“Sixty one percent of U.S. online consumers have made a purchase based on recommendations from a blog.”
That’s from a report by Blogher last year.
I don’t find it surprising. Do you?
Technorati’s 2013 Digital Influence Report, cites 60 percent of respondents as planning an average increase of 40 percent in social spend in 2013.
The report details results of a 2012 survey of 6,000 influencers, 1,200 consumers, and 150 top brand marketers.
Apparently blogs rank high with consumers and factor into purchasing decisions.
Blogs Rule
We’re all reading blogs today.
Interestingly, while brands begin to understand the power and influence bloggers hold in the minds of the consumer, many hesitate to engage with them. Blogger outreach programs, designed to build relationships with the authors of such influential earned media, are time-consuming, complex, and can be difficult to measure.
Bloggers are people. People are difficult to measure and are complex (and often time-consuming!).
Until recently, finding the influential bloggers in a particular niche was extremely time consuming. Evaluating how effectively these same bloggers reach their audience, how engaged their readers are, and how active the bloggers are in social networks–important information and an integral part of the process of building a blogger relations program–took valuable time.
Blogger Outreach Made Easy
Until now. Enter Inkybee.
I’ve enjoyed being part of the beta for Inkybee, a tool which defines itself as making effective blogger outreach simple. While I am far from a power-Inkybee-user, I find the tool does what it says it does. I am excited about the information it provides and the work it automates for me.
To create an effective blogger outreach program you need to find the bloggers who are writing about the things your customers (or your client’s customers) care about. You need to know what said bloggers are writing about, where they show up in social media, and what aspect of your products or services might appeal.
Inkybee automates much of this work for you and, while you still have to communicate with the bloggers and work to develop the relationships, there are four valuable areas where Inkybee does the heavy lifting.
Inkybee Builds Lists of Blogs for You
As a starting point, Inkybee builds your blog list. Supply the criteria for your search, blogs you already know about, the keywords you have identified as relevant, and Inkybee starts working. You get emails each time Inkybee identifies a new blog and adds it to the list. You can easily download your list and review it with your team or client.
Inkybee Assesses Blogger Influence
Next, Inkybee helps assess the blogger’s level of influence. This is huge. The blogs are presented in an easy-to-read format that allows you to compare them at a glance, easily view their social profiles. and follow them without leaving the page.
They also provide the following “influence” and SEO metrics:
- Size of audience
- Levels of engagement
- Frequency of posting
- Numbers of Twitter and Facebook followers
- Number of inbound links
- SEOmoz mozRank
- SEOmoz PageAuthority
- SEOmoz DomainAuthority
Having all of this information in one place for your review and assessment? Fabulous.
Inkybee Tracks Relationships and Engagement
Inkybee doesn’t tell you how to reach out to the bloggers you choose. That’s on you. Once you have started communicating however, this blogger outreach tool helps you track the relationships you’re building and makes it simple to add all forms of blogger interaction and then easily stay on top of the day-to-day activity with each blogger. Best of all? You can produce reports to share with your clients. Easily.
Inkybee Measures Your Campaigns
As you know by now, measurement is huge. Being able to judge the success of your blogger outreach program is critical. Being able to easily download a report that highlights the potential size of the audience who may have read a blog post about your product? Heavenly.
Inkybee measures your campaign and also includes information on:
- Actual levels of engagement with your story
- Engagement compared to the average for those blogs
- Actual links from the blog posts to your website
- Actual traffic from the blogs to your website (via a Google Analytics plug-in)
All of this information is available for total campaign and on a blog-by-blog basis. Easily downloaded in a report you can share with your team or client.
Conducting an effective blogger outreach campaign holds tremendous value for brands and organizations. While using a a blogger outreach tool to automate essential functions doesn’t remove the need for personal involvement and interaction with the bloggers or for using simple common sense in your communications, it does offer incredible value.
Inkybee not only gives you back time – it hands it to you, gift wrapped with your tracking and measurement reports.
Who doesn’t want to have their job made easier and look like a superstar to the client? I know I do. This blogger outreach tool makes that a reality instead of a distant possibibility.
RUN, don’t walk to the Inkybee site while you can still sign up to be part of the beta. They’ll be launching the live product any day.
Editor’s Note: Inkybee is so excited by the support they’ve received they’re launching a super special pricing deal starting *today* which will only run until May 1st. Pop over and check it out.