Working with bloggers: How to find bloggers that are a good fit for your business

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Dec 16, 2016 / by
Working with bloggers: How to find bloggers that are a good fit for your business

Working with bloggers in your niche can be a great way to expand the reach of your business. There are several ways that working with bloggers can benefit you, and there are multiple ways in which you can work with them.

But before you can start working with any bloggers, you need to find the right ones to contact. How do you do that exactly? Here are some tips for finding bloggers worth working with and some red flags for which to watch out:

Where to look for bloggers

Social media iconsStarting with a simple Google search for “[your niche] + blog” is a good beginning, and will no doubt present you with a lot of options. It can be a little overwhelming to sift through pages and pages of search results, however, so here are some other places to look for more targeted and potentially active groups of bloggers.

  • Facebook groups. There are thousands out there, so finding the right ones can be tricky, but they are an excellent place to start forming relationships with bloggers.
  • Twitter lists can also be goldmines for blogger contacts. Usually created by other bloggers, these are places for bloggers to connect with each other and build their Twitter followings.
  • Searching for Instagram hashtags is another, more targeted way to conduct blogger outreach. The ways Instagram uses hashtags is very similar to Twitter, but there are some unique and interesting ways they interact with content and connect businesses to customers on that platform compared to others.

How to decide which bloggers are right for your business

Once you’ve found bloggers to contact, it’s worth taking some time to determine which one of them are likely to be a good fit for your business. Check out their blog and consider the following:

  • When was the last new piece of content published on the blog? Is it being kept up to date?
  • Click through to their social media pages. How many followers do they have? Do they have a lot of followers but very little audience engagement (likes, shares or comments) on Facebook, for example? If it’s low, this may imply that they’ve bought followers.
  • Is there an easy way to get in touch with them? Look for a contact us page and see if they have an email address, rather than just a contact form (emails are way easier to follow up on!)
  • And, most importantly, would you feel comfortable with your service or product being promoted on this blog? Does it feel like a good fit?

In general, bloggers who have a media or work with us page are the ones who are most likely to be open to collaboration in the first place, and should understand more immediately what you are trying to achieve by reaching out to them. Another general rule of thumb is to try and find bloggers in your niche whose sites have a domain authority of 30 or above. This you can check with a variety of domain authority checkers, such as this.

When you’re sure you’ve found the bloggers you’d like to connect with, try not to cold email them and consider connecting with them before emailing. Adam Connell suggests engaging with their blog content directly. He states that:

The best way to get a response from a blogger is by connecting with them via different mediums first, so consider commenting on their blog, sharing their content and engaging via social media.

But be careful…

It is true that most bloggers nowadays will expect to be paid for publishing content on your behalf, but be wary of those who quote ridiculously high prices. By being unrealistic with their expectations for compensation, bloggers are showing you that they are either not well informed about how collaborations of these kinds work or that they have overestimated the value and influence of their site. These are ones to avoid.

Blogs which have not been updated in many months, which are littered with bad spelling and grammar, clearly contain spammy sponsored backlinks to gambling or escort sites, for example, are ones to avoid, no matter how high their domain authority.

Finally, be careful with bloggers who engage in unprofessional email exchanges. If they are not taking their role as a potential influencer seriously, don’t expect them to take your collaboration seriously either.

In the end, it all comes down to finding a partnership that works for you. This may take some trial and error to see what fits your business best, and that’s OK. Allow yourself time to grow in to collaborating with bloggers and finding out how to get the most out of it.

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