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Jun 19

9 Networks You Can Use for Guest Blogging and Blogger Outreach

Posted on June 19, 2013 by dengkane

When it comes to online marketing in the post Penguin and Panda age, two strategies that many marketers are turning towards are guest blogging and blogger outreach. While you can do a lot of leg work on your own by searching for bloggers related to your industry on Google, you can also turn to networks designed to connect businesses and bloggers. However, there is an easier way to find blogs looking for content…

Guest Blogging & Blogger Outreach Networks

The following are nine networks for guest blogging and blogging outreach that you can use to market your business for increased exposure and additional backlinks.

BlogDash

BlogDash calls itself the blogger outreach dashboard. Their network has a directory of 109K bloggers which you can search based on topical keywords, category, Klout score, gender, and other demographics.

You can use their service to interact with bloggers tweets, share blog posts, and pitch bloggers to write about your product or service. Some notable companies using BlogDash include Likeable Media, Shine United, and True Media.

Bloggers can join BlogDash for free to connect with businesses related to their niche. Businesses can start with a free account to browse the blogger directory, but to start pitching to bloggers through the dashboard, membership begins at $49.99 per month. You can save by paying for three month’s or one year’s membership at a time.

Be sure to read testimonials from satisfied agencies using BlogDash and download their free guide to blogger outreach. You can also read a review of their service (while it was still in beta) on Social Media Explorer.

Blogger LinkUp

Blogger LinkUp is a free service that connects bloggers who need content with marketers and businesses looking to place content in exchange for links. The best part is bloggers who have signed up for the service shouldn’t request payment (according to the guidelines on the network, but actual contact requests may vary).

The way it works? You submit your offer for a guest post, product for bloggers to review, or contest announcement. Bloggers will also request guest posts and interview sources for their websites. An email goes out to everyone on the list on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. If you see a request you can fulfill or if a blogger likes your request, you can contact each other directly via the contact information provided in the email.

There’s not much content available on the Blogger LinkUp site itself, but it did get a nod in a post on Social Media Examiner as a great place to find guest bloggers. But considering it’s a free service, it doesn’t hurt to give it a shot!

BlogSynergy

BlogSynergy is a social network for bloggers looking to guest post for other blogs and receive guest posts for their own blogs. Registration is free!

Once you have signed up, you can create a profile for your blog to accept guest blog posts and for yourself as a writer to provide guest posts. You can browse the 2,000+ blogs listed that are looking for guest posts and submit articles for people to use on their blogs.

If you are looking for content for your blog, you can browse the 17,000+ writers ready to provide content, as well as articles that are waiting to be published on a wide variety of topics.

GroupHigh

GroupHigh is a solution for big brands looking to incorporate blogger outreach into their marketing strategy. Their service indexes millions of blogs so that you can search them by keyword, topics covered, number of followers, and location. You can also see if the blog supports video, guest posts, sponsored posts, ad networks, and giveaways.

Once you’ve created a list of blogs to target, GroupHigh can provide key information about them including social profiles, contact form locations, author names, traffic statistics, and SEO metrics.

Notable companies using this service include Social Media Explorer, Distilled, Citrix, Billboard, Home Depot, and many more. You can read mentions of their service on their In the News page which includes nods from Convince & Convert, Content Marketing Institute, Search Engine Journal, and SEOmoz. They also post tweets mentioning their service on the homepage of the website.

Pricing is not listed on the GroupHigh website—you have to contact them for a demo of the service. One site reviewing their service in January listed the price as $3,000 per year, so you can expect it to be on the higher end of the spectrum of premium outreach services.

GuestBlogIt

GuestBlogIt is a community where you can submit content for other blogs to use on their website and receive content to use on your own blog. Free membership allows you to have one article on the market at a time; pro membership for $20 a month allows you to have five articles plus access to other features including ratings, sending / receiving direct messages, and a membership to the Blog Engage social voting network.

Guest Blog Genius

With all of the fear invoked by Google Panda and Penguin, Guest Blog Genius advertises that they are 100 percent transparent and that their services fit within Google Webmaster Guidelines. Their service geared towards SEO professionals allows you to find great guest blogging opportunities, as well as order quality content on a regular basis from U.S. based writers. They take the hassle out of link building with content by sourcing content ideas, recruiting skilled writers, building a list of authoritative blogs, and cultivating relationships.

Pricing is based on the content topic you need for your articles. Current prices range from $36 to $144. You can see what their service has to offer by browsing the current guest blogging opportunities.

Guestr

Guestr helps blog owners find new content from bloggers and helps guest bloggers and SEO’s find guest posting opportunities to place their content and build links. Guestr is currently a free service for both site owners and those looking for guest post opportunities. There are currently 804 listings for sites looking for and accepting content in a wide variety of categories. Each site is listed with their current Google PageRank and number of estimated visits.

MyBlogGuest

MyBlogGuest is probably one of the most well-known names when it comes to guest blogging communities. You can sign up for free to list yourself as someone looking for guest bloggers or looking to guest post on another blog in specific categories in the guest blogging forum. There is also a forum dedicated to those looking for social promotion help for their published posts.

