Beyond the 101 of Blogger Relations
Posted on January 27th, 2009 by EliciaBasoli
Blogger Relations has become as important (and sometimes even more important, depending on the brand and audience and how much time they spend online) as traditional media relations. From time to time we host “best practices” speakers at 360. On Friday, Susan Getgood, a Society of New Communications Research Fellow and the voice of Marketing Roadmaps, led a discussion amongst 360 staff about getting beyond the “101″ of working with bloggers.
It was an awesome discussion that ran over-time by about an hour! We covered a lot of ground and I’ve summarized a handful of key takeaways below for your reading pleasure:
- “New to You” is Enough - A product/service doesn’t have to be brand “new” to be relevant to a blogger. Susan recently posted a blog entry with more detail about the concept of “New to You.”
- Add Value – When reaching out to bloggers, it is so important to add value. It is about much more than a quirky pitch. “That means putting your product or service into the blogger’s context, not talking at him from yours with a press release, list of features or carefully crafted message point.”
- Bad Pitches – Susan shared a number of examples of bad pitches that she and fellow bloggers have received. We have a no-blast policy at 360, but often bloggers do get blanket pitches from PR folks that, for example, are addressed generically, e.g., (“Hi!”), or include mixed fonts (a sure sign that the pitch was blasted out), or are geographically irrelevant. Susan has a bunch of examples of bad pitches on her blog – check them out!
- Being Reactive and Proactive – It is just as important to be reactive in the blogging community as it is to be proactive. Listening before you engage in the blogosphere is important, and only after you’ve listened should you choose to either pro-actively reach out to a blogger or react to something they’ve already said.
- Planning for Measurement – Incorporate measurement into your plan at the start of a campaign! Whether it be measuring visits to a websites or microsite, downloads of a file, blog views, etc., those metrics must be determined at the get-go.
Thanks to Susan for a wonderful discussion and a great way to kick off 360′s professional development series for 2009!
Thanks for having me in. I enjoyed our discussion tremendously and am happy to hear that it was of value.
In the coming year, as belts and budgets tighten, blogger relations as a marketing tactic will become even more important. It’s a direct conduit to the customer.
It’s also quite likely that companies will have fewer new products. That means finding creative ways to engage around the “old stuff” beyond a product pitch. This is what I call adding value. It also means being able to measure results. I’ll have more on both topics over the next few weeks.
You folks are paying attention to the right stuff which should stand you in good stead in the coming year.
Thanks for the comment, Susan
It really was a great session. Agree with you on all fronts – it will be very interesting to see how things play out this year as far as budgets and product releases go.