4 Brilliant Ways To Connect With Influencers

When you are a new blogger trying to attract an audience of faithful readers in order to establish yourself as an expert in your field, you might throw a fit if you aren’t gaining any momentum after a few months.

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It happens to the best of us when we first begin our journey toward blog stardom.

You watch as “blogstars” like Penelope Trunk, Jon Morrow and Chris Brogan seem to attract followers effortlessly and we wonder what are we doing wrong. You often sit in exasperation trying to figure out how to make blog ‘magic’ happen.

Blog magic can happen and it will happen, it just won’t happen overnight.

Starting a blog takes hard work, and in order to make any niche blog sing, novice bloggers have to align themselves with the very best in their niche. By aligning yourself with greatness, you walk amongst them yourself.

But how do you get the experts in your field to notice you, much less take the time to promote or even acknowledge your blog? With a little creativity you can attract the biggest names in your field to your tiny corner of the internet.

1. ‘BEST OF’ FEATURE

Since the internet has experienced a total takeover of social media, blogs have become mostly viewed as depositories for good content. It’s all about gauging which articles you can create that will go viral. If you want to grab the attention of influencers and niche experts you admire you should decide to do a “BEST OF” feature on your blog that consists of curated articles, videos and books created by the most celebrated experts.

If Jon Morrow is someone you admire, decide which are his top 3 articles, his best ebooks, his most widely shared podcasts and his most awesome videos. Put them all together in one post to celebrate his work and send him an email introducing yourself. Ask him one question to include with your post and if he replies, include the response in your post along with links to his blog. Tweet the link to his “BEST OF” Feature to him and he just might share it with his audience, driving a nice bit of traffic your way.

It’s classic ego-bait, but it works.

2. BECOME A CONTRIBUTING WRITER FOR A MAJOR BLOG

Most websites have blogs that are written by hundreds of writers and many of these blogs are open to new content being submitted by fresh voices. You don’t have to be a long time journalist or a best-selling novelist to secure a spot on one of these platforms. The mere fact that you own a blog that caters to a specific niche and you update regularly qualifies you to write for other blogs too.

If you are really feeling gusty, take the time to craft a pitch to websites like Forbes.com, Entrepreneur.com or even Business Insider. These websites are all business-based yet, blogging is a business and your niche is a business as well.

They all have the option for regular contributors to own their own site under their brand name and having a stake in a major website like this will automatically increase your visibility as an expert in your field. In addition to increasing your clout as an expert, it gives you an opportunity to write about the other experts in your field, further aligning them with your brand by offering them exposure on more well-respected websites.

Once they see that you are affiliated with a major name website or blog, they are more likely to associate themselves with your fledgling blog and pay attention to you.

3. JOINT VENTURE (JV)

If you are brand new blogger, this may be a little tricky to do but once you establish your audience and have a few thousand subscribers and products created under your belt you must consider doing a joint venture with bigger name bloggers or experts. A joint venture is where you agree to promote the big wig’s product or service to your audience for a share of the profit they receive from your audience.

For example, if Jon Morrow has created a new webinar that he is teaching for $400 and you agree to promote it for him to your audience, you will write a great blog post and send out an announcement about his webinar, encouraging your subscribers and followers to join in and learn from him and you will receive a portion of every sale he makes from your audience. If you help him make money, he will likely support your goals and growth as well.

This is where long-lasting relationships are formed with influencers.

4. CREATE A TOP TEN LIST

There’ s nothing more flattering to a blog star or expert than being able to add an honor to his resume.

[Influencer Name] named one of [Your Blog’s Name] ‘Top 10 Creative Thinkers of 2015’, as an example.

All you have to do is create a list and fill it with the most admirable people in your field, write a blurb about why each of them deserves praise and be sure to tweet it to them individually and/or send an email to them thanking them for their work and telling them what an honor it is to celebrate them.

Who doesn’t like to be honored?

Honor begets honor and a quick mention on twitter aligns your name among the names you admire most.

As you start connecting with this influencers and stars in your niche, you’ll soon become an influencer yourself. Happy connecting.