It's a tough world out there for outreach, could be a number of reasons why your efforts are falling on death ears, such as :
- Not targetting the correct sites
- To Personal or not personal enough
- Unrealistic targets
- Email sounds automated
- Email is too long, to short
- Poor grammar, spelling.
- Your focusing on what you want and not what you can offer.
Via a couple of website I get around 15 guest post requests a day, I probably respond to one maybe two a month, and after outlining our guidelines only 1 or 2 actually commit to writing in a 3 month time scale.
What you shouldn't do
Broken English requests, poor grammar and spelling - This makes me think, if they can't write an email properly, then they are certainly not going to be able to provide a 2000 word article of exceptional quality that id expect of a guest post.
To friendly - I like friendly, but I don't want to see a writing style that comes across as they already know you, or is similar to what you would talk to your friends like in a bar. It's not quirky, its annoying.
To much bullsh*t - If your opening line is any of these :
- "I really love your blog"
- "I read your blog daily"
- "I'm a huge fan of your blog"
Or similar sounding phrases, they will get trashed before I've even got past that line. Flattery, is not an attractive trait in outreach and its extremely see through, most of these outreach requests have never even looked at our site let alone regular readers.
To Persistent - I'm a busy person, I deal with clients daily and they, and other business commitments come first. I prioritise my emails by importance and come back to them sometimes a week or two later if they spark my interest. HOWEVER, If I then get 2, 3 or 4 follow ups to that email in a short space of time...............it will result in them all getting lost in a black hole of nothingness.
Email is To long - I don't want to read a life story, I actually don't want to read anything other than what your going to provide which will benefit me more than it would you.
You want a link back/article that is unrealistic - If you really think that a competitor is going to offer a guest post link back to a direct competitor, offering the same services and/or products as you........then you've obviously not even bothered looking at the site you are requesting a guest post from.
Pitching article titles - If you give some examples of potential article titles which you could write, don't take whom your pitching to for a fool, the first thing I do when a title looks attractive is to google it, look at the competing sites. If you have also provided guest posts for the majority of those sites...........its an indicator that you won't be writing to the best of your ability for my article, it will just be another notch on the bed post.
Stop pitching from an SEO point of view - There is nothing I hate more than to read in an outreach email that someone is going to provide an "SEO optimised" article, "500 words long". Its irritating, don't do it.
What should you do ?
- Be genuine and transparent about what and whom you are promoting
- Be clear about what you want and what you are offering.
- Get straight to the point
- Show me posts you've written that are live.
- Keep it short
- Don't follow up to soon.
This is really simple, alot of people over complicate things . All I really want to read is a short email saying
This gives me everything I need to know to make an decision whether to reply :
- The company you are associated with and the link you expect.
- The mention of 1500+, creative articles and social interaction shows me you want to spend time and effort in providing me with something solid.
- Examples of your work will speak for its self.
- Short and to the point.
Pro Tip
If you really want to blow my socks off, go above and beyond, offer to build a link back or two to the article as a factual reference, if you are proud of the work you produce you will have no problem linking back to it .
Perfect if you are reaching out to 10 - 20 sites at a time and offering them a little something extra for those you want