When you first start in content marketing, you usually have little to no audience of your own for your content. If you're a major brand, you may be able to develop this quickly, but it's still extremely helpful to get visibility on third-party sites to grow your reputation and visibility as a producer of fantastic content, and to also net links to your site.
This can come in the form of third parties linking to content on your site, or getting guest posting or columnist opportunities on those sites. A key stage in that process is creating a pitch to the site in question, in order to get them to say "yes" to whatever it is you're requesting.
The hardest part of writing any pitch isn't the creation of the pitch itself. It's the legwork you have to do in advance. Successful pitches are all about preparation, and frankly, there needs to be a lot of it.
To illustrate this, I'm going to walk through the process using a fictitious landscaping business, describing what they might need to do to start successful pitching of the content they plan to create.
Step 1: Competitive research/identify topic areas
You aren't ready to pitch until you understand what else is out there. You need to visit major sites and see what they're writing about landscaping and related topics. You also need to see what your competitors are doing in terms of content marketing.
If your competitor has been proactively doing content marketing for two years, it's a good idea to see what areas they've been focusing on. For example, if the competitor has already established themselves as the thought leader in Do-It-Yourself (DIY) landscaping, perhaps your initial focus should be on something else.
Perhaps you can concentrate on specialty areas, such as prepping your yard for a wedding reception, a graduation party, or the integration of an in-ground pool into the yard.
I'd start by pulling raw data from tools such as Open Site Explorer, and getting the Domain Authority data on the links they have. I did this for one landscaping business, and here's a snapshot of the highest-authority links they have:
For this company, it would be interesting to see what they're doing with ThisOldHouse.com. That looks like a key relationship for them, as they've received 131 links from that site. Ultimately, what you would do next is dig into the details of each of these sites, find out why the competitor got the links, and uncover what it tells you about your opportunities.
Step 2: Identify target sites
Who covers topic areas similar to yours? Have they published third-party contributions before? You can obtain some of this from the competitive research you went through in Step 1. But, to take it further, I did a search on "landscaping ideas":
This brought up a bunch of high-authority sites to check out. As a next step, I collected data on their Domain Authorities, and then dug into whether or not they accepted guest posts. The search query I used to get information on whether a site accepts guest posts looks something like this:
After doing that, we can assemble the data into a table that looks like this:
This now helps you understand who to potentially pitch. Important note: Don't limit yourself to guest posts. With very high-authority sites like many of these, you may want to explore becoming a columnist. Pitching a column may be even easier than pitching a guest post, as it suggests that you are interested in a long-term relationship, which may be of greater interest to the target site.
In addition, explore whether or not the sites in question do interviews of experts on different topics. This could be another way to get your foot in the door.
Step 3: Line up your experts
Having a legitimate expert writing for you is a crucial part of any pitch. Successful off-site content marketing requires you to get placement on some of the top sites covering your market. You won't succeed at this unless you have someone creating content for you that really knows their stuff.
It's great if the subject matter expert (SME) is you, or someone working for you. This makes pitching your expertise easier. However, if no one inside your business has the time, you can rent (contract) the expertise. Either way, make sure your author is a legit SME.
If you need to rent your SME, there are many ways to go about identifying someone. Here are some potential approaches to use:
- Search the sites you identified that accept guest posts, and find out who is writing them. A query such as: "guest post" site:bhg.com is pretty effective for this.
- Search related hashtags on Twitter, such as #landscaping and #gardening, to see who's sharing related content.
- Try other Google search queries, such as "landscaping design articles" or "landscaping books," and identify the authors.
- Search Amazon directly for landscaping and gardening books.
You get the idea. Once you have identified a bunch of people, you have to start figuring out who might be a potential author for you. Keep in mind that you'll need to pay them to write on your behalf, and you'll have to help them line up places to write, as well.
You don't need the absolute top name in the market, but you want someone who can credibly write unique and valuable content for you (you want what Rand calls 10x Content).
Step 4: Identify the target topic
Once you have your writing team identified, work out with them what types of content they can help you create that meets these three goals:
- Fits your competitive strategy per Step 1.
- Might be of interest to your target sites.
