#Protip – 1
A simple way to improve an outreach email
Today I’m starting a series of #protips. I’m really excited about the project and the opportunity to add some real value to the community. So many outreach (acceptable guest post link spam) emails follow the same line:
- Hi
- I’m a massive fan of www.asiteiwantaguestposton.com
- It must be hard writing so much quality content!
- Did I mention I’m a writer within your niche?!
- I could write about x, y, z or something else if you would like?
- Hope to hear from you soon.
Of course I would never send out something so horrifically mundane.
When blog owners are receiving millions of guest post request emails on a daily basis you have to think about how your email can stand out. How can I make my email seem more legitimate?
How about instead of telling the blog owner that you loved a particular article (Your post ’10 things you didn’t know about the Epson FX-890 2 x 9 Pin Dot Matrix Printer’ had me in stitches!) you tell them that you arrived via a referral link from another website.
Telling the blog owner that you arrived via another site sounds legitimate and is too lame to be a lie. I know this sounds retarded but something slightly different, ‘elaborate’ and most importantly boring may be seen as true whereas saying you liked a post/article is transparent bullshit.
When putting together your email quickly review Opensiteexplorer/majestic SEO/whatever to find out a piece of content that links to your target site. If the site doesn’t have any decent content linking to them then choose the best directory 
Just in case the blog owner is sharp or weird I would advise that you actually click through the link so that it shows as a referrer in their analytics.
Anyway. I’m tired. Hopefully this #protip will be extremely helpful in your goal of gaining links through a means that will probably be out of date within 12 months.
Good luck!
#Protip - 1,
Sean – this is awesome. My Saturday night was spend doing 4 hours of outreach to SEO people – some really well known names as well – and I had to make myself look legit and not a spammer. Luckily, since I do know the SEO niche, I know they’ve all seen crap outreach before.
The issue was, I had to Copypasta a bunch of stuff to SEO guys I’ve never interacted with before, which was slightly worrying.
So I just sent a bunch of e-mails with a title that couldn’t possibly ignore (I used “Hi (name), sorry for the worst outreach you’ve ever seen” a lot) and wrote a bunch of random stuff in the first paragraph before apologising for copypasta.
So yeah, I often get outreach saying “Hi Emma, I loved your article (references an articles where I just ramble at length) – it really taught me a lot!” and then the bullshit alarms go off.
Cheers Emma. I really like the idea of being honest/self deprecating and saying “Sorry for the worst outreach email ever, but there is a point!“
I always try to use a little bit of self-depreciation too, but that’s a killer subject line Emma. But I’m usually lame and say stuff like ‘I clicked through on Twitter because I am horribly addicted’ and if I am doing “high level outreach” (especially for a personal freelance project), I’ll usually say something like ‘so I am not just some stupid jerk’ after listing two or three qualificiations or places I’ve been published, and then follow it up with ‘… well, okay I am. But I’m a stupid jerk that has done those things I listed.’
And people say I’m too wordy for some reason…
It’s a great angle. In fact one of my favourite guest post emails was from you. Honest, real and not sycophantic
Good tips Sean, but don’t you think the whole ‘I really loved your blog post on some random topic’ thing is a bit overdone, and now also says ‘generic’ outreach?
I tend to avoid it, unless I genuinely have read a few things on their blog, because I just think i sound fake and spammy.
And for that reason, even when I have read and genuinely liked something on their blog, I still feel like I sound fake!
Yo Amy,
So what you’re really saying is you hate the post. I understand, that’s cool
In terms of the “I really loved your blog post” that bit was under my ‘this is how so many people do it, isn’t it shit section’ and with this I totally agree with you. It’s crap, generic and transparent (as in obviously crap)
I understand what you mean in terms of wondering whether it comes across as spammy but you’re only concerned because you send x number of outreach emails a day/week etc. You feel that outreach in itself is some form of spam when from the readers perspective it probably comes across well and honest.
I suppose what I was trying to get across with this was when getting in touch with someone via email, excite them, make them want to open it and come across as a real person and not another guest post request. Think outside the box, what aren’t the other outreach people writing. Those are the ones that will get positive feedback.