We all know the concept of a side door.
Everyone tries to get in through the front door of a club, a concert, an exhibit... and the only people who really get in without any hassle are the people who use the side door.
Well, with popular bloggers, it's the same situation.
Getting mentioned by a power blogger is a double benefit. First, you get instant exposure to their loyal readership of multiple thousands immediately. Second, since they get sooooo many inbound links, you'll immediately get shot up to the top of Google. But since everybody knows this everyone is going to try to reach them.
This is how most people try to get featured by a major blog:
The Front Door
1. They use the contact link on the blog website.
2. They try to tweet
at people like @xenijardin http://twitter.com/#!/xenijardin
3. They try to email these guys.
IF you're advanced, maybe you're a PR pro, you'll
4. ask for their content calendar
and you'll try to tie in your product or company to something relevant to them.
STOP.
Unless you're getting paid hourly by the government, don't do any of the above.
Everyone is using the above methods. As far as method #4, there are far fewer people who as savvy enough to ask for a content calendar so while the volume of your competition shrinks with this approach, all the others asking for a content calendar are dudes and girls who are seasoned PR pros who went to Columbia University for their journalism degree.
So if you use any of the above strategies, you're literally
a. competing with a huge number of amateurs
b. smaller number of seasoned power pr vets.
And, worst of all, even if you do get scheduled for inclusion into a power blogger's blog like mashable or boingboing, it's going to be on THEIR time table. It's going to be when THEY want to mention you... NOT when you need the traffic for your seasonal sales push.
So, instead, use the side door.
The side door has 7 steps to get you into a power-blogger's blog in just a few hours. In fact, these steps are only used by industry insiders like Michael Arrington (sold his blog: techcrunch for $30 million dollars) and Jason Calacanis (sold his blog network for about $27 Million) and even Google itself. Basically, it's the difference between how a realtor looks at realestate vs Donald Trump. And the 7 steps specifically give you detailed instructions and steps to follow.
After your first read, you'll immediately wonder why you didn't do this any sooner.
In fact... I'll give you one of the steps that didn't make the grade. This is a technique to get into major power blogs that wasn't even worth including in the 7 step list. But, it's much more effective and powerful than anything that most people ever do. Only the best of the best PR pros use this 8th strategy.
Even though only the best of the best PR pros use this 8th strategy, part of the reason this particular technique didn't make the list is because you may have already heard of it and because it's just not as effective as any of the other 7.
Powerful Ways to Get Featured by a Power Blogger
(That Weren't Good Enough for the 7 Step Trade Secret List)
Every now and then, some brilliant and resourceful person looks at how laborious and tedious it is to try and get press. Then they decide to structure a simpler way of doing do.
Craig did this with the newspaper classifieds.
He simply decided to create a simple and instant way to post a classified. By the way, Craig makes about $20 million dollars a month. I know, totally unrelated factoid.
Pete Shankman and Jason Kintzer did the same thing to blogging that Craig did to classifieds. They created http://www.helpareporter.com/ and http://pitchengine.com , respectively.
Try them out. But...
But they are still not good enough to mention in our 7 Step Trade Secret Strategies to Get Featured by a Major Blogger.