- Matches up with what your SME can write.
The topics you pitch need to be different for each site. Let's say we've decided on BHG.com as one of our sites of interest. As a first step, you can try searching the query "site:bhg.com landscaping" (quotes not required):
This does not yet solve the problem for us, as it shows over 6,000 results. The good news is that this site covers the topic a lot; however, you're looking to see what gaps there may be in their coverage, and then see if you can pick something that will be supplemental to what they already have published.
Since 6,000+ posts is a lot to look at, let's see if we can simplify it a bit more. Here's a follow-up search:
This idea assumes you're able to create content around the topic of landscaping for colonial homes. Assuming you are, you can go through this and start trying to figure out what type of content you can create that the site hasn't seen before.
This is an essential part of the process. Your goal is to come up with a topic that comes across to the editor you pitch as offering unique to value to their site. This is what the first four steps have been about. Don't go past this step until you have the first four steps nailed.
Step 5: Research the people you will pitch
We're getting close to pitch time, but we have one more research step left. First, figure out who it is at the target site that you are going to pitch. Usually, identifying the editorial staff is pretty simple. In the case of this CountryLiving.com site, they have an About page, which shows us who their editors are:
Next, start researching the various editors. Do they publish on the site? Read what they've written. Are they active on social media? Start following them there. Advance points for establishing credibility by having meaningful interactions with them about their articles in their social feeds before ever sending them a pitch. At a minimum, make sure you learn what you can about their likes and dislikes.
Step 6: Craft the pitch
Finally, we get to write our pitch! Steps 1 through 5 are about making this step the easiest of them all. Let's start with three rules:
- Personalize every pitch. No automatic pitch-building whatsoever.
- Know what your key value proposition is, and lead with it.
- Keep it short. Get right to the point, and don't waste their time.
Those are the three most important things to remember. To satisfy rule two, start figuring out what the lead of your pitch is. Brought in a well-known expert? Lead with that. Groundbreaking study? Lead with that. Filling a void in the content-published-to-date on the target site? Lead with that.
This is where your pitch is won or lost. The major pitch elements are:
- Your lead value proposition up front.
- Something that shows you've done your homework.
- The specific nature of the request.
- Additional required background.
Here's an example of a pitch:
Even though I've included some areas that need filling in, don't confuse this with being a template that you auto-populate. The comments you make on what they've already published and the nature of what you're suggesting to them are all custom.
Also, if your author or your business is really well-known, then that might be the lead value proposition, rather than the content. In that case, lead with those facts, cover the proposed article topic in the second paragraph, and structure the email differently.
Summary
As I noted in the beginning, successful pitches are all about the preparation. Treat each opportunity to pitch someone as special and rare. After all, if you sent them a crappy pitch, and it shows you didn't put in any special effort, you may have burned that bridge permanently.
That can be very costly, especially as your reputation and visibility continues to grow over time. Do all the upfront work correctly, and the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts will be greatly amplified.
We all like to get an edge on our competition, and one of the best ways to do that in content marketing is to master and perfect your pitching process.
Also remember that first impression is most important. If you're missing it - don't email him another 100 times. There is big chance to see your own mail in Twitter and other social networks.
In some cases you can even see your pitches in blog post. Geraldine DeRuiter summarizing this in his blog as Pitch Imperfect
That's why you should do perfect homework before first pitch. In most cases there isn't second chance.
Not the same as a linking email, but I had a salesperson email me 8 times. We never met, don't know her company, doesn't know mine.
I consistently get an email every 3 days. The first email said "Don't think we ever met" (okay, your from nebraska, I'm in California so don't do the white lie thing, just say we haven't met) and then said "I'm SURE you've heard of my business" (nice move, but I actually hadn't, so now the email just looked pompous). I know that persistence is great in sales, but in this case I'm not going to EVER reward that salesperson with a reply.
So 100% agree, "don't email him another 100 times."
Good article Eric,
I'd like to add some of my points here.
Its refreshing to see such a systematic approach to getting your content our there. Its funny how simple, yet elusive this is, but man this makes it seem SO doable and simple.
