"Reach bait" blogging for unbeatable publicity

In the article entitled "Viral content using reach bait" I introduced the concept of "reach baiting" and compared it to link baiting.

In a nutshell, reach baiting and link baiting are more or less the same thing, but with one crucial difference. Whereas link baiting is designed to attract tonnes of backlinks and responses from anyone and everyone who might come across the post, reach baiting is specifically designed to leverage the reach of a particular site or blogger.

In this sense, reach bait is a more focused, targeted version of link bait. You're going after the readership of a specific person, which means you have to write content that that individual is highly unlikely to refuse. Because of this, reach baiting requires additional research above and beyond a standard link bait post.

Before going any further, I should point out that reach bait is most likely to come in the form of a guest blog post or guest article. The reason being that most blogs and sites simply won't consider duplicating content. But reach bait can also be something you post to your own site that involves the target blogger or site in such a way as to encourage a response from them.

For example, you might consider writing a review about a given blog, book or site. As always there is a strong need to make the content exciting, relevant and noteworthy. Share this review with the target blogger and suggest they mention it themselves. Eliciting a response from a blogger is just as effective at driving traffic back to your blog as writing a guest post. In either case, you have piggy backed on the reach of the target blogger.

Another good reach baiting method is one that requires some sort of understanding between you and a target blogger - most likely this is going to have to be someone who you already have some sort of relationship with. Get together and agree to write articles that cross reference each other's content from within the blog or article content in a natural and seamless way.

For example, the article posted on social media examiner entitled "How Bloggers Can Use Book Reviews to Connect With Experts" does a great job of highlighting how writing a book review (cross referencing someone else's content) can often lead to market growth because the author being reviewed will often share this review with their own audience (increasing your reach).

By creating great reach bait content you are giving your content exposure to a completely new target market that you already know is predisposed to being interested in what you offer (because you selected that specific audience when you wrote the reach bait in the first place).

Not only that, but giving yourself exposure on different sites or blogs is a great way to open up new relationships and show the world that other industry experts are ready and waiting to implicitly endorse you by publishing your content.

Article first published as "Reach Bait": Blogging for Unbeatable Publicity on Technorati.