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Are you trying to connect with influencers?
Looking for ways to streamline the process?
You can make your influencer outreach more efficient and save yourself time by combining three free tools.
In this article you’ll discover how to automate your influencer outreach with BuzzSumo, Buffer, and Twitter.
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#1: Identify Influencers Who Shared Similar Content
The first step is to source popular posts related to the topic you’re interested in promoting. Let’s use this article as the topic example.
Go to BuzzSumo.com and type in keywords related to your blog post. For example, the results for a search for “influencer outreach” returned similar articles.
After you find similar posts that are popular, you need to identify key influencers who’ve shared those posts.
Click on the View Links Shared button next to each post and then click Page Authority to sort your list by who has the most influence. Ideally you want to target 10-20 individuals with high authority and a large number of followers.
In this example, Brian Dean, SEMrush, and Jon Morrow all have high social authority rank, a large Twitter following, and have shared an article similar to this one.
When you reach out to identified influencers who have shared content similar to your own, you raise the chance they’ll share your article. Plus their amplification of your content can drive huge exposure for your blog.
To put your best foot forward, you’ll want to start engaging and interacting with the influencers you choose a few weeks before you reach out to them on Twitter.
Add your influencers to a Twitter list so you can easily monitor and engage with them on a daily basis. To put yourself on their radar, make an effort to retweet, like, quote, and spark conversations with each of your influencers.
#2: Create and Schedule Automated Tweets to Influencers
Once you’re on the influencers’ radar, create a two-column spreadsheet with personalized direct tweets to each of them. Make sure each tweet is no more than 143 characters long. To quickly work out the character count for each of your tweets in Excel, use this formula: =Len(enter cell).
Your spreadsheet should look something like this (including 10-20 direct tweets).
Here are some tweet templates you can adapt for your spreadsheet:
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- [TWITTER HANDLE] Hey [FIRST NAME], I saw you shared [CONTENT CREATORS TWITTER HANDLE + POST TOPIC] post and thought you might like this ☺ [LINK TO YOUR POST]
- [TWITTER HANDLE] Hey [FIRST NAME], I saw you shared [CONTENT CREATORS TWITTER HANDLE + POST TOPIC] post. I hope you like my own refreshed version ☺ [LINK TO YOUR POST]
- [TWITTER HANDLE] Hey [FIRST NAME], I saw you shared [CONTENT CREATORS TWITTER HANDLE + POST TOPIC] post and hoped you’d like my take on it ☺ [LINK TO YOUR POST]
- [TWITTER HANDLE] Hey [FIRST NAME], I saw you shared [CONTENT CREATORS TWITTER HANDLE + POST TOPIC] which inspired this – hope you like it ☺ [LINK TO YOUR POST]
Once you’ve created the spreadsheet, copy the Tweets column into a notepad file and upload it to Bulk Buffer, a free tool you can use to bulk-upload content to your Buffer account.
Simply upload the saved notepad file where prompted, select the Twitter account where you want your tweets to upload, and click Send to Buffer.
Once your tweets are uploaded, you’ll want to space out the scheduled updates in your Buffer account. This will ensure the outreach tweets aren’t too frequent and don’t appear spammy.
To do this, simply go to your Buffer content queue and scroll to each queued post. Then click the posting date to edit the date and time the tweet will publish.
It’s a good idea to space your outreach tweets for every other day, and ensure you’re sharing plenty of content in between.
#3: Follow Up
Influencers can easily miss your direct tweet due to the volume of messages they receive on a daily basis. Here’s how to follow up with them to increase the chances of your post being shared to their large online audiences.
First, continue to use the Twitter list you created to engage with and provide value to the influencers you want to form a relationship with. Remember to be consistent and genuine when you tweet them.
Second, send an email to each influencer who hasn’t replied to your tweet within 2 days. Make sure to pen a personalized email message and include a link to the post you brought to their attention.
An effective outreach email should do four things:
- Build familiarity
- Get to the point
- Provide value
- End with a call to action
You can use the following template:
Dear [ENTER NAME],
My name is [YOUR NAME] from [YOUR COMPANY]. Over the past [AMOUNT OF ENGAGEMENT TIME] we have been engaging on Twitter ([YOUR TWITTER HANDLE]) and I have been really impressed with your blog content.
I’ve been sharing your posts across [ENTER CHANNELS] and I especially like your [ENTER POST TITLE] because it [ENTER REASON FOR LIKING POST].
I sent you a direct tweet 2 days ago when I noticed you had shared [CONTENT CREATORS NAME + POST TOPIC] post, which I also liked a lot.
As I mentioned in the tweet, I have recently created an updated version, which [OUTLINE ADDED VALUE YOUR POST PROVIDES].
[LINK TO YOUR POST]
I would love to hear your feedback on the post as I really value your opinion.
I look forward to hearing from you,
[YOUR NAME]
Conclusion
Using the framework above to automate your influencer outreach strategy is a great way to form relationships with people who can increase traffic to your blog posts without investing huge amounts of time.
What do you think? How do you feel about automating influencer outreach? Will you use this tactic? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