I do have a question. What are opinions about writing for sites that don't necessarily have a huge following or have major authority. I write for a pretty niche site but still of some authority. To me it is a building block and I may even be able to help the site grow. My thoughts that going for home runs is great but when competing against seasoned professionals, it may be a little out of my league. I have to go for smaller goals (or sites), stay committed, write good content for them and incrementally move to higher authority or maybe even have them grow to a higher authority.
Is this mindset naive or is it considered a long term content/link building strategy or is it just the norm?
Great question Jason. First of all, authority is relative to your market space. For a local business, the ultimate authority might be the local newspaper.
Also, when you start out, you may need to start with somewhat lower authority sites, and then work you way up the ladder. That's OK. Just make sure that you are mindful of the goal of moving up over time, and use your initial publishing relationships to establish your expertise and set yourself up for moving up over time.
Thanks for getting back to me! It kind of reminds me of what I tell a lot of ppl. SEO and linkbuilding is just like real life. Go meet people, help their org's grow, make a good reputation. That will help you gain reputation and move up to bigger and better things.
Funny how online has the same concept, but of course the methods of communication and connection are a little different.
This little depends on what kind of content are you creating and for whom, because with great content you can go right up for higher tier sites. I ma sure they will be interested, but yeah it should take a time. Anyway is great that you are writing and keep on movin. :)
Thanks Karol! Yeah right now I'm honing my writing skills but also working on that "interesting" factor. I'm continually working on it, but I'm telling myself not to wait for that light bulb. I just keep writing, reading and communicating. I feel that way when I get that Amazing Content idea I will be battle tested in writing, having the right networks and so on.
Eric, this is a great post -- it echoes a similar step-by-step process that I had detailed on Moz a while ago with An Introduction to PR Strategy for SEOs.
The tasks that you've described are very similar to those used in publicity work -- getting attention in the media for a person, company, product, event, or piece of content. I just wanted to jump in to state that your post today is a perfect example of how the traditional and digital worlds are becoming integrated -- in this example, "publicity" and "content marketing" are rapidly becoming the same thing.
Thanks again for the thoughts!
Samuel - you've taken those words out of my mouth. Coming from a PR background I know that such a systematic approach is necessary if you want sustainable results from you media relations.
I have a question to Eric (or anyone who feels like providing input) - could the ability to drive traffic to a site be a factor that improves chances of getting one's content published? I'm not saying about using it as a direct argument in the pitch, but finding a way for the publisher/site owne to see that you have potencial to bring visitors to their site based on e.g. number of Twitter followers, blog subscribers, Facebook fans etc.
Great post, I like your systematic approach. I would like to add that it really helps you win guest post writing and contribution if you already have posts on the web - even if its on your own company blog or personal blog. These shows your ability to write quality content and you can also provide citation to some of your best posts within your emails to people.
Agreed!
Valuable article, particularly the parts about ensuring your approach is unique to the site in question, and that you offer them unique value. Should be about 'what's in it for them' and not 'what's in it for me'.
Would also encourage leveraging the time spent on/investment in content wherever possible. If you're creating a post for another site, create a unique version of it for your own site too, even if that's some months down the line. Or do it the other way round - look for sites with opportunities to post different versions of content you already have. Or turn it into a Slideshare, video, new podcast episode etc., linking back to your site.
This is a great approach to pitching your articles to third party blogs and websites. Far too many people think it's enough to send out a really well written piece, with the same copy-pasted email to a dozen different publishers. It might be an amazing piece of content, but no one will ever know if your spammy email deters them from even opening the attachment. If you don't take the time to address your email to me personally, then why should I take the time to even read your content?
We all get those spammy emails from people asking to guest post from time to time... When you're pitching your content, you need to ask yourself: "if i were to receive this in my inbox, would I trash it immediately?".
Thanks for simplifying such a complicated process into six steps that can be easily followed.
I especially enjoyed how you made the competition analysis portion short and concise. Many times I find myself so deep in competition analysis that I forget what I was supposed to be taking away from the process in the first place.
