio chat room was lively and Shel and Neville invited people to join the conversation.

I joined the conversation and offered a different perspective as I too had received the email from Gary’s team. I looked beyond the fact that it was a form letter as the intent behind the connection I saw was to offer value to my community and that Gary was open to receiving ideas on how to partner as part of his book launch as you can see from the extract from of the email:

We’re getting requests for interviews and stuff like that but we decided it would be better to be proactive and contact all the business and marketing blogs and see what we can do for them. He’d love to do book giveaway contests, interviews, Q&A sessions, an interpretive dance summarizing a chapter, really anything that you think your readers would like to see.

I am not sure that we helped Gary answer his big question “how to reach a massive audience in a personalised way”. I got the sense that his vision for his book and how many people he wants to reach with it is bigger I am sure than any author I know of. It almost felt that Gary wants to book into everyone’s hands – like the Heinz Tomato Ketchup vision of being in every household.

Some if the ideas shared during the conversation included sending a personalised email to everyone he wanted to connect with as Darren Barefoot had done some years ago with the ebook he launched.

There was also commentary about there being fatigue with blogger outreach though I don’t believe that is the case at all inn Ireland and the UK where it is in it’s infancy.

KRISHNA’S SUMMARY GUIDELINES FOR BLOGGER OUTREACH

• If you are a PR firm working on behalf of a client and plan to connect with bloggers, make sure that you have developed an implement your blogger outreach policy – the same goes for if you undertake blogger outreach on behalf of your own company
• When you connect with bloggers take the time to read their blog and discover what they are interested in so that you ensure that when you connect it’s relevant to their interests and audience
• Ideally connect with bloggers before pitching them – just as you would get to know journalists and reporters in the traditional media
• Offer something of value to the blogger – writing a blog takes time and if you want to encourage someone to write about your business, product or service, ideally give the blogger something that would be unique to them.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Here are three previous articles that you might find of interest in relation to blogger outreach:

How not to pitch a blogger

How to pitch to bloggers and podcasters – your blogger code of outreach

Why businesses should appreciate bloggers

OVER TO YOU

I have two questions for you:

1. What advice do you have for Gary in terms of how to enhance his outreach at scale for his book where he does not want to just connect with A list bloggers in the US?

2. What would you add to my summary for blogger outreach based on what works or what does not work for you?

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