You don't have to spend a lot of time with me to know that I am a big believer in blogging. I spend a lot of time blogging professionally and personally, and it is a great way to brand yourself and your company as thought leaders.  But did you know there are other ways to promote your company with blogging? It's called  "blogger outreach" programs and if you've never done one, you'll want to take some notes.

What IS a Blogger Outreach Program?

A blogger outreach program is where you, your company or your agency works closely with a carefully selected group of bloggers to promote your company, services and/or products.  The group of bloggers will use your products and services and write a review to post on their site in exchange for payment, product or both. You may be familiar with the term "mommy bloggers" which is one of many groups of online influencers out there. These bloggers possess what you're looking for - a very passionate and loyal following who value the opinion of the person writing the blog. It's SOLID word-of-mouth marketing that is virtual gold for your brand. The ROI on a solid blogger outreach program can be quite rewarding if done correctly.

So the next question is...

Why Should You Do a Blogger Outreach Program?

There are plenty of reasons why a blogger outreach program could be beneficial for your business, but probably the biggest reason is this:

Blogger outreach is a great way to get website traffic, reviews, buzz, and awareness to your brand.

Why? Here are a few reasons:

1. Blogs are considered trustworthy. They consistently rank high in value when people are looking for honest opinions on products and services.
2. Blogging increases site traffic. Essentially you will have x-number of bloggers writing about your brand and referring people to your site.
3. Consumers look to blogs for opinion. By building a relationship between your brand and bloggers, you increase the probability that they will promote and speak favorably about your brand - even if they're NOT doing a program at that time.
4. Banner ads and the like don't work as well anymore. Again - these are people with established followings of people who trust them. They'll believe them before they'll click on your banner ad any day.
5. Content. Content. Content. Not only are you getting great site visits from the program, but you have a variety of people writing and providing fresh content for you!!

There are a lot of facets to a successful blogger outreach program - too many to cover here in one post. In my next post, I'm going to cover the DOs of an effective blogger outreach program and then I'll cover the DON'Ts in a final one.

Have you done a blogger outreach program at your company?