Building Relationships to Grow Your Blog

This blog post highlights the story of a SaaS startup’s journey to growing their blog and acquiring new subscribers. The author shares their steps and strategies, emphasizing the importance of building relationships with influencers in their niche. They found that focusing on engagement and building mutually beneficial relationships with influential individuals before seeking their help is key.

Step One: Targeting The Right Influencers

The first step involved creating a list of "target" influencers – individuals or businesses whose audience aligns with the blog's target demographic. The author’s blog focused on SaaS startups and small businesses, so they identified influencers in the same space.

• The influencers should be speaking to the same general audience as your blog.
• They should be able to personally get value out of your blog content.
• They should be able to share your content to build social capital through sharing new, helpful ideas with their audience.

Step Two: Engaging With Influencers

The article stresses the need to proactively engage with influencers by consuming their content, sharing it on social media, and leaving insightful comments.

• Promote the influencer's content on your social channels.
• Leave thoughtful comments on their blog posts.
• Start discussions on their blogs to show that you've read and value their content.

Step Three: Validating Your Content

Once you've built some initial engagement with influencers, it’s time for a small ask. The author suggests sending emails to these influencers, not to pitch your blog, but to ask for their permission to share an exclusive link to a new blog post with them. This approach works because it shows you value their opinion and are seeking their feedback.

• Give a brief synopsis of your blog post and ask for their permission to share it with them.
• Focus on getting feedback from influencers instead of asking them to share your content on their social networks.
• Use the feedback from influencers to improve your content.

Step Four: Launching Your Blog Post

When it comes to promoting your blog post, having influencers already engaged and familiar with your content can make a big difference. This can help you gain more attention and validation.

• Send emails to your influencers about an hour before publishing your blog post to give them a heads-up and a small ask.
• Announce your blog post on your social media channels.
• Send emails to your customers and inactive users announcing your blog post, and test including a link to an influencer’s tweet about your post.

Step Five: Engaging In the Comments

Comments on your blog posts are a valuable opportunity for further engagement and feedback. Responding to every comment is crucial, as it can provide validation, further your relationships with influencers, and help you understand what your audience wants to read about.

• Engage with readers who leave comments and respond to their inquiries.
• Seek feedback from comments and use it to inform future content creation.

Step Six: Maintaining Growth

Growth is a continuous process. It’s essential to keep building relationships with influencers and providing value.

• Continue to engage with influencers by sharing and commenting on their content regularly.
• Create an “Inner Circle” of influencers and send them drafts of your new posts for feedback.

Results and Takeaways

By following these steps, the SaaS startup was able to grow their blog and acquire over 5,000 subscribers and 535 trial signups within five weeks. This growth not only impacted their website traffic and leads but also boosted their brand awareness and authority within their niche.

• The article stresses the importance of building genuine relationships with influencers.
• It underscores the power of creating high-value content that engages your audience.
• It emphasizes the importance of ongoing engagement, providing feedback, and utilizing the insights you gain.