5 Of The Best Tools For Blogger Outreach

[Rivmedia]

Blogger outreach is an increasingly difficult and time-consuming process. As more and more people enter the internet marketing space, bloggers are receiving hundreds and thousands of emails every single week from 'outreach managers' and 'marketing consultants'. This means that competition is stiff and also, it means that many bloggers won't reply to your email at all. Not only this, but with Google's recently algorithm changes, it's important to ensure that you're emailing blogs and sites that will actually provide genuine value rather than harm, which is an entire task in itself. Luckily, there are a few great tools out there that can really make your life easier. Some of them are free and some of them are paid, but they're all well worth the money (especially the free ones!).
#1 - SEOMoz Toolbar

For most outreach exercises, the SEOMoz toolbar should be your first port of call. It's available to download and install completely free of charge and once you have it, that's it. It'll appear at the top of your browser window and will offer information about any site you visit. It'll tell you important metrics such as Mozrank, Domain Authority, Page Authority and so forth. These are great indicators to look at when you're trying to choose a high quality site to outreach too. It's definitely a much more reliable tool than Google's Pagerank toolbar as the information is generally of a higher quality. Obviously, you shouldn't rely entirely on this toolbar as you need to look over the site yourself too, but it's great for the quick stats.
#2 - BuzzStream

Buzzstream is a paid tool (available for $19/month +) but if you do a lot of outreach, it's well worth the price. Essentially, Buzzstream makes every part of the outreach process simpler and more manageable. The tool allows you to search for link contacts and it extracts Facebook, Twitter and Email information from any websites you enter into the system (if they're available). This feature alone will save you countless hours. What's more, you can also monitor links, perform prospect searches and even send and manage outreach emails straight from the system itself. It's a must-have for those serious outreach fanatics. ?
#3 - Bananatag

Bananatag is a nifty extension that allows you to track your emails and the links therein. There are a lot of these tools around but the nice thing about Bananatag is that it integrates with Gmail perfectly. It also integrates with Outlook and numerous other email programs. Once you have it installed, you send your emails as normal (just make sure you have the 'track email' button checked and it'll alert you when the recipient opens the email. You can also track links, which is extremely useful if you want to check whether or not a prospect has actually looked at whatever you're performing the outreach for.
#4 - Rapportive

Rapportive is a fantastic tool that will make searching for contact information a thing of the past. Rapportive is a Gmail extension that integrates beautifully with the service and shows you information for your contacts in a non-obtrusive box to the right hand side of the screen. If you have a recipients email address, Rapportive will do its best to extract Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Skype information for the contact. It'll also search Crunchbase and show you a few of their latest tweets. It's completely free to use and install and works extremely well. Another tool that offers a similar outcome is Smartr. This does look a bit better than Rapportive and also works with clients other than Gmail. This is a great alternative if you use Outlook or another email client for your email.
#5 - Gmail Canned Responses

Gmail canned responses is a nifty little Gmail add-on created by Google themselves. The add-on allows you to create email templates from within Gmail an insert them into an email at the touch of a button. If you do a lot of outreach, you'll know that typing out similar emails can be a time-consuming and somewhat tedious process, so Canned Responses will almost certainly save you a huge amount of time. It's currently available from Google Labs as a free add-on. To install it, just go to your Gmail and click the cog icon in the upper right hand corner. On the drop-down, click 'Settings' then 'Labs'. You'll see Canned Responses in the list, just select 'Enable' It's a great alternative if you don't use the inbuilt template system on a paid tool like Buzzstream and works just as well.