Blogger Relations: Push or Pull? How to Get Bloggers to Mention Your Brand
Posted on 01. Feb, 2012 by Lee Odden in Blog, blogger relations, Online PR, seo pr, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Is Your Blogger Relations Using Push & Pull PR Tactics?
Yesterday digital PR maven Adam Vincenzini pinged me about a post he was researching on how brands could make it easier for bloggers to talk about them. It’s a great question because mentions and links from influential content sources are priceless for credibility, awareness and in particular, social SEO.
This is a topic close to home because after 8 years of blogging here at Online Marketing Blog attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors, nearly 50k RSS subscribers, 13k blog Facebook Fans and 16k blog Twitter followers, I’ve had the opportunity to be pitched, schmoozed and numerous other tactics to get me to talk about companies that want exposure. After all that, I can say I think I’ve found the magic formula that will almost guarantee bloggers will talk about a particular brand.
Are you ready?
I know, the suspense is killing me too.
OK, here it is.
It’s not about you. It’s about them.
Yeah, that’s it.
Bloggers don’t really care about your brand’s agenda.
What DO bloggers care about? That’s exactly the question PR and Media Relations professionals should be asking themselves. The problem is, most media relations people still think of bloggers as if they operate like journalists.
A great example is sending an email pitch (with no previous correspondence or social web interaction) with a press release attached as a MS Word document offering a chance to set up a meeting with some corporate executive to talk about the thing being pitched.
Really?
For comparison, imagine someone coming up to you at a party and introducing themselves, suggesting a great new drink and that you’ll need to arrange a time to talk to the bartender for more information about the drink and maybe you’ll like it and maybe you’ll talk about it to others. I don’t think so.
What about introducing yourself, asking about favorite drinks and then getting one of those favorite drinks to try – right then and there? If it’s great, that drink will get talked about, right then and there.
The problem with many blogger relations efforts is that PR pros tend to pitch based purely on serving the brand’s need for exposure instead of thinking about what would make the blogger interested and even excited to use a brand’s information in a blog post. That’s the challenge for PR professionals – reconcile brand needs with those of the media or bloggers.
How to be useful to bloggers as an information source is the key to getting more brand mentions. Dig into what hooks or triggers motivate a particular group or segment of bloggers and then package useful content in compelling and interesting ways that PR can use to engage them. Think about how those bloggers discover new content. Do they search? What do they search for? Where do they search? Do they ping their social networks for sources and information? Which social networks?
Besides optimizing brand stories for easy discovery on search engines and social networks, think about how to get on the blogger’s radar by appealing to their ego – in a relevant way. Create content that is special, that is unique, relevant and timely. Bloggers love to be first. They love to share.
Once you’ve created compelling and useful content, make it easy for bloggers to share on the social networks where they spend their time. Beyond generic social sharing widgets, it might mean the ability to Tweet an individual data point, image or video. easy + useful + relevant = win.
Don’t stop with an infographic, monster list of industry statistics or entertaining video – keep producing interesting content and you’ll not only get on the radar of influential bloggers, you’ll stay there.
Push tactics like media relations pitches to bloggers need to empathize with bloggers’ needs and then package brand content in an interesting and useful way. Pull PR tactics to get on bloggers’ radar means optimizing content for search and social media discovery as well as making it easy to share the the content that has been found.
That’s how you make it compelling for bloggers to talk about brands online.
If you’re a media relations and PR pro, what have you done to become more successful at increasing blogger mentions of your company or your brand clients?
For even more great insights, check out Adam’s article on Ragan. You can also get Blogger Relations 101 here and some useful SEO tips for PR in Optimize.
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© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
Blogger Relations: Push or Pull? How to Get Bloggers to Mention Your Brand | http://www.toprankblog.com
BlogWorld NY: @JasonFalls No BS Guide to Advertising & PR for Bloggers
Posted on 25. May, 2011 by Lee Odden in Blog, blog advertising, blogger relations, BlogWorld, BWENY, Marketing PR Conferences, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
While initially sitting in a SEO session, I quickly switched once I saw that Jason Falls was presenting. Jason is one of those speakers that gives great advice and he’s funny.
The lowdown on this session: How bloggers can better understand the world of advertising, marketing and PR to avoid common mistakes. How can we learn from the crappy behavior of the bloggers before us.
