Finding and befriending influential bloggers is one of those things that’s easy to say, but quite hard to do. Bloggers (including this one) can be prickly when riled, so there’s good reason for taking a cautious approach. That said, an appreciative post on a popular blog can outweigh the best efforts of any PR agency. So here’s our 5-step guide to getting blog outreach right.  We hope it saves you a lot of time, effort and heartache.

1. Find influential blogs

For ages Technorati was the best way of finding influential blogs. These days there are a few good options: Postrank and Wikio all enable you to search for blogs by topic or industry. Wikio.co.uk focuses on UK bloggers, which is useful for people this side of the Atlantic. Obviously it’s best to narrow your search if possible. A quick search I did produced 6000 influential “social media” blogs, but just 39 for “social media monitoring”. That’s a nice manageable number to try and build relationships with.

2. Identify the blogger

While the biggest and best blogs are businesses in themselves, many hugely popular blogs are run by keen amateurs or small teams. These tend to be more approachable than the big boys, as they are their own bosses and likely to welcome interesting stories, worthwhile advertising or decent promotional opportunities. Make sure you know who you’re dealing with. In spite of their ferocious reputation, all bloggers are human, so it’s worthwhile getting to know who they are and whether blogging is their job or their hobby. Technorati names the authors of blogs and (if they have registered) provides a detailed profile. Otherwise most bloggers publish contact details or have a contact form.

3. Make your pitch

If you want your selected bloggers to blog about something you’re doing, the best approach is to ping them a short message with a URL and 1-2 lines about why you think they may be interested in covering it. Stowe Boyd, a well known blogger, has gone as far as setting out guidelines of how to approach him via Twitter. Jason Falls has published a similar guide on SocialMediaExplorer, which states that he accepts short emails. If you have a commercial marketing proposition, you can include a bit more detail. Most bloggers are open to discussing commercial offers even if they don’t say so openly. Jason Falls has a commercial agreement to promote PostRank, which he discloses emphatically beneath every related post.

4. Build a relationship

If you aren’t offering a commercial benefit to the blogger, what’s in it for them? Well, like all journalists, bloggers have a keen interest in sharing new and interesting content with their readers. So, if you can feed them good tips and stories on a regular basis, they’ll be more predisposed to help you when you want to share your own news. Developing these relationships is critical to building a long-term blog outreach strategy. As Murray Newlands, the affiliate marketing blogger, says about his advertising partner Clickbooth: “I have worked with them for years. I know them. Their social media manager Eric got to know me.”

5. Monitor the results

It sounds obvious, but make sure you provide the blogger with a unique URL to your website, or simply track referrers to your site using your analytics package. There are also lots of social media monitoring solutions that can help you track their mentions of your company. Review these on a monthly basis. Are you getting value from the arrangement? If not, either renegotiate the deal or nudge your newfound friend. It has to work for both parties, after all.