How to Promote Your Blog with Guests, Influencers and Celebrities
This is a guest blog by Richard Etienne, brand consultant, public speaker and creative director for OPELLO™.
In a world of #fakenews, here’s some stone-cold reality: your blog post is not original, unique or game-changing. Nor is mine or anyone else’s post.
With so many other writers in your "lane" creating similar posts, it can become increasingly difficult to stand out and gain more traffic. What’s more, it can be incredibly disheartening to learn someone else’s post (that isn’t nearly half as good as yours) gets heaps more traffic, particularly when you’ve put in a great deal of time and effort to complete it.
Fear not. There is a workaround. In fact, there’s quite a few. These workarounds are applicable to all bloggers and doesn’t cost a penny. Let’s get started shall we…
Make a guest feel welcome
When Buffer got started, they built an email list of 100,000 subscribers by publishing 150 guest posts in just nine months.
Guest posts alone can build your credibility that ties back to your own blog and the valuable content you publish there. Plus, it gets your name out there to help you steal the audience you need to grow.
Want to write a guest blog for Kaitlin Zhang? Check out the submission guidelines here.
You can even offer to guest takeover a brand’s Twitter page to publish news, advice articles, and host Q&As relevant to the interest of the followers.
Here’s how to find someone to guest blog for:
Google search the following -
blog: [subject matter] “[country/region]”
Positive Influence
Essentially, a guest post is you promoting yourself on someone else’s platform.
By contrast, a mention from a top blogger or influencer is a recommendation from someone with thousands of loyal followers. Getting a mention or feature by an influencer, with a link back to your blog is the pot of gold at the end of a literary rainbow.
A proven way to get traffic from social media groups such as Linkedin or Facebook Groups or is to interview the owners or influencers of these groups and ask them to share the article you feature them in.
Does your post have a pull quote from another blogger? Do you link to or discuss someone else’s brand or business? If so, it’s perfectly normal to ask them to share your post. Many will be happy to oblige. Simply send them a short email/DM with a link to your post, and mention that they were featured. Tell them if they like it, you’d appreciate them sharing the article.
If someone regularly shares certain types of content, they’re more likely to do it again. Buzzsumo is a great tool for finding highly shared content and its key influencers.
How to contact an influencer
An unspoken rule of influencer outreach is that you shouldn’t contact people out of the blue. Before you ask someone to share, spend some time sharing their content, commenting on their blog posts, and building a relationship.
"I’m with Famous"
The key with celebrities it not to select the one with the most followers to promote your brand, because engagement is more important than number of followers.
Harvey Schwartz, senior vice-president of talent for WhoSay explains:
If someone has one million followers and someone has one hundred thousand, the obvious choice is, ‘let’s go with these million,’ but when you dig into the numbers and you see that the audience of 100,000 is ten times more engaged than the audience of one million, you’re going to pay less for the 100,000 and get way more for your investment."
If your blog is about a product of yours start off by offering to send free samples to your chosen celebrity. Don’t discuss endorsements or money. Simply communicate that you’re a big fan of them and that you’d love to send them your amazing product. If they accept and give you an address to send the product, that is great. If not, then just go back to you shortlist, pick the next one on the list and begin again.
How to contact a celebrity
If your target celeb is not A-list, there’s a strong chance you can contact them directly through their social media account and won’t have to confront any gatekeepers such as publicists, assistants, etc.
In closing
With so much noise on the internet you may feel that you will never be heard or noticed. With a solid plan of action and brand strategy you can surely be heard. It takes passion, commitment and persistence with a heavy dose of strategy to get that endorsement from an influencer or celeb that would make a difference to your brand and lead to a surge in following, credibility and investment in your brand.
Read More: Can Personal Branding Really Save You Time?
About Richard Etienne
Richard Etienne is a brand consultant, public speaker and creative director for OPELLO™. Follow his weekly blog on www.opellomedia.com/blog
Since 2007, Richard has worked as a digital marketing consultant to the who’s-who in branding including professional football clubs, global banks and instantly recognisable drinks brands. As a public speaker, he has taught the fundamentals of promoting a strong brand to start-ups and universities in four different countries and also became a proud father to an adorable, cheeky chap.
Richard is regularly called to speak at events because he teaches with passion, authenticity and from a place of expertise. His aim is to ensure you always come away from his events, blogs or courses learning something of value.
Follow Richard on Twitter @retienne and Linkedin.
FREE Event - How to Use Content Marketing To Promote Your Personal Brand
Richard Etienne will also be the guest speaker at my next personal branding workshop on 1 March 2017 in London.