How to Approach a Blogger

Posted by techgirl

Posted: April 30, 2009 - 7:53 am

Comments (0) |

Bloggers are people, tooA lot of people look to bloggers these days to help them publicize their products or services. I'm approached many times a week to do this so have come up with a short list of things to consider when asking a blogger to promote something for you.

1. Do your homework. Before you approach a blogger, read some of their past posts and recent posts to get a sense of the themes and topics they cover. Have they blogged about a product or service before? Reference this in your pitch to explain why you're approaching this particular blogger. And before you hit the send button, make sure that your product or service is actually relevant to the blogger's blog.

2. Be personal. A major pet peeve of many bloggers is when the pitches they receive are addressed to LAST NAME FIRST NAME or INSERT NAME HERE. Most popular third-party email marketing services such as Mail Chimp and Constant Contact can help auto-fill the salutation if you're doing bulk email, but a better solution is to identify a smaller number of bloggers who are well-suited to promote what you're marketing and send individualized emails to each one. Yes, one at a time.

3. Be concise. Your pitch doesn't need everything including the kitchen sink. Be brief, put your request at the very top of your email, and add links instead of large blocks of text to lead bloggers to additional information about your company, products or services. Long emails are not read, trust me.

4. Be transparent. If you are a PR person, state that up front. If you work for the company you are promoting, let the blogger know. Don't ever pretend to be a fan of the company when you're being paid to market something. If discovered, the backlash will put the company into communications crisis mode.

5. Be courteous. Bloggers are people, too. They are usually juggling many obligations and their blog may or may not be a priority. If they don't respond, one or two followup emails over the next few weeks is acceptable but three times is either the charm or a strike out. Move on to someone else who may be interested.

No blogger is obligated to write about you, your company, or your product or service. But if you cultivate a relationship with a blogger, they'll be much more likely to help you achieve your goals and provide you with a targeted, attentive audience for your marketing messages.

What else do you think marketers and PR people should do or not do when approaching bloggers?

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