There is also a Pro Account option that allows you to submit articles to the article gallery for other bloggers to use on their sites, submit guest posts directly to a blog’s admin dashboard for faster publiscation, submit articles to the infographics gallery for bloggers to discover, track published article status, and more. You can choose from a Basic Premium account for $30 per month or an Advanced Premium account for $70 per month.

You can learn more about MyBlogGuest through features they’ve had on SEOmoz, Blogher, and Search Engine Land.

PostJoint

PostJoint is a platform that helps to make guest blogging quicker and easier for both parties. The key difference between PostJoint and other services is that there is no searching or browsing through galleries of blogs / posts. Instead, advertisers supply content they are looking to have published, the system matches the audiences up against its database of blogs, and bloggers then offer to publish the posts. The advertiser simply has to choose which publishing offers to accept.

Various metrics are shown to help advertisers make a decision, and bloggers are only shown an excerpt of related posts helping to stop the content from being duplicated. All of the bloggers registered with PostJoint are quality screened by moderators, so the response rate and your satisfaction should be high.

This is a unique and interesting concept and one to watch out for. Pricing has not been announced yet, since its currently in a free beta phase for all users. You can read a review of their service on Growmap.

5 Simple Tips for Guest Blogging & Blogger Outreach

Just because a blogger is a part of one of these networks does not mean they are guaranteed to accept your requests. So, whether you use a service or Google to connect with bloggers for guest posts or pitches, there are a few things you should do to ensure your success.

1. Personalize your request.

Be sure to include the name of the blog owner in your request. As a blogger, there is nothing more irritating than seeing a Dear Sir or Madam, Hello Webmaster, or other generic greeting on a request, especially when my name is plastered on the sidebar of the blog, on blog posts, and on the about page. These are the places you should start looking to find the blog owner’s name so you can address them properly in your requests.

2. Interact with the blogger before pitching them.

If you are really interested in a particular blog accepting your guest post or reviewing your product, consider investing a little time in getting to know the blogger first. Commenting on their blog posts, sharing their posts, and interacting with them on social networks are great ways to become a familiar face in the blogger’s community—one that they may be more open to accepting a request from.

3. Make sure your guest post, product, or service fits the blog.

Sure, you may find a blog that lists itself under the Fashion category, but if the title of the blog is Handmade Fashions, then they’re probably not going to be too open to a pitch from a retailer selling name brand fashions. Make sure that the guest post, product, or service you are about to pitch is going to be something that the blogger is actually interested in promoting on their blog. Otherwise, you’re just wasting an email.

4. Make sure the guest post topic you’re submitting hasn’t already been covered.

There’s a great search string that you can use to make sure that a topic you are about to submit as a guest post hasn’t already been written about. Search Google for site:domain.com intitle:keyword—this will show you any posts with a particular keyword in the title. So, if you are a marketer submitting a post about link building, you can see other posts the site has received about link building to ensure that yours is unique enough to make the cut.

5. Read the guidelines.

Many blogs will have guidelines on their site pertaining to guest posts and product reviews. Be sure to read them so that your request is as on target as possible.

[The source URL: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/9-networks-you-can-use-for-guest-blogging-and-blogger-outreach-2/50801/]

Jun 17

10 Ways to Optimize Your Brand’s YouTube Channel

Posted on June 17, 2013 by dengkane

YouTube is becoming the silver screen for brand exposure, generating 800 million monthly views. Brands that want to stand out in the endless stream of clips have to make sure their Channels can be easily discovered to capture users’ interest and keep them tuned in.

As part of Brafton’s video marketing service, my team and I are constantly developing YouTube strategies for brands, and we’ve come up with 10 core best practices, presented for your learning ease in our latest infographic. Whether you’re new to brand management on YouTube or have been using the network to promote your branded videos for a while, you can – and should – be taking advantage of your Channel for visibility and search.

Here are some more insights on the top 10 ways to optimize your business Channel on YouTube covered in our infographic.

1. Channel Setup and Design

This might sound obvious, but the first step to creating a pleasurable viewing experience is setting up your Channel with your company’s name and branding to make it clearly recognizable to your audiences. Your Channel design will also reflect the company description – make this something catchy but straightforward, and very search friendly.

YouTube also allows your brand to add links on your Channel. Ideally, these links should go to your other social Pages for cross-promotion, as well as to core landing pages on your site. Remember to add any other YouTube Pages your brand is affiliated with to the “Featured Channels” section for more reach opportunities.

2. Video Content Strategy

The most core ingredient to a successful YouTube Channel is a strong video content marketing strategy. With nearly two-thirds of Americans watching web videos weekly, it’s important that companies build video strategies that can keep visitors coming back.

For more tips on producing a strong video marketing strategy, download our whitepaper “Video Marketing from Production to Purchases – Strategies for Sales”.

3. Calls to Action

The videos you create for your website, emails and beyond should all have internal calls to action, but your YouTube Channel presents more opportunities to remind viewers how they can connect with your brand.

