Some great tips for working with Bloggers as part of your PR / Communications strategy from Brian Solis

Thanks Brian



Building relationships with bloggers has been the hot topic of the last year .

PR & Communications Agencies are more and more interested in working with Bloggers as part of their Communications Strategy

Conversations are taking place right now about your company and your competitors. What are you going to do about it?

1. Why does Blogger Relations matter to your company

- Blogger relations is about interacting with people who are talking about your business, many of whom might be customers and peers.
- They matter because their opinions are seen online when people search google about your business
- They matter because negative opinions about your business will spread from blogger to blogger
- More and more mainstream journalists are influcened by bloggers, and bloggers opinions filter into mass media


2. Engaging Bloggers - The Art of Relationships

- Be knowledgeable, transparent, honest, and trustworthy. Add value or don't bother.
- You don't have the "right" to pitch bloggers, so really think about it before you approach anyone.
- Conversation seems to be the "it" word, but it all comes down to respect, articulation, and relevance. Personality helps.
- No one likes to sold "to" or marketed "at" - each person needs to hear things differently, so think about that.
- There is no market for messages.
- You are empowered and expected, as a PR person, to know what you're talking about, it's benefits, and why it matters to the markets you're trying to reach. Become an expert.
- Less is more. This isn't about numbers, this is about doing PR in the Long Tail so that you can develop more meaningful relationships that have a more significant impact on the brand, business, and customers service. Quality vs. Quantity.
- Stop thinking about PR in terms of pitches and audience. The pitch is dead. The audience is dead.
- It's all about trust and respect
- Determine their preferred method of contact - note it might not be email, but rather various social tools.

NOTE TO BLOGGERS: Please help PR help you. Create a page or update your "about" section with tips and recommendations for developing relationships with PR people.

3. Promote and build relationships with Bloggers on the own turf - through Social Media

- Submit their posts/articles to social networks and news aggregators such as digg and reddit.
- Link to them.
- Comment before reaching out with meaningful content - participation is marketing.
 - Leverage personal networks.

4. Utilize Social Tools

- There are alternative contact channels to email and forms ( No spam or invasive tactics allowed)
- Social networks such as Facebook, Yahoo Mash, LinkedIn, Plaxo Pulse.
- Micromedia such as Twitter, jaiku, Tumblr, Utterz, Pownce.

5. Be Creative

- The traditional press release has no business in blogger relations. You're going to have to put things together as building blocks in order to help someone tell a story.

- Video, create short video demos, intros, events, greetings, or skits, that are specific to markets you're trying to reach.

- Podcasts, invite them to co-host a podcast or to be a guest on something like BlogTalkradio. Or create pre-recorded interviews or discussions that matter to bloggers. Think about creating custom content for different people. One shoe doesn't fit all just like one message or one tool doesn't matter to everyone.

- Social bookmarks, Bookmark content that matters to bloggers through services such as StumbleUpon, ma.gnolia, and delicious. Also, create purpose built pages dedicated to providing unbiased market background and perspective to help bloggers gain expertise and context through one link.

- Tagging, Tag items within social networks for specific people.

6. Find the People Who Can Help You

- Google Alerts allow you to be notified if anyone is talking about your company, competition, you, or other important topics.
- Blogpulse reveals blogs and bloggers that have strong authority around relevant memes.
- Technorati allows you to discover blogs that cover certain key words.
- BuzzNumbers ... shameless plug... Our blog monitoring, analysis and reporting tool...

7. The Art of Listening

- Read lot of blogs, and explore your target bloggers blog history.
- Explore their blogroll and find common topic of interest
- Use an RSS aggregator or feed reader to simplify the process of reading the important blogs and their coverage.
- Read the comments (and participate). Sometimes the greatest insight is unveiled outside of the post.

8. The "C"s of Blogger Relations

- Concept: what's the compelling plan.
- Context: why is it relevant to them.
- Consumption: create a package that makes it easy for bloggers to write their story.
- Credibility: what makes you credible? Become the expert.
- Community: join it, participate without expectations.
- Conversation: you are not invited to the conversation as a marketer. This is about people, so be articulate, responsive, honest, smart, and resourceful.

9. Expand the scope,

- Don't get caught up in the A-list bloggers.
- Focus on the magic middle, bloggers with 20-1000 blogs that link back to them.



Hope this helps, again, for more information have a read of http://www.briansolis.com/

If you are looking for a Sydney Agency to help you manage Online PR and Blogger Relations, contact ShiftedPixels
Social Media Monitoring Social Media Monitoring Australia