There’s a low cost of entry to become a blogger. Basically, all you need is a pulse and an internet connection. But, just because you’re a blogger, doesn’t mean you’re a diva. When you start to evolve as a blogger is when you attract an audience. You’re still not a rockstar, but you’ll be making progress when people are paying attention to you and engaging. For perspective, many advertisers require a minimum of 100k pageviews per month. If your blog isn’t at that level, you’re still building.
Blogger eg0 = trouble. Getting some attention and audience is an accomplishment but it’s not a reason to be a dick. Jason statistic: 15-20% of people in a given vertical think they’re god’s gift to blogging.
The conflict comes for the vast majority of bloggers who are not marketing bloggers or have marketing expertise. They don’t understand how the world of marketing and advertising works.
Soliciting money is advertising sales. (Paid Media) Any time you solicit money from an organization for space or exposure on your blog, that’s advertising. FTC requires disclosure of any kind of advertorial or ads. When you take money for publishing editorial content, you will degrade some trust with your audience – but not lose it.
The discussion you have with securing advertising on your blog might be with a media buyer, or with a larger organization, a media agency. This includes ads for media as well as advertorial.
Public relations is earned media. PR agencies or staff within companies may pitch stories to bloggers. There are PR software companies like Vocus, Cision and My Media Info that will aggregate contact information for influential bloggers within particular verticals. PR can be an information resource and go between with a brand that you want to write about. PR doesn’t buy advertising (or they shouldn’t).
Blogger Horror Story 1: After being pitched, a blogger responded demanding that instead of the blogger writing about the brand, that the brand should advertise on his blog. While the blog was topically relevant, it didn’t have anywhere near the audience that the brand’s media buyers would consider.
Blogger Horror Story 2: Jason pitched a blogger about a brand he represented and the blogger responded saying that to have a conversation, she’d charge a consulting fee. Basically, this blogger responded to PR pitches with a consulting pitch.
The situation where bloggers have built up a certain size of audience and consider themselves a diva is where blogging douchebags came from.
Blogger Horror Story 3: Fortune 25 company, big brand, wide array of products. Identified 15 bloggers and pitched them to go to an industry conference – all expenses paid (airfare, hotel and conference). While at the event, the brand wanted to show the bloggers their products.
A week before the event, one of the bloggers left a message saying they’ve decided to turn the trip into a family vacation and requested more airline tickets. Then the blogger threatened that if the brand didn’t do this, there would be editorial repercussions on her blog.
Jason says there’s a high concentration of this type of blogger in the gaming and the mommy blogger groups.
The problem with this minority of bloggers is that brands end up not wanting to deal with bloggers at all.
As you build an audience and gain reputation, it’s important that there’s a difference between being a proud person and being a jackass. There’s an attitude of entitilement plus ignorance about how advertising and public relations works.
Trust: Your audience trust you less if you’re paid for creating brand content. There’s a perceived bias.
Respect: Mutual between bloggers and the brands that communicate with them. Loss of respect means loss of relationship and the benefits that come with that.
Reality: Jason shows a series of graphs that represent mainstream media reach compared to blogs – blogs barely show up, let alone compete. (There were no sources cited in these graphs and that was very disappointing, especially from a professional like Jason)
Bloggers have a place in the advertising and media world online, but in the majority of cases, do not come close to having the same reach or clout as mainstream media. Many bloggers that gain a certain size of audience and degree of influence start to overestimate their authority and impact, plus many don’t understand how relations between advertising and advertisers, media/publishers and public relations work.
What Bloggers and Brands need to consider:
- Ethics and impact of pay for play – disclosure
- Think of bloggers as journalists
- The effect of advertising and PR on your audience
- There’s no right way, only a right way for you
Opportunities for bloggers:
- Make PR be helpful. When you get an irrelevant pitch, offer PR feedback.
- If you want advertising, ask for the media buyer, not the PR person.
- When discussing advertising opportunity with a brand, make a compelling argument with facts from a third party on your audience and community.
- Partner with other blogs.
Opportunities for brands:
- Understand the power of niche
- Make all outreach relevant. This is a huge problem and persists across many verticals.
- Know & respect bloggers have differences. Some bloggers are not PR friendly, so don’t pitch them.
- Have a plan for when you get requests for advertising
Check out Jason’s community online: ExploringSocialMedia.com
Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
BlogWorld NY: @JasonFalls No BS Guide to Advertising & PR for Bloggers | http://www.toprankblog.com
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