Dealing With Negative Replies
Dealing With Negative Replies
At some point, you’re probably going to get negative replies to your outreach. This is normal and something that you shouldn’t worry about. In fact, it can be a great opportunity to engage with a blogger and get further feedback from them. In this section are a few principles to bear in mind when dealing with negative replies.Always Reply; Don’t Ignore the EmailIt can be tempting to just ignore the email and move on, particularly if you’ve put your heart and soul into a piece of content that someone just doesn’t like. But, ignoring the reply means that you’re damaging your chances of ever building a good relationship with that person. They may not like the current work you’ve done, but what about the next piece you do? The last thing you want to do is alienate anyone so that they don’t even bother looking at your future pieces of work.Get As Much Information and Feedback As PossibleWhen replying to someone, try to get some feedback on why they’re not interested in linking to you. If you’re promoting a piece of content, ask them for their opinion on what would make the content better. Is there a better way of presenting the information? Are there extra facts or statistics that would have made it more valuable or effective?Sometimes the problem may not be the content itself. Instead, the blogger just may not have time to write a blog post and link to you. In that case, you may want to offer the blogger some help with writing the post so that they don’t need to spend time on it. At the same time, you could ask the person for their opinion on what content is sorely needed in their industry. Do they see a demand for something, but do not have the time to create it themselves? There is great opportunity here if you look for it. For example, you may be able to come to an agreement in which you partner with the blogger to create a piece of content. You put the work into the content which they want to see created, and they use their contacts to help promote it. Together, you’ve created something valuable for the industry.
Also, imagine you get a good idea for a piece of content from them. Then you go away and create it, email them again and show them. They are probably going to be much more receptive this time around! Even more so if you can somehow give them credit for the idea, perhaps a small mention or a link on the piece of content which would acknowledge them again and show them.