How to Be Persuasive When Pitching Bloggers to Carry Your Guest Posts

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In a Yahoo blogging group someone complained that she hadn’t gotten many responses to her email queries writing other bloggers to offer a guest post from an author whom she was promoting.

This blogger did mention that she tends to write long email queries.  Yet what immediately seemed apparent is not the length of the queries (thought usually shorter is better) but the question of how she pitched this author.

Most of us tend to say what we want to say about something we’re pitching – the great features of a product or service (or how great the author’s book is).  Yet what we need to say is what the person receiving the query needs to “hear” in order to motivate that person to act on our request.

Without knowing the name or book of the Latino author my blogging colleague was promoting, here’s my suggestion for a hypothetical pitch.

Forget a long description of what the book is about and how many awards it may have won.  Instead, focus on how large the Latino market is in the U.S. and how it is an underserved media market.  Part of the email query pitch might go like this:

“Here is an opportunity for you to feature a Latino guest blogger whose novel about a Mexican family immigrating to the U.S. will resonate with Latino readers as well as non-Latino readers who live in cities with large Latino populations.”

Thus what my blogging colleague would be offering other book bloggers is the opportunity to reach a segment of the reading market that these bloggers may not have yet reached as well as give readers in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, etc. a closer look at those people whose lives intersect with their own.

In my opinion what is the number one strategy for being persuasive?

Switch your mind from what you want to say to what the other person wants to hear.  Put aside your own point-of-view and develop your pitches for your target’s point-of-view.

Yes, sometimes this may be very hard to do.  You really, really want to go on and on in your query about how much work you’ve put into developing the perfect pumpkin pie recipe.  But what the blogger whose baking site you’re pitching cares about is – how easy will it be for the blog readers to follow the instructions in your pumpkin pie recipe and duplicate your perfect pumpkin pie?

Rule of thumb for pitching bloggers regarding guest post opportunities: If you want a good chance at achieving your own objectives, switch your mind around to focus on achieving the blogger’s objectives. – P.Z.M.
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is a National Internet Business Examiner at http://www.InternetBizBlogger.com as well as a book author, and her power marketing company http://www.MillerMosaicLLC.com combines traditional marketing principles and Internet marketing strategies to put power in your hands.

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