HOW TO: Approach a Blogger

 

Bloggers are becoming an increasingly important part of the media mix, with some of the larger, more established blogs having huge readerships. Mainstream media outlets often look to the blogosphere for inspiration and breaking stories, while consumers are increasingly looking to bloggers as trustworthy "people like me" who can give them unbiased advice and opinions.

However, unlike the press, bloggers aren't under pressure to adhere to a code of conduct - and there are no established practices of how best to work together. Just as you get annoyed by unsolicited telemarketing calls trying to sell you irrelevant products, bloggers and journalists get annoyed by PR pitches they feel to be poor or irrelevant or regard as unsolicited. The added risk for you is that, unlike journalists, many bloggers will happily post about the poor pitch, reprinting the content of you email and possibly naming you and your agency.

Therefore it is important to be cautious and thoughtful when considering any blogger relations programme and to proceed with care.

How long will this take me?

Like any relationship, building it will take time and effort and the more of each that you put you put in, the more likely you are to be successful.

What do I need to know first?

Before considering approaching bloggers you must have already gone through the following stages:

• Created a keyword list
• Identified who is talking about the issues you are interested in
• Evaluated those blogs to find the top 10 – 20 in terms of influence
• Started to monitor those blogs on a regular basis

How do I do this?

1. Read

Even more so than with traditional mainstream media, it is vital that you are very familiar with the blogger, their blog and their interests because as mentioned above they are more likely to react publicly to your ignorance. Most blogs will have a variety of RSS feeds, use these to track posts and comments.

2. Participate

Try to become known to the blogger that you are pitching before you make personal contact. Most bloggers will be more willing to interact with you if they can see that you’ve gone to the effort of interacting with the content that they’ve written. Be genuine and add value, don’t just comment "Nice post!"

The longer you interact, the better.

3. Check the submission policy

Not every blogger is happy to be approached with a potential pitch. Many of those that are not happy will have already posted about this and some that are happy to be approached - usually the larger, more commercial, blogs - will have a clear submission policy for you to follow.

4. Consider how you can help them

Bloggers tend to be writing for themselves, not their audience; their blogs serve as an outlet for thoughts or to express a genuine passion. They also tend to have ultimate editorial control on their output, a blogger won't write about something "newsworthy" if it doesn't personally interest them. And unlike journalists, they don't have to.

Many of the media relationship basics still apply though, a blogger is more likely to be interested if you give them something that is newsworthy and relative to them.

Don't limit adding value to being only related to your clients. Consider introducing bloggers to each other by linking them to content from other bloggers that you think they will find of interest.

5. Deadlines

Bloggers don't have them but they do tend to work on a far quicker turnaround than even the online press. Pitches need to be short and pithy; the key points should be upfront and where possible provide good visuals.

6. The approach

You should approach each blogger personally and completely transparently, you must always state:

• Who you are
• Who you work for
• Which client you are representing

Remember that it is more about the blogger than their readership, don't use PR jargon and never ask them specifically to blog about what you are sending to them.

A good pitch, that offers something of interest and value, will give them a reason to be interested in your client but also remember you have to give up control of what they might say about it and also graciously accept that they may not say anything at all.

7. Follow-up

Remember bloggers are not journalists and while they may receive several pitches a day or week, they may be uncomfortable being approached by phone. If they don't respond in a timely manner, then do not hassle them – send a polite reminder and then leave them alone.

Summary

If they do respond positively you need to work on making this a long term relationship: keep reading and commenting and only approach them when you believe you have something of value that is relevant and newsworthy for them.

A long term relationship with a blogger can have many benefits, just as a long term relationship with a journalist, and similarly fewer but deeper relationships are far better than many, shallow ones.

Comments

[Mat Morrison]

Particularly like the tip about introducing two bloggers to each other as a way of creating a role for yourself. It's almost straight out of "How to make friends and influence people" which shows that good ideas never go out of date!

In social network terms, you've just given yourself status; instead of going to someone in a mendicant role you've proven that you can be useful.

However, I suggest that it may be dangerous to assume that the parties don't know each other. But their audiences may not know to whom you're referring. What do you do?

The cocktail-party etiquette would probably be to say something like "A - have you met B? She's a fascinating expert on X"

What does anyone else think?

[Damien Mulley]

Simply brilliant. Not seen advice as good out there. Well done.

[Kerry G]

@Mat - True, you shouldn't assume that the two parties don't already know each other. That said if you've actually done the reading you should have done, then you should also have a fairly good idea who is already on their blog roll and who they do and don't read themselves.

@Damien - Very glad you like it and thanks again for your advice and feecback...:)

[James Whatley]

Certainly gets my seal of approval. Good job.

You should have more sharing options here...

Where my 'digg this' button, huh?!

;)

Hopefully see you soon,

J.

[CJ]

Nice post!

[Nay]

Hey, I followed on from Damien's blog. This post makes a great comparison to his How To Get Blacklisted By Me!
It's interesting because you state it very simply but you're spot on, especially regarding familarity. I get a fair few pitches via my blog and most are well-behaved, I must just be lucky!

[Mat Morrison]

@Whatleydude - thanks for the suggestion. You're right, of course. Digg button now in place (I think it could be better arranged, though)

[Adonis]

Nice post, covered all the major points. Digged.

[Darragh]

Excellent advice. Even though it's implicit above, one of the things I'd suggest you should never do is collect a load of bloggers' email addresses and send them a mass, impersonal "press-release" email and expect a favourable reaction, because not only is it spam, it's also going to result in far worse publicity for you than if you'd said nothing.

Great resources here - I'll be back :)

[connector]

very useful and watch out for the link back !

be good
conor

[Mat Morrison]

Think it's worth pointing to Brian Solis's article from last year here: Building Relationships with Bloggers

http://snurl.com/2tcvm

Some of it is truly excellent stuff; and it really bears reading in parallel.

(damn comments don't allow HTML -- must go and fix)

[Mat Morrison]

http://www.thenewpr.com/wiki/pmwiki.php?pagename=Resources.PitchingBlogs

[Mat Morrison]

There's a lovely take on the wrong (and right) way to work with bloggers over at That Canadian Girl.

She's got a really good list of do-s and don't-s

(Via Whatleydude)