How To Reach Top Bloggers

As a technical founder, this was super helpful. I had intuited a lot of this, but it's nice to see it all clearly spelled out and bulleted. Thanks for posting this.

Does anyone have other specific/tactical tips for blogger outreach? Specific sites/tools/processes? Examples of successful copy/assets used in emails? (gohat, thanks for already sharing some)

This is some great advice.

I'd add the tried and useful technique of having your first email be purely relationship creating: say, respond to a recent post with a useful thought, or point out a minor bug somewhere on the site

Having sent a decent bunch of emails to bloggers, I've also noticed that smiley faces increase response significantly, but using them makes me feel a bit cynical, so I usually don't ;-)

I like to use social engineering when I need to reach top bloggers, and sometimes lie... "I'm facing a crisis, give me some advice... blah blah" Then 5 months later, tell them "Thanks so much for your life changing advice, it inspired me to start my startup... Hope you can tell others about it"