BLOGGERS. Love them or hate them, they are a valid part of your marketing strategy. Bloggers can excite their audience about your product, service or non-profit organization. You just need to know how to form a relationship with the bloggers in your market or niche.
How? Well, while there are many different strategies and ALL should be tailored specifically to YOUR needs. That being said, below are a couple of tips to consider before beginning your blogger relations strategy:
Get to know them before pitching them!
Spend time on their blog. How can you pitch a blogger if you don’t even know them? From your blog research, you will get a feel for how your product, service or cause might fit within their content.
Develop a relationship!
Get to know them. Utilize Twitter and Facebook to begin to reach out to them. Don’t be afraid to engage them. Only after you’ve “broken the ice” should you even THINK about pitching them.
Respect their time constraints!
Chances are they blog as a hobby and therefore have other time commitments. Realize that each blogger is different and therefore has a different response rate.
Be relevant!
The days of throwing a random press release at a blogger and hoping that it “sticks” are over. Bloggers are way too savvy for that. Be relevant to their blog. If they are an eco-friendly blogger and their content largely focuses on that then pitching something contrary to their beliefs will only anger them and drive home the fact that you didn’t take any time to learn about their blog. Sometimes this can backfire and you will be called out for it. Example? Baskin Robbins Shaklee Wowzers!
Personalize!
Dear_____ isn’t gonna cut it. By now they should be at least familiar and “open” to you. If you don’t engage them and are not personally interested in them then they will know it. Yes, it is time consuming. But if you want to be effective then you will need put some work into it. Unless you want to end up like this guy.
Great info here Jenn. It takes time and effort to do it correctly and like you said there is a lot of risk in doing it poorly.
Thanks Beth! I decided NOT to post my examples of bad pitches. I get them all of the time, of course. If it is not done well then it can hurt much more than help.
I just got a doozy of a pitch this morning. Basically they want free advertising for nothing in return. Ummm, no.
“Love them or hate them.” Wow — I would hope no one hates bloggers!
This is an interesting article. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for Posting & I got to read nice information on your site.
this is a blogger-mouth speaking right here. This is great advice to avoid us hitting the delete key on those horrid email pitches.
I know where you are coming from! I (Jennifer) am a blogger too. I speak from experience – unfortunately! hehe