Visual Marketing: 99 Proven Ways for Small Businesses to Market with Images and Design

33. Blogger Outreach in the Cloud: Using a Visually Inspired Word Cloud to Start a Conversation with a Blogger

Getting bloggers to talk about your brand can be harder than pulling teeth: Your pitch tends to be like everyone else's, and bloggers simply aren't impressed. David de Souza, founder of TaxFix.co.uk, knew that getting the attention of money and finance bloggers would be a challenge, so he came up with an unusual idea. De Souza created a personalized word cloud in the shape of the logo from each blog on his outreach list and sent bloggers the logo-shaped word cloud along with a personal note. (A word cloud is a visual depiction of the main words used on a website or blog. The more often a word is used, the larger the size of the word.)

“The goal is to create a relationship with the blogger,” de Souza explained. Once you've come to the blogger's attention, if you have quality content on your site the blogger may decide to write about it and link to it. “Links are like votes to the search engines and the more quality votes that you have … the more visitors.”

Why It Works

De Souza did his homework. He identified the words each blogger used most frequently in his or her blog by analyzing the site content. Then he used a free online tool at Tagxedo.com that generated the word ...