One idea that I keep pondering about after reviewing your article is how you approach making a unique pitch for each reach out. This process lacks scalability to a certain extent. Do you propagate a list of websites and then create a unique pitch, email them, and wait for a response one by one? Or do you create all the pitches, email them, and then see what you are left with? I know this is a small detail, but would love some insight on how an expert approaches it!
I totally feel you about the competitive analysis. I want to be thorough and make sure that as a marketer I do my due diligence in understanding who I'm up against. But often I just burn myself out and spent way more hours then I needed on things that didn't matter. For me, it has just been spending time honing my knack for knowing what to do. Now I ask myself, "Can this info I'm researching immediately give me insight into actionable strategies that my client will understand and want to take advantage of?" All the other stuff is still important but I find that when your working with a client, they want to see results and you spending a ton of time researching in the beginning may be a detriment. What I've seen is that you learn all the stuff you research naturally over time as you work with a client/industry. Trying to do it all at once in the beginning is almost impossible and not time effective.
Do you propagate a list of websites and then create a unique pitch, email them, and wait for a response one by one?
From my understanding/experience its about identifying and ranking opportunities. Those big opportunities you spend a lot of time honing that pitch. Send that email over and as you wait for a response keep going down that list. So first, of course you need to identify what areas of content you can help with, then see the sites you want to rank for and then start identifying which are the best.
Alluding to another comment I got back on this thread though, you have to be reasonable. Know which ones you can likely make that relationship and the ones that may seem just a little out of reach, spend time on them, but you don't want to be striking out (in terms of time and effort) when there were better targets for you that don't have as big of a following but could use your expertise.
Hope this helps!
I really don't worry about scale so much. To me, one killer link is worth far more than 100 crappy ones, so I don't need big numbers when I am picking the right targets. Of course, patience is also required. If you do this the right way you are talking about a long road to building your business. That may be frustrating, but it's better than trying quick and easy tactics, perhaps getting some short term gains, and then watching your growth stall.
With the right targets, I am setup for long term sustainable growth
Great post Eric, email or social outreach really depends on the quality of pitch, I'd prefer a profile analysis with crystalknows this app can really help you have a slight knowledge about the person you are going to pitch to.
Thanks for this post. These are tactics that certainly yield results. Pitching columns over guest posts is a nice insight.
I think it's easy to be complacent because outreach may seem so daunting. With a proper competitor analysis and research you can build relationships, create great content and get links.
Thanks again.
Hi Eric, great post!
I've actually recently finished working on the same guidelines, and a couple of things I wanted to add. First of all, we do need to ask as directly as possible about what we want from the collaboration - otherwise we are risking not getting the benefit we've been after, and if our communication is happening through emails, then it's very easy to misunderstand each other. Secondly - I find it very important to keep track of everything I find about the company/people I'm reaching out to and of all messages we've exchanged in the past - it's crucial if it's not only me working on reaching out to different websites, or if I've been doing it for a couple of years already and there is a chance I've reached out to the same people in the past.
Hey Eric, Great post.
Nice Ideas and Thoughts. Will definitely Start working over these..
Thanks for the Post!
Killer content is a great idea, but where to post that killer content is also a great idea, in my opinion high pR websites like Blogatize is suitable for such killer content.
Very good article Eric, i would like to add passion too and extend it to everything you write/explore. Try to empathize with your reader/visitor might be important from my point of view as well.
nice post! i think it really helps me!
Interesting to see that guest posts seem to have come full circle. First they were the rage, then they died off a bit due to Matt Cutts' post earlier last year, now they seem to be picking up again. I think the key here (as always) is quality over quantity.
This post is exactly what I have focused on in the last few months, and I'm definitely reaping the benefits. Recently (the post was published today) I pitched to a copywriter that I had used in the past. In exchange for a few hours worth of my SEO time to help her up-and-coming copywriting site, would she do a guest post on her blog? We came to an agreement and she did a full profile on my businesses with a number of juicy links to 5 or 6 of my sites. Win win for both parties, because I took the time to pitch to her properly!
Great stuff Brad!
Good article Eric , give strides that are important.
Eric - on the SME portion, if you're hiring an expert that's a freelance writer outside of your agency and they become a columnist for a website in your vertical, would their byline state that they're working for your client as opposed to billing themselves as a freelance writer?
