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According to Hubspot’s 2018 State of Inbound Report, marketers who prioritise blogging are 13 times more likely to achieve a positive ROI on their efforts.

In 2019, there is no question that blogging is worthwhile. Posting articles on your own site can drastically improve SEO performance and demonstrate your in-depth expertise to potential customers – leading to more leads and more sales.

But this can only take you so far and should be complemented by a robust outreach strategy. ‘Influencers’ are a hot topic for good reason. By identifying and eventually working with the most popular, respected and relevant blogs, you can reach extensive new audiences right in your sweet spot.

Once you’ve decided on your outreach strategy and its goals, the tricky part is finding and engaging with the right influencers. The number of blogs in the world is expected to reach 3.12 billion by 2020, so you’re going to need some help.

Thankfully, there’s a whole host of powerful tools out there to help you do just that. Here are some of the best.

Buzzstream

Buzzstream is all about outreach. Its remit is to help you find the right influencers, engage with them more efficiently and report on the eventual success of your efforts.

It takes a lot of the leg work away from research. You can upload a list of URLs of the blogs you’re interested in and it will automatically search the web for contact information, site statistics and social-media metrics. All you have to do is decide which ones you want to get in touch with.

Top features:

• segment your contacts – quickly find the most relevant information with a whole host of data filters
• streamlined outreach – quickly personalise and send emails to bloggers and automate follow-ups, saving you time
• end-to-end reporting – see the effectiveness of everything from your outreach emails to the blogs you post so you can optimise their effectiveness

Ninja Outreach

One of Ninja Outreach’s main selling points is that it works for all users across the globe, no matter their language or location. 

This tool is purely focused on outreach at scale, again helping you create and personalise messages to influencers. It also indexes and allows you to search social networks like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Once you’ve identified them, it gives you an idea of how much they charge for a post and automatically fills in their contact information. 

Top features:

• find the top influencers – Ninja Outreach claims to have access to 25m Instagram influencers, 7m Twitter influencers and 6m bloggers
• create personalised templates – make sure you give the best representation of your brand with eye-catching email templates
• automate outreach – send multiple, personalised email messages to bloggers to save time and give yourself more chance of success

Vuelio

Vuelio is a tool aimed at PR professionals, and claims to have the largest database of media contacts in the world.

While bloggers, vloggers and other influencers form a key part of their tool, the focus is on finding the best journalists and titles for your business. The features are similar to others, helping you to contact, manage and measure your outreach efforts more efficiently.

Top features:

• the world’s largest media database – if you can’t find the right bloggers here, there’s not much hope!
• media monitoring – set alerts to listen out for conversations about your niche
• reporting – measure the reach you achieve to demonstrate the value of your PR efforts to your business

BuzzSumo

A real content marketing all-rounder, BuzzSumo is often the first tool on digital marketers’ shopping lists because it can be used to answer a number of questions.

BuzzSumo lets you research blog-post titles by looking at how content is performing across search engines and social media. It makes it easy to see which titles and articles are performing, and from there find the top-performing bloggers. 

Once you identify the best content, it’s just a case of getting in touch with the relevant parties. 

Top features

• filter by type of author – whether it’s influencers or brands you want to find, this tool makes it easy
• filter by location – pinpoint exactly where you want to view content for, particularly good if ‘hyperlocal’ is important for your business
• filter by social shares – useful if you want to increase your influence in a particular social network, among other things

You’re spoiled for choice

Blogger outreach is an important task for any business – the good news is there are plenty of tools out there to make the process as effective and painless as possible.

Another positive is that these tools will have a package to suit your budget, ranging from free accounts to enterprise options. Many also include a free trial so you can try before you buy and find the right tool for your business.

Remember, if you’re still struggling after this, or if resource is scarce, you can use a blogger outreach service to help you along the way.

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