The document details a presentation from the Edinburgh Social Media Meetup on online PR and blogger outreach by Hugh Anderson and David Cumings, focusing on the importance of establishing relationships and creating compelling content for effective outreach. It emphasizes the significance of blogs in consumer decision-making, the benefits of targeted blogger outreach, and the necessity of a strategic approach to digital marketing initiatives. Key points include measuring engagement and visibility, finding influential bloggers, and understanding business objectives to achieve sales targets.

1. Edinburgh Social Media Meetup 20 June 2013
Online PR and Blogger Outreach
Hugh Anderson & David Cumings

2. • Established in late
2010
• A technology company,
but not run by techies
• Scottish Enterprise
backed + one round of
seed investment
• Simple, online
marketing analytics
products
• Scalability to reach a
global audience easily
and cheaply
• Mantra: “Disrupt from
below with simplicity”

3. • Measuring online PR
(digital outreach),
discovering online
target audiences and
managing the process
• NOT social media
monitoring
• Focussed on bloggers
and blogger outreach
• Solving known pains :
inability to measure/
demonstrate value +
high cost or high
manual intervention
• Simple, user-friendly,
compelling and
affordable
• Full public beta
launched in February
2013

4. CONTEXT:
The changing
world of
consumer
consumption

6. Audience Participation 1
• How many people in the room write a blog?
• How many people in the room read blogs?
• How many marketers are in the room?
• Any experiences of digital/blogger outreach in
the room? Examples? Successes? Pains?

7. Why blogs matter: stats
• 78% of internet users conduct product research online.
• Greater than 70% of consumers state that blogs affected their
purchasing decisions.
• Trust in online customer opinions of 70%, vastly outstrips
traditional media.
• The average budget spent on company blogs & social media
has nearly tripled in three years.
• There are more than 180 million blogs globally
Sources: Hubspot, Econsultancy, eMarketer, Nielsen

8. Why blogs matter
• Earned media = Trust
• Consumer point of research
• Engine that drives ideas on the Internet
• The realm of experts
• Panda/Penguin updates

9. Benefits of blogger
outreach
• Precise: rifle-shot target audience
• Create loyal communities & brand
advocates
• SEO performance
• Measurable: campaign & business

11. Important points
• It's about developing relationships
• You need to be creating compelling content
• It's a two way process
• You have to have a lead capture strategy
• It requires an investment of time & energy

12. Process 1: Objectives
• Know your business objectives (how much
money do you want in the bank by what date)
• e.g. generate £4K of sales for ‘Our Debut
Album’ by the end of July 2013.
• How many physical conversions does this
translate into (total money needed / unit cost
price = conversions required)
• e.g. get 571 people to download ‘Our
Debut Album’ by the end of July 2013.

13. Customers
• Know your target customers
• Who are the people who are going to deliver
the business objectives by actually spending
their cash?
• Where do these people ‘hang out’ on the
Internet?
• Have some sort of a clue about why this
audience is going to care about your offer

14. Find the influencers
• Find the influential bloggers that your customers
follow
• Estimate the visibility they might achieve for you
• Big does not equal best; find the “magic middle”
• Assess engagement and other factors

16. Audience Participation 2
• Examples of outreach campaigns? Or business
development opportunities where bloggers
could be marketed to?
• Where does the target audience ‘hang out’?
• What do the target audience read about?

18. Reaching out
• Be sane and be normal
• Follow on Twitter
• Read their blog
• Retweet occasionally
• Get to understand them
• Comment sensibly once in a while
• Behave like a friend
• Keep a record of your level of interaction with
them

20. The content offer
• Devise and create a compelling content
offering that will appeal in the strongest terms
to your audience (customers and influencers)
• Teach, don’t sell
• Educate, entertain, and be relevant
• Think about the expertise you have and how it
will help your target audience.
• Prepare a content strategy that includes
anticipation
• No spammy emails or press releases!

21. Types of content
• Videos
• Infographics
• Ebooks
• Interviews
• Surveys
• Event invitations
• Samples
• Etc.
But, make it really genuinely useful.
And make it compelling.

22. But, to re-emphasise, success is based on
developing relationships and putting effort
into making really useful content
Neither of these is too hard to achieve

23. Measurement
• Weekly meeting (not sit down!)
• Visibility achieved?
• Engagement achieved with the offer?
• Conversions to leads?
• Are the numbers going up?
• Discuss ideas to increase conversion
• Assign actions to improve now before next
week

24. Example
• ‘The Best Practice
Guide for Effective
Blogger Outreach’
eBook
• Released July 2012
• 12 main influencers

29. Audience Participation 3
• Experiences of measurement?
• Anything beyond mentions (google alerts)?
• What other metrics?
• What other tools?
• What client experiences/expectations?

30. In Conclusion
• Embrace digital outreach - it’s here to stay;
• Think strategic goals, not tactical gains;
• Compelling content/story is key;
• Be human - it’s about relationships;
• Demonstrate value.

31. Hugh Anderson David Cumings
hugh@forthmetrics.com dave@forthmetrics.com
@hughforth @davidcumings
Thank You!
www.inkybee.com
https://www.facebook.com/inkybee.outreach