We advise video clients to follow Brafton’s standard best practices on content marketing CTAs, creating strong and soft calls to action to appeal to Channel viewers at every level of the purchase process.

LG uses CTAs successfully on its YouTube Page. For one, its video description for the LG Optimus G phone clip highlights a link to information about the mobile device on LG’s website.

4. Annotations

Want to increase viewership and keep your viewers more engaged? We use custom annotations to highlight specific points in clients’ videos to ensure main points are clear and to guide viewers to perform certain actions.

5. Thumbnails

When it comes to perusing YouTube Channel and watching clips discovered via general web searches, the thumbnail accompanying video results is possibly the best way to win clicks. Thumbnails are shown to increase search clicks by 64 percent among men in an recent A/B test from Visibility IQ (relayed by Econsultancy). Among women, this was an even more dramatic 154 percent CTR boost!

General rules of “thumb”nails:

Choose an image that entertaining
Pick a shot that’s well-framed and bright
Select something representative of the clip
Go for a presenter or product close-up when possible

Check out how the thumbnails (left) stick out on the SERP. They all follow good image selection criteria.

6. Search-Friendly Video Tags

There are four types of tags that you can use on your video content to gain more visibility through search.

Title tag of your video – Make sure that your video title is compelling, features appropriate keywords and accurately represents the content of the video.
Video description – Tell your audience what the video is about in two to four sentences, but leave enough mystery to make them click to view. Be sure to include relevant keywords for search optimization and use calls to action and sitelinks.
Video keyword tags – Keep these tags balanced between your SEO strategy and keywords that relate directly to the video. (Your company should be producing video content that’s relevant to offerings, so picking the right phrases shouldn’t be a challenge.) You can also use the YouTube keyword tool to generate potential keywords.
Video category tags – Pick from the (unfortunately broad) labels most relevant to your content as users may search through categories to find new videos relevant to their interests. Examples of categories range from “How-to & DIY” to more industry specific groups like “Tech” or “Beauty & Fashion.”

7. Playlists

Keep your audience engaged by creating playslists for different types of videos on your Channel that will appeal to unique audience segments or fulfill various user needs. Playlists should be in line with your video content strategy – remember, the content is the backbone of a good YouTube Channel.

Organize playlists by video topics, product or services lines or broad categories, like recruitment clips or commercials.

8. Engage, Engage, Engage

YouTube is a social networking site like any other – pay attention to what users are saying. YouTube allows comments on your videos and your Channel too. Respond to these comments in a timely manner on both places to improve on your Channel’s reach and encourage audiences to continue to connect with your brand. BH Cosmetics does a good job of keeping their responses timely.

You can also update your own status on the network, though this requires a different approach from Facebook or Twitter. You may use this update feature to let viewers know when you add videos to your Channel or create a status about your new playlist.

9. Subscriptions, Social Outreach and Cross Promotion

To gain new visitors, views and subscribes to your Channel, you’ll want to execute a strong social media strategy that focuses on subscriptions, social outreach and cross promotion. Subscribe to relevant (but non-competing) brand Channels to encourage them to follow your company and share videos with their audiences. You can also directly ask viewers and followers on other networks to Subscribe.

Levis is an excellent brand example of cross promotion. They’ve creating a Subscribe button at the top of their Channel and incorporated their social media icons into their Channel design to allow users to easily share content across networks. They also do an exceptional job of cross promoting their videos on their blog and top social media channels (Twitter and Facebook) to fully alert their audiences of new videos to increase their reach, views and overall virality.

10. Analyze Insights

To have a successful video marketing strategy, you must continue to refine your strategy for maximum results. To do this, you’ll need to take a step back from your video production and social strategy to analyze your video performance metrics. Within your YouTube manager settings, you’ll have access to vital view and engagement metrics that you can use for ongoing YouTube (and video) marketing optimization.

Here’s an overview of what you can learn through the View Reports:

Views: Total video views over time and top videos

Demographics: Gender, location and age of viewers

Playback locations: Comparison of views across your embedded video player, YouTube watch page or on mobile devices

Traffic sources: Overview of where visitors coming to your Channel came from

Audience retention: Duration (in minutes) showing if and when people dropped off

In YouTube’s Engagement Reports, you’ll see metrics on:

Subscribers: Growth over time and videos that subscribers viewed

Likes and dislikes: Report of engagement through likes over time and a list of your top-liked videos

Favorites: Favorites trend overtime and your most favored videos

Comments: List of videos that garner the most comments from users

Sharing: List of videos most shared by users (and what platform they were shared on)

Annotations: Overview of the annotations most-clicked on by viewers

Our infographic introduces you to tips for YouTube optimization, and our latest white paper offers more video marketing insights. Overall, make sure you continue to evaluate and refine your strategy for YouTube (and video) marketing success – and contact us to learn more.

[The source URL: http://www.brafton.com/blog/10-ways-to-optimize-your-brands-youtube-channel-infographic]

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