easter_eggsSilly easter egg wordplay aside, networking with bloggers is all about giving in order to receive. Even if all you are after is a plug from them to your blog, the best way to break the egg ice is with an act of kindness. Manipulation and being friendly are surprisingly similar when the gains to be made are so obvious. Ambitious (or already successful) people understand this anyway and they are the exact people you want to get acquainted with.

5 Ways to Earn The Respect And Attention Of A Blogger:

1. Become well known on their blog by regular commenting. Your comments have to be insightful or useful in someway, starting a debate counts even if it means disagreeing with the bloggers post. You don’t have to be the blogger to be a known personality on that blog. If you are well known by their community the blogger has to pay attention to you. When you come to pitch your linkbait/blog to them it will be a whole lot easier if you can honestly say you are a long time reader and commenter.

2. Be the submitter of their best posts to social media sites. As well as earning brownie points from the blogger, your presence and credibility on that social media site increases (be it algorithmically or socially). This should only be done with appropriate posts to the correct social media site.

3. Offer them a killer guest post. Most bloggers are happy to save some time and energy by publishing a guest post, providing the content is up to their own standard or better. The traffic you receive from the guest post is a bonus.

4. Give them something to give away to their readers for free. This requires you have slightly more than a blog at your disposal. Sponsoring contests is often written about as a great promotional method, but the fact you as sponsor are gaining the favour of the blogger you are sponsoring for longer than the period of sponsorship is often missed. The bloggersis far more likely to mention you if you were a previous sponsor, even if your contract has expired.

5. Blog about them. This is by far the most obvious way to get on a bloggers radar and as a result is often over used. Linking to the same blogger in every post makes it look like you don’t read any other blogs.

Conclusion

By far the most effective way to network is at real live networking events, but for many bloggers traveling round the world for these is too expensive. Ultimately attracting the attention of bloggers is just like advertising because frequency and reach is vital. Not putting all your eggs in one basket in this circumstance means networking with a select group of bloggers in lots of different ways. Being an active member if your blogging community is often the difference between a successful and a failed marketing campaign.

This post was written by Matt Jones.

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