Twitter Chat, 10/10/2014 – Bloggers: How to Find Advertisers and Sponsors
This post is about Banners & Text Links, Blog Advertising, Native Advertising, Sponsored Circle / 5 minutes
Last Friday I held a Twitter chat for #sponsoredcircle at 2:00 PM EST (8:00 PM GMT+2).
The topic at hand was “Bloggers: How to Find Advertisers and Sponsors“.
My special guests for the chat were Phil Turner of EntrepreneurDifference.com and Pat Weber of Patricia-Weber.com.
It’s hard to lure advertisers into buying ad space and sponsored posts on your blog, even when you have a highly trafficked, established blog.
And when you do, it’s rare that your contact is going to hire you again a second or third time. Often, advertising relationships are one-offs, and there might be policies in place to keep them as such.
They need to see results to pay again – #sponsoredcircle
— Phil Turner (@EP_pturner) October 10, 2014
So, to maintain a steady flow of advertising opportunities, you have to learn to market yourself constantly and keep your blog not only up to date, but even up to high traffic and engagement standards.
How to do that?
Let’s break the process down into 3 sections:
- Maximize your blog’s current assets
- Work to increase your blog popularity
- Reach out to companies and offer advertising opportunities
Maximize your blog’s current assets
The first thing to do is to make your content even more attractive with:
- Calls to action — what are your readers thinking about the topic at hand?
- Freebies — they go viral easily and can help you build popularity and traffic
- Q&A sessions for readers — keep your readers involved and… loyal!
Interact with your readers in ways it helps them and shows you’re friendly and caring — build a loyal audience that impresses advertisers and makes them want to buy native or sponsored content right away.
Another idea is to create a column for your most engaging topics: study your analytics and see where most of your traffic and engagement goes.
Also, have a Media Kit or Advertising Kit ready on your blog, with a link to your analytics — you can use SeeTheStats for Google Analytics — and your backlink counter — MonitorBacklinks.com is free and gives you a widget to put on your site (or just to link to, if you, like Phil Turner, hate widgets).
Of course, here your backlinks are not counted for SEO purposes, but as an indicator that your blog is known and findable on the Web.
Work to increase your blog popularity
Get in touch with other bloggers — be social and get known via blog comments, social media and email outreach.
Join comment exchange communities like Blog Matter (for personal bloggers) and Talk Novella (for niche bloggers).
Interview and get interviewed – use Ann Smarty’s MyBlogU or forums or email outreach.
Open your blog for guest posts – You can use MyBlogGuest or Blogger Linkup, or just invite your readers to submit a guest post (make sure to provide thorough guidelines).
Reach out to companies and offer advertising opportunities
This works the other way round than you may be used to! Instead of having advertisers contact you, it’s YOU who contact brands for advertising outreach.
You can use the same advice for link building outreach from Backlinko and Moz.
Remember to assess the company’s needs before you reach out: study their niche, the advertisers and sponsors they currently have, look up their backlinks and Web mentions. Be sure you’re offering something valuable to them in terms of traffic and reputation!
Last but not least…
… You have Sponsored Circle! 🙂
Of course, I understand — and respect — the common fears webmasters and advertisers alike face every time they approach advertising opportunities… and know there’s a Google’s Webspam team member hiding behind the corner, frowning upon the exchange.
Here is a strong fear my guests face:
@SponsoredCircle got penalty last year due in part MBG . Nightmare, costly in time & energy. Google (Matt Cutts) slammed #sponsoredcircle
— Patricia Weber (@patweber) October 10, 2014
Yes – need to clear any penalty b4 looking for advertisers #sponsoredcircle
— Phil Turner (@EP_pturner) October 10, 2014
The good news is that Sponsored Circle is safe to use and you can build truly great Advertiser-Publisher relationships here.
Sponsored Circle can be Google-friendly if you want it to be. You can use nofollow tags on site, and you are encouraged to use nofollow when you link back to Sponsored Circle (unless you’re a rebel, like us!). The community is open-minded even though it has a “rebel” approach at its core.
No matter what stance you take, you can always play it safe on my website. 😉
How to join Sponsored Circle?
There’s a registration form on the sidebar, right below the newsletter subscription.
Joining is free, of course! I did not found this community for profit (unless an advertiser makes direct contact to advertise on my blogs or on this site), so I’m not going to charge you for using Sponsored Circle— ever!
The forums will be ready by October 15 (but you can join and use them already!).
What do YOU do to find advertisers and sponsors for your blog?
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
DISCLAIMER: Many links in this post are tagged with a rel=nofollow to protect my guests from Google penalties. I do NOT use nofollow by default and I do NOT support it, but I want to show respect to other people by not putting their businesses in “danger” with a Google penalty. When/If they will feel ready to face Google and expose their websites to the “enemy” — like I do — the nofollow tag will go.
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Originally posted on: Written on October 12, 2014, Sunday
Luana Spinetti is a B2B blogger and artist for hire based in Italy. She has been in business since 2009. When she's not busy writing or drawing for herself or her clients, you may find her reading a Sci-Fi book or scientific articles on robotics and Computer Science. Get in touch with Luana on Twitter (@LuanaSpinetti), Instagram (@luanaspinetti) or Goodreads.
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