Joe - the byline should indicate that they are working for your client (the truth is, they are). Be careful though, that your freelance writer is truly and expert in the topic matter. Given the types of sites I recommend you target, expecting a writer can't create thought leadership level content unless they are already an expert in the topic matter when you start to work with them.
In a lot of ways, writing your pitch letter will take longer than writing the content itself. However, all your legwork won't be for nothing. It will not only make your content a better fit for the publication's audience, it will also make it much easier to write. Also, editors and site owners absolutely need to understand how your content will fit in with their audience. If you fail to tell them this in your pitch letter, the chances of them publishing it decrease considerably.
Completely agree with you on this Nick. The pitch letter is so important. I also find, in order to show them how your content can fit in with their audience it helps to already get content out there, even if its on your own blog. Then at least you have some examples of existing published and live content to link to and show in the initial email. Do you deploy this tactic sometimes as well?
Nick - you're right, it may well take longer than creating the content itself!
If you want someone to post your link, don't ask them if they want you to send it - just send it in that initial email. It takes me a few seconds to click over and look at what you have...a lot less time that it'd take for me to reply and for you to get back to me. I find cutting out this extra step will get you more replies.
@eric Great post. Interesting that you recommend starting with competitive research. I typically begin with social media to find influencers first, but I will try the competitive first for next time.
Thank you for your sharing. Cheers
Thanks for writing this post Eric. Each part is important so you in the end are targeting the right person/company and that you have the right content to share with them.
Excellent content marketing strategy mentioned. You explained all the points explicitly which make me content marketing picture very clear. I will try to follow these content marketing steps to make my blog successful. Thanks a lot for sharing this information.
This is really an informative post about blogging. I really like the ideas expressed in this post. It would be of great use fr all those who wants to be a blogger in future or who wants to start a blog. The steps shared are also clear and easy to implement. Ronda Kaley
Great point about leading with your most valuable asset whether that be the content, the writer or the business's name. Also, I think starting with 'Dear *magazine/site* Editor can be trumped by spending an extra two minutes finding their name!
Excellent post. I think that have complete guideline for preparing a good article or post.
thanks
Today content writing competition is to high.anybody wants to rank their site with the basis of content marketing.but they are failed .reason is here.lack of content strategy.here Eric covered nice point related to content marketing.i agreed .and i like your query used in search engine.
Hi, Eric.
The post covers good point in marketing outreach, however, I have a remark on the example of pitch email - I fell asleep after second sentence. Such emails are very boring to even look at it, more so to read it. I get several similar emails a week and super rarely even finish reading them.
I think that main part of outreach is personalization and creativity.
Great post, thanks for sharing it. The articles in this blog are really helping me to improve my SEO knowledge. Working hard on content promotion. Thanks for sharing..
Very Nice Article, I am Speak Spanish and a little English, but I found very interesting this publication and could not help commenting, I found a post of quality, I just want to suggest something, worry also about the quality and content of our web, ie not only focus on competition but also trying to innovate to do something different than what others do, which off course is very important.
A good strategy to position your content in serach engines. I do sometimes similar things to find the best way to publish my posts.
@Eric No doubt your post is really effective and it will help practically all of us.
But as per my experiences, i have noticed, only deep research can make your topic effective. Lots of things have already written about most of the topic. We rarely find any new topic, But if we do a deep research on any topic, we find something really innovative and interesting about that particular topic. I think before starting content marketing, we should findoput the topics and then we put our efforts to findout something interesting about that topic. In short, we should spend time on doing research about every topic.
Thank you for this post.I have learnt from this post a huge knowledge.thank you so much.
Thanks @Eric.
It's revealing that for content marketing partisans advertising is always intrusive, arrogant, or clumsy and "content" is useful and interesting. Methinks the writer doth protest too much especially when the piece goes on to appropriate, with minor changes in wording, the old Attention, Interest, Desire, Conviction, Action formula of -- wait for it -- advertising.
@Ali, As I said earlier, copy comment content like yours keeps Google busy to rolling the content algorithm