Be a Big Fish in the Blogger Outreach Pond

 

By Chris Abraham

Image via CrunchBase

It’s always a tough question: would you rather be the smallest fish in a big pond or the biggest fish in a small pond? Would you prefer to be the ugliest pretty person or the prettiest ugly person? Would you prefer to have the lowest IQ at MIT or the highest IQ at State?
This is all according to your preference, but when it comes to a blogger outreach campaign, the decision is never so zero-sum, not nearly so either/or. You can always do both, right? You can always secure hundreds of long-tail earned media mentions while you’re desperately working on securing coverage on Mashable and TechCrunch. You can lock in hundreds of posts short term while you’re wining and dining Pete Cashmore in Manhattan to make sure you become BFFs, so that you’ll have that inside track on getting column inches for your future newsworthy announcements.
However, in the meanwhile, getting those hundreds of posts on B-list-through-Z-list blogs insures that you start building your reputation as a player. Consider this your bush league experience. Like doing your time in the small clubs. Paying your dues. In fact, most journalists and A-list bloggers glean their story ideas from the blogs they reach, from their influencers, blogs and bloggers who may well be less popular but are still highly influential.
Do you have the sort of news, offerings, and quality of content that can compete with the big players? Do you have the kind of prior relationships with the top bloggers and journalists or do they not know you from Adam?
This is not only about blogger ego and their desire to be treated like demigods by multinational agencies and their billion dollar consumer electronics clients–though that doesn’t hurt–it also has to do with the prestige of the blog’s content as well as the aspiration of what the blog and the blogger wants to become.
Where do you fit on that? You need to be realistic. You need to judge fairly where you are in the competition. Do you have the time, the resources, the reputation, the newsworthiness, the novelty, or the prior relationship to make it into TechCrunch? If not, that’s OK. There is no reason to fight over the top 25 blogs of your industry or the top 100 blogs in general, because there may be over one billion blogs worldwide, which equates to one out of every six people in the world.
Realistically, unless you’re the quarterback of your high school football team, you’re being unrealistic if you limit your options for prom to just the captain of the cheerleaders. There are so many appealing dates for prom everywhere in school. If you’re only applying to Harvard and Yale, you had better also be not only at the top of your class but also a legacy, score a perfect score on your SAT, letter on a sport, and have a well-developed set of extra curricular activities.
Work toward Prom King and an incoming Freshman spot at Harvard College, but plan also on going to prom with someone and to college at all. Aim high but have a plan B and C. Remember, also, that being the best lover with the best prom date you get can always results in better dates in the future and being the best student in the college you are accepted to can always result in getting to Harvard as a transfer or in graduate school later.
Focus on being a big fish in a small pond. As you are working to succeed at that, you’ll naturally graduate to the A-list if you have the goods. But if you shoot for the A-list pond exclusively, and you don’t make the cut, you won’t have done anything to win with the B-list.
Start small and grow to make blogger outreach work for you.

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About the author

• 
• Chris Abraham
• Chris Abraham is a leading expert in digital: social media marketing, Internet privacy, online reputation management (ORM), and digital PR with a focus on blogger outreach, blogger engagement, and Internet crisis response.
  A pioneer in online social networks and publishing, with a natural facility for anticipating the next big thing, Chris is an Internet analyst, web strategy consultant and advisor to the industries' leading firms. He specializes in Web 2.0 technologies, including content syndication, online collaboration, blogging, and consumer generated media. Chris Abraham was named a Top 50 Social Media Power Influencer by Forbes, #1 PR2.0 Influencer by Traackr, and top-10 social media influencers by Marketwire; and, for what it’s worth, Chris has a Klout of 77 the last time he looked.
  Chris is currently Director of Social Media at Unison agency, where he is expanding their social media offerings by starting a social media practice. Unison is an integrated brand agency combining strategic, creative, and technology services to help their clients build and strengthen their brands.
  Chris recently completed a five-month contract with Reputation.com as Team Lead, Special Projects, in sales for their "Whale Hunting" team. Chris was one of two whale hunters tasked with closing clients for their high-end Picasso Online Reputation Management (ORM) and Executive Privacy products, from $10,000-$100,000/month campaigns for high-net-worth and high-profile individuals and Fortune 500 companies.
  Prior to Reputation.com, Chris ran his own digital PR and marketing company, Abraham Harrison, LLC, from Washington, DC, Portland, Oregon, and Berlin, Germany, with clients including: Kimberly Clark, The Daily, Habitat for Humanity, Greenpeace, The Fresh Air Fund, International Medical Corps, Sharp, Pew, Alzheimer’s Association, and others. Previous to starting AH, Chris worked on the Interactive Team at Edelman Public Affairs in Washington, DC, consulting with clients such as Wal-Mart, Shell, and GE on blogger and social media strategy. Before Edelman, Chris was Technology Strategist for New Media Strategies, a pioneer in online brand promotion and protection with clients including Sci-Fi Channel, Buena Vista, TomTom, Paramount Pictures, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Disney, Reebok, EA, RCA, and NBC.
  In the early nineties, Chris joined The Meta Network, a seminal online virtual community based in Washington, and so began his career as an expert in online community development, social media, social networking, and online collaboration. Chris has had a web presence since 1993 and started blogging in 1999, focusing on community, connection, innovation, and brand extension. As a technologist, Chris has consulted T. Rowe Price, the US Department of Treasury CIO, Friendster, Deutsche Telekom, and others.
  Chris has taught blogging courses for the Writer's Center of Bethesda, has been a guest lecturer on public affairs blogging at Columbia University's SIPA school and the American University in Washington, DC, the Emergent Technologies Advisor to the Urban Institute's Communications Advisory Board, and a Renaissance Weekend participant since 2001. Additionally, he is the go-to expert on social media, citizen journalism, technology, and the Internet for BBC World Service, CNN Radio, and CNet's BNet.Chris received his BA in American Literature from The George Washington University, studied American Literature at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, studied French at the University of Hawaii, and studied German at both the Washington and Berlin Goethe-Instituts. In addition to the Huffington Post, Chris blogs for his own blog, ChrisAbraham.com, for Biznology.com, for Socialmedia.biz, and for MarketingConversation.com. Chris has written for AdAge’s DigitalNext and Global Idea Network blogs.Chris is indulging his mid-life crisis by buying a motorcycle and taking up the shooting sports including trap and target shooting with both rifle and pistol. Until he gets the novelty of gun ownership out of his system, you’ll find Chris in South Arlington, Virginia, right across the river from his beloved Washington, DC.