Posts Tagged ‘bloggers’

Are Bloggers Part of Your Plan?

Aug
12

Written by: Kim Hardcastle

Picture this…you’re in a room with 3,600 of the nation’s most influential voices and they are there just to meet you, learn about and try your product, and listen to your elevator pitch. What an opportunity to learn about the perception of your brand, your product, your message. Now consider this – the room is filled with bloggers – women bloggers. And these women are the voice (a very, very large voice) in the buying decisions of all of their peers, networks, friends, families and even strangers. How do you stand out and how do you tap in to this network of potential brand advocates?

Here’s a little insight from just such an event – BlogHer, which is the largest gathering of women bloggers from around the world and was held just last week in San Diego.

  1. Female bloggers are not just mom bloggers anymore (heck, I never was). They blog about everything from veganism to employment law, bras for breast feeding (that they invented by the way) to vodka. They are looking for brands to affiliate themselves with, and they want to play a part with your brand – not just get paid for posting a story. Invite them to engage by hosting an event on your behalf in their hometown, participating in a focus group at headquarters, critiquing your next online marketing campaign, or providing feedback in a product design charette.
  2. They’re smart. Really smart. As discussed in another ThinkStand post this week, these savvy businesswomen know how to market, they know how to write, and they can help or hurt your brand in a significant and measurable way. For some, blogging is simply a creative outlet. For others, it’s a very viable business model. Consider this– 85 percent of BlogHer network readers purchased something as a result of reading about it on said blog. And, Nielsen now rates blogs higher than both social media and corporate web sites as the go-to source for information about a company or product.
  3. Blogging is not just for chicks. There were several brave men who ventured out for this estrogen-heavy conference, and they are writing about their roles as single-parents or Mr. Mom, their jobs and hobbies (like home improvement, hint, hint). Make sure not to pigeonhole your outreach to target only moms or women; men matter too.
  4. ROI is also important to them. Bloggers want to work with you to show results – let them in on the secret, figure out a way to measure together. What’s good for them is ultimately also good for you.

Next up, we turn the tables and provide more key learnings on how bloggers can and should work to form better relationships with agencies and corporate partners.

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Come on, Ma. Give PR a chance!

Aug
10

Written by: Robin Hubier

I recently had the pleasure of attending the third annual Type-A Parent Conference in Asheville, N.C.

The majority of attendees were mom bloggers – and as the conference name implies – real go get ‘em mom bloggers. They were smart, passionate about their work and good at what they did. So it was easy for me to see why the main topic of conversation among these smart, passionate, talented women was getting paid for their talents and skills.

How to make money for their work on blogs and social networks came up in nearly every session. As one mom put it, “If I’m spending 50 hours a week on my blog and social networks but not paying any bills with that work, I’m just being a bad parent.” These women don’t see blogging as a hobby; blogging is their profession.

Hearing this, I was completely on board. Yes, you should be making money! What are these companies thinking sending you content ideas for your blog and expecting you to use your valuable brainpower and time to write about them for free! And then I remembered…wait, that’s the whole idea behind PR.

In PR, our bread and butter is “earned media.” We don’t “pay for play” – that’s advertising. PR departments spend so much time on earned media because we believe a person’s true thoughts put into an article are more credible, interesting and genuine than what a company can say on its own through advertising.

In several sessions, I wanted to shout out, “don’t rule us PR people out! We can be your friends even though we don’t have advertising dollars to pay you!” Here’s why:

  • Relevant Content. In PR, we’re not working with the huge budgets advertisers have, and that means we have to make sure our content means something to your audience if we want you to use it. Unlike advertising, if the content we develop is not interesting and relevant, it’s not going to make it anywhere past our desktops. PR practitioners have to work hard to get you good ideas, because if the idea isn’t good, it will never be more than that – an idea.
  • Keep your readers’ trust. As highlighted in the third Social Media Revolution video produced in June, 90 percent of consumers trust peer recommendations, while only 14 percent trust advertisements. Your readers want to hear your opinion – not what a brand is paying you to say. If your blog becomes primarily paid content, your readers will lose trust and stop reading. If you lose your readers’ trust, you’ll lose the following that put you in the position to receive advertising opportunities. PR professionals want to add value to your blog, not takeaway from it.
  • You don’t have to “sell your soul.” I attended one session at the conference called, “Profitable Blogging without Selling Your Soul.” This session featured a panel of bloggers who had turned down some paid blog posts opportunities because the post ideas were irrelevant to their readers. Turning down irrelevant paid posts is part of it – it protects your blog from being seen an advertising site by your readers. Likewise, if you demand a brand pay you to write about a good story idea the PR team has pitched, you are doing a disservice to your readers by keeping relevant information from them. Because PR departments don’t pay you, you’ll never feel like you have to sell your soul. You just decide if it’s a good story for your readers or not. Say yes or no, and feel good about providing interesting information to your readers or not wasting their time with irrelevant information.
  • Money. So I know I said PR doesn’t have money to pay you, but we can only improve your chances of making money. In addition to giving you good content ideas to help you attract and retain readers and advertisers, relationships with brands’ PR departments may lead to relationships with brands’ advertising departments. Here at Jackson Spalding, we have many clients who use both our Communication team for media relations and other PR services, and our Creative team for advertising. More and more, PR and advertising departments are collaborating and integrating campaigns. If you form a relationship with a PR professional without asking for money, that relationship could lead to opportunities down the road for sponsored blog posts or other types of advertising.

