Create an Expert Roundup
Expert roundups seem to be everywhere these days. In all honesty, I'm a little fed up with them because most of the time they're full of responses from people who aren't even knowledgeable on the topic.
That said... they're a great tool for building relationships with influencers.
From my experience, expert roundups don't convert very well and they don't tend to earn many links. On the flip-side, they get shared pretty heavily on social media. This is mainly down to the individual contributors to the post sharing with their network.
Instead of creating expert roundups to drive social engagement, links and leads, I use it for a different purpose:
Relationship building.
Let's say you want to get your content linked to or shared by an influencer within your influencer; just sending them a cold outreach email to ask them to do it is likely going to result in a very low conversion rate. On the other hand, if you have an existing relationship with that person, you may see better results.
This works particularly well for lining up guest blog opportunities.
The typical process that I follow is:
- Gather a list of influencers I want to form a relationship with.
- Reach out to them to take part in an expert roundup by answering a simple question.
- Touch base with them via email when the post goes live and sign off by asking if I can keep in touch with any future projects.
- Reach out to them again in a few weeks to ask what I really want (guest post opportunity, etc.), thanking them again for contributing to the previous expert roundup.
I guarantee that this will improve your outreach results.