Beyond your content - blogger/media outreach

Creating your own content is really important, but sometimes what can go even further to get your message out to the public is to have someone else talk about you. Testimonials are great (and you should be asking for them and sharing them!), but if people can create videos and blog posts and share all kinds of information about what you do on their social networks that is also amazing. So how do you make that happen? There are a bunch of ways to do it, but today I'm going to focus on events.

Blogger/media outreach events

There are all kinds of people out there who love to share what they're doing online. It is in their nature to tweet, Instagram or check in whenever they're out having fun and doing interesting things (I'm one of them :) ) You want to try to get those types of people to talk about you online and a great way to do that is to hold an event and invite them.

Recently I attended an event hosted by Giant Tiger called The Secret Supper. It was a 5-course meal by a mystery host and it was only at the end of the night that attendees found out that everything from the dinner had been sourced from Giant Tiger. It was a great way to have people buzzing over the fact that everything about the evening was over and above what one expected from Giant Tiger. Post event, there were quite a few blog posts written about the event (including the one I wrote for Kids in the Capital).

A couple of weeks ago we worked with one of our clients, Tay River Reflections, to create an event to invite bloggers to experience their AQUA expansion. Over 55 people got to go through and experience a facility that most had never heard of, and they shared lots of the things they loved on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and on their blogs like this great post from Just a Trace. 

How do you plan an event?

First you'll need to create a guest list of people who you think would have an audience that would be interested in what you have to say. Depending on your business, the kinds of bloggers that make sense could vary greatly.

Then you need to make it worthwhile. Bloggers actually get a lot of opportunities and they aren't going to want to write about you for something of little value because most of them are attempting to make a living from blogging, or at least earn a side income. I will never forget years ago someone saying "shampoo samples are great, but I can't pay the bills with them." So you need to create something that people WANT to go to and then give them incentives to share content from what you're doing, but don't make it mandatory.

At some events, people are encouraged to share lots of content during the event (or after) with a specific hashtag in the hopes of winning a prize (I won an Android cell phone at a Rogers event in the Fall just by tweeting :) ).  

Make the event about creating an amazing experience for people so that they will want to talk about you, not that you expect them to do so if they don't want to. Tonight I'm off to an event run by Canadian Club and I have a feeling you'll see some #iheartrye content coming from my social media accounts :) 

It can be a bit of a gamble, but in the long run, having other people tell their audience about you and having more and more content that can come up in search engines about you is what this is all about and it's well worth a try.

Leave a comment and let me know if you think a blogger event would work for your business! If you want to brainstorm more about it, let's book a coaching call and discuss!