It’s a great angle. In fact one of my favourite guest post emails was from you. Honest, real and not sycophantic 😉

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.

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!

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…

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!“

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.