Do you think a solid content marketing strategy exempts your brand from needing to do outreach? Sorry, but it doesn’t. Check out these 25 awesome outreach tools for your smash business strategy. We’re living in an era of content saturation. Over 2 million blog posts are published each day. Research by Technorati has found that digital influencers are quickly outpacing traditional media in terms of ability to win consumer trust. The world’s best-known bloggers have the ability to make or break their brand’s reputation with a simple Tweet to their massive audience. Perhaps most notable is the fact that blogs fall just behind retail websites in likelihood to influence purchase decisions.
Traditional PR just isn’t as effective as it used to be. It’s time to discard traditional outreach tools and tactics, and focus on connecting directly with digital influencers!
To learn more about this concept, we recommend Why Digital Influencers Can Explode Your Company’s Bottom Line.
Outreach isn’t just important–it’s crucial for brands who hope to expand their audience, develop credibility, and gain notice in a crowded online world. To streamline your entry into this practice, we’ve reviewed 25 of the most powerful outreach tools:
1. GroupHigh
This product is the secret behind the viral content of many notable brands, including HomeDepot, GoDaddy, and Groupon. The software acts as a one-stop shop for digital influencer outreach, allowing content marketers to quickly identify, contact, and manage communications with thought leaders.
2. InkyBee
Designed especially for agencies and PR Pros, InkyBee is a product for managing your influencer outreach and communications – with the added benefit of visually rich, easy-to-consume reporting.
3. BuzzStream
This product is robust enough to handle and track social media outreach at major enterprises, thanks to its unique feature of collaborative list-creation and maintenance. Even large outreach teams can communicate remotely with prospects, customers, and influencers thanks to its organized interface.
This free service sends emails on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays featuring guest content requests and offers, products for review, and interview opportunities. Membership allows you to both subscribe and submit requests to other content marketers.
5. BlogDash
This company’s stellar outreach tools help connect brands and bloggers. Users are able to perform detailed searches on content marketers, using qualifications like reach, categories, and demographics.
6. Boomerang
Persistence can be key, which is why outreach tools that remind you to follow-up are important. Boomerang allows Gmail users to schedule outreach, and reminds you if it’s time to follow-up on a message.
7. Mention
If you’re starting to outgrow Google alerts, it may be time to invest in Mention – a tool which allows real-time monitoring of any keyword, from industry terms to your brand’s name.
8. Signals
Gmail, Salesforce, and Outlook users can closely monitor their outreach with Signals, an app that informs you minute-to-minute when your emails are opened, read, and forwarded.
9. Klout
It’s hard to define Klout – is it a social network? Or is it better categorized as outreach tools? Regardless, it’s the world’s leading measure of the digital influence and reach of people and brands.
10. Haro
With a tagline of “free publicity,” Haro is a free subscription service that features interview requests and media opportunities from entities as big as the Associated Press and ABC News. Submit your own request, or keep close tabs on their thrice-daily emails for publicity opportunities.
11. Alltop
Founded by social luminary Guy Kawasaki, Alltop is among the world’s largest content repositories. Sort by category to connect with well-known blogs in your niche, or syndicate your own work for daily republication.
12. MyBlogGuest
Notable SEO blogger Ann Smarty is the brains behind MyBlogGuest, one of the largest forums dedicated to connecting would-be guest bloggers. Threads are separated by industry, so you can easily find the right authors and requests for your brand.
13. FollowerWonk
Do you really know who’s following you on Twitter? FollowerWonk is one of the sharpest ways to analyze your social following, including the demographics and top influencers of your audience. These outreach tools also come with gorgeous visual reporting.
14. Google Alerts
If we had to select just one option from these outreach tools that every blogger needs, it would be Google Alerts. This notification service is free, easy-to-use, and takes just minutes to set up.
15. Little Bird
Brands worldwide are still learning how to leverage competitive intelligence and thought leaders for marketing, which is why Little Bird can help you stand out. The service offers rich social research and content curation capabilities.
16. Outreachr
Though these outreach tools are still in Beta, there’s no doubt this is going to be epic. Outreachr retrieves lists of invaluable contacts in response to your searches around keywords.
17. RavenSEO
This smart tool provides the best options for your outbound links for content marketing, allowing you to establish relationships through SEO efforts.
18. WordTracker
These outreach tools are a platform for ethical link exchanges – allowing you to connect with other content marketers to provide outbound links that offer a high chance of links in return.
19. Topsy
This tool is essentially a search engine for the “social web,” which provides users with the opportunity to explore social trends, viral content, and influencers.
20. All My +
This data visualization platform provides a to-the-minute overview of your personal or company’s social graph.
21. Kred
Much like Klout, Kred is a measure of digital influence, but their outreach tools offer the additional benefit of content promotion and social networking.
22. FollowUp
This platform integrates with your Salesforce or calendar to allow you to set reminders as easily as including a time and date-specific note in the BCC field of your emails.
23. Ahrefs
Ahrefs site explorer is something of a search engine for backlinks, allowing you to scope out page authority of competitor’s domains and their best-performing content.
24. OXO
Product-oriented brands can connect directly with bloggers through OXO, a service which specializes in being an intermediary for relationship-building.
25. RavenTools
It’s easy to centralize your strategy with RavenTool’s extensive list of outreach tools, which range from social monitoring to easy reporting on your paid advertising.
What are your favorite outreach tools for connecting with thought leaders and content marketers? Have you used anything from this list to reach your marketing goals?
