In other words, more than 90% of your email remain unanswered.<\/p>\n
These days bloggers and journalists are bombarded with link requests. They can recognize mass campaigns and fake link-baity tactics. Engaging your contacts and getting them to reply is becoming harder and harder.<\/p>\n
There’s only one solution to this problem: Authenticity<\/p>\n
This is about providing authentic value<\/strong> and focusing on authentic relationship building<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Email outreach<\/a> is an exchange of value.<\/p>\n You need to give something in order to get links. Examples include:<\/p>\n Creating value should be re-enforced by effective relationship building. Each of your email outreach campaigns is going to be much more successful if you maintain active relationships with your linking leads in-between.<\/p>\n Nurturing your relationships with your link building leads is no different from nurturing your relationships with your clients. Engage with them regularly on social media, send out emails to congratulate them on their birthday, invite them to be featured on your site or social media channels.<\/p>\n On average, a person needs about 8 touchpoints to remember you (and this number goes back to 2015<\/a>. I am pretty sure it’s more now that we are well into the information overload era). That’s how actively you need to bring your brand in front of niche bloggers and journalists to increase your chances they will remember you by the time you email:<\/p>\n It is also a good idea to personalize their experience when they finally get to your site. Using content engagement tools like Alter<\/a> is always a good idea to bring your content asset in front of your site users, including your link building leads:<\/p>\n Ever since the European Union has launched online privacy regulations called The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), privacy concerns have become widely recognized. Around 100,000 complaints<\/a> have been issued with EU national data protection authorities showing that more and more people become aware of their privacy rights.<\/p>\n Your linking leads recognize their right to privacy too, and if you get too pushy, you can end up annoying them. This could blow up. Your contact may bring the issue public discussing your practices on social media.<\/p>\n To minimize the reputation management risks:<\/p>\n Just a few years ago it was much easier: Original and useful content would bring links organically. It was hard to build links to product pages and commercial landing pages but content-based link building was basically a breeze.<\/p>\n These days creating content that would bring links on its own, without you asking for those, is next to impossible. Content consumption is quickly exceeding content demand, so standing out is tough.<\/p>\n The key is in creating integrated content creation strategy that would include many of the below areas:<\/p>\n [Apart from optimizing content for organic visibility, Text Optimizer pushes you to expand your content making it more indepth]<\/p>\n In order to accommodate new marketing trends, marketers need to build a cohesive email outreach technology stack.<\/p>\n There are three types of content that attracts links and makes email outreach easier and more effective:<\/p>\n But the real power of outreach-friendly content marketing<\/a> is in combining all of the three<\/strong> types in one content.<\/p>\n But I am getting ahead of myself. Let’s look into each of this in more detail:<\/p>\n Here I start with linkable content #3 because it lays the foundation for everything: We need to find a searchable idea, i.e. one that may be research by bloggers and journalists who will hopefully discover our research on Google and link to it as a source. This is the ultimate goal, but to make it happen, this is also where we start.<\/p>\n Keyword research<\/a> usually helps in discovering ideas for your research, as well as question research<\/a>. Basically, it’s the same type of brainstorming you’d when creating any type of content<\/a>.<\/p>\n Looking and assessing your own content is a good idea here, actually, if you have been contributing industry content for at least a year, it’s probably the best place to start. You want to know which content attracts traffic, attracts links and engages your audience.<\/p>\n Check your own web analytics dashboard in search for some exceptionally great content. Here I am using Finteza<\/a> which is an advanced traffic analytics platform with a huge focus on engagement and conversion analytics:<\/p>\n You can further research the selected content performance to see:<\/p>\n This gives you lots of information as to whether you should invest in turning this content asset into a survey-based research.<\/p>\n Make a good list of your ideas and search for existing research studies. Ideally you want to go ahead with the one that hasn’t been done for a while (if at all).<\/p>\n Actually, it’s best to choose the one that was done in the past but years ago. You’ll be able to claim those links by providing those publishers with updated data<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Once you know which topic \/ question you are building your content asset around, put together a survey and collect your data.<\/p>\n If you have a solid customer base, consider inviting them to complete your survey. This is free, plus it’s a good opportunity to re-engage your past customers.<\/p>\n Here’s also a detailed article on collecting free submissions for your survey<\/a> which you can use in combination with other methods, like paying for SurveyMonkey’s Audience solution<\/a>.<\/p>\n You can also collect answers from your current and future site visitors. I use Alter<\/a> to engage my audience which should work for getting additional survey submissions too.<\/p>\n Alter is a smart marketing bot that aims at increasing your site engagement rate. You can connect it to your preferred email marketing software and then invite your new subscribers to complete the survey in the automated “Welcome” email.<\/p>\n For a solid research study, you’ll need at least 500 participants<\/strong>, so everything you can do here helps.<\/p>\n While collecting the responses, start coming up with visualization solutions. Here are a few tools<\/a> and plugins<\/a> to help.<\/p>\n Besides collecting raw data, use “ego-baiting” technique to collect more ideas and add some trust signals to your future research study. Here’s how it will help:<\/p>\n To give you a better idea, here are two well-known example of how original research can include a powerful ego-baiting component for better results:<\/p>\n On top of that, you’ll also be able to get those experts link to that asset to. Here’s an outreach email I received from the author of a similar project:<\/p>\n (Notice that this email includes exactly where and how I can link to the article. As a contributing expert, I couldn’t really resists this request!)<\/p>\n At this point, you need to create content that can both rank well and attract links. Use Text Optimizer<\/a> to create content that will meet your target audience’s needs. Text Optimizer uses semantic analysis to identify associated concepts that need to be included in content:<\/p>\n It is a great way to ensure your future asset will be able to rank higher as well as attract organic links.<\/p>\n Don’t underestimate the impact of visual appeal! Take some time to come up with appealing design and professional graphics. Highlight key takeaways, visualize numbers, create sharable images featuring influencers’ quotes, etc.<\/p>\n Original research + Ego bait + Email outreach = Your link building success<\/strong><\/p>\n Don’t forget your ultimate goal is to generate links on an ongoing asset but don’t wait for them to come once you build it. Start with the email outreach while diversifying your templates<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n
![](\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/kmbrian.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/word-image-3.png?resize=358%2C196&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/kmbrian.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/word-image-4.png?resize=393%2C288&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n2. Privacy Concerns Are Getting Stronger<\/h1>\n
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3. Linkable Content Creation Should Become More Integrated<\/h1>\n
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![](\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/kmbrian.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/word-image-5.png?resize=365%2C387&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\nTakeaways<\/h1>\n
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How to Create Linkable Content that Makes Outreach a Breeze<\/h2>\n
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1. Come up with Content Idea that Ranks<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"Finteza](\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/kmbrian.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/finteza-old-content-assessment.png?resize=700%2C405&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n\n
![\"Finteza](\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/kmbrian.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/finteza-old-content-assessment-1.png?resize=700%2C391&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n2. Collect Your Data<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"Alter](\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/kmbrian.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/alter-optin-bot.png?resize=700%2C467&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n3. Get Influencers’ Input<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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![\"Associated](\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/kmbrian.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/associated-ego-bait.png?resize=700%2C364&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n\n
![\"Egobait](\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/kmbrian.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/egobait-example.png?resize=700%2C692&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n![\"Expert](\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/kmbrian.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/expert-links.png?resize=700%2C471&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n4. Put Everything Together<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"Text](\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/kmbrian.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/text-optimizer-writing.png?resize=700%2C588&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\nNow Start Your Outreach!<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"Flowchart\"](\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/kmbrian.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/flowchart.png?resize=700%2C425&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n