So mom bloggers, please don’t just dismiss the next PR professional who pitches you an unpaid story idea. Remember, paid blog posts may add value to your bank account, but PR professionals can help add value to your blog. And when content is king, you can’t afford to blow off PR.

So what do you say, will you give us a chance?

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Extra, Extra, Read All About It (Online)

Sep
22

Written by: Chad Sour

Earlier this month, the Associated Press released a set of guidelines for providing credit and attribution to sources that originate news. While this sounds benign and like it’s nothing new, there was some interesting language in the fine print. More precisely, under these guidelines, AP will begin crediting bloggers as sources.

While this is a huge step for online journalism, it ushers in conversations on issues like breaking news, ethics and credibility, to say nothing of delivering yet another blow to already battered newsrooms everywhere.

Extra Extra

Photo Credit: http://www.biojobblog.com/news.gif

It reminds me of a conversation (or shall I say “debate”) my family had about a year ago. We were at my Great Aunt’s 1950’s-era duplex in Shreveport, La. As you gaze around the room you’d be hard-pressed to find empty space – every inch is covered with books, magazines and newspapers. Chances are if you were to open any one of these books or newspapers, you would find the remnants of my Aunt’s red pen – calling out some glaring grammatical error made by the author. See, my Aunt has spent her career in academia and is now a retired professor of English and Literature.

At any rate, my family was sitting around her dining room table – always a venue for lively debate on politics and current events – and we stumbled upon the topic of bloggers. My Aunt was in utter disbelief that so many people were getting their “news” from bloggers. She argued that bloggers were a rogue bunch of amateurs with little to no credibility and that anyone could post anything, and we’d never know fact from fiction.

Being the lone Millennial at the table, I had to speak up. I argued the “anyone/anything” theory actually enhanced journalism because it delivers an Egalitarian approach to reporting the news. The barrier of entry is so low, we’re able to not only get niche reporting, but we’re also able to get it on a hyperlocal level.

Then, I shifted focus to her credibility argument, and rebutted with a question: “What makes a print or TV news outlet ‘credible’?” The consensus around the room was something along the lines of “a consistent track record of accurate reporting.”

I pleaded that we needed to give this concept of bloggers reporting the news some time. After all, who knew, for example, that the Wall Street Journal would be “credible” when it launched back in 1889? The advantage we have now, however, is that online communities are pretty darn good at regulating themselves. If there is a whiff of false or unethical news reporting – that “source” is discredited almost immediately and word of this travels online, virally. And while I’ll never be sure who won the debate that day, the conversation certainly raised some great questions.

What about you? Are you cool with bloggers reporting the news? What implications do you think it has on how we receive our news? Comments are open…

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4 steps to find quality blogs to pitch

Jul
1

Written by: Bryan Long

While leading a recent training session with the marketing team at Chick-fil-A, a client raised his hand and asked what seemed to be a very simple question: How do you find the best blogs?

It seemed simple until I tried to answer it. Well, uh, you search for them. Right?

While it’s not complicated, searching for blogs that are relevant to your business, hobbies, customers or trends requires more thought than that. Any business should think through the process like any other marketing tactic, especially with the intention of building relationships with specific bloggers.

Feeling that I shortchanged my answer in person, and hoping that others may benefit from a more thoughtful answer, I present The Best Way To Find The Best BlogsTM.

There are four simple steps.

Use a blog search engine.

Using a basic Google search can help you find a blog, but it will also generate about 3 million other results that may or may not be relevant. A search for blogs requires a special tool. While there are dozens of websites that claim to search for blogs, there are just three that I recommend:

I’ve seen consistently good results from all three search engines. Many sites that claim to be search engines for blogs are merely RSS scrapers that bring back anything that can be found on feeds, including lots of junk and articles that aren’t safe for work.

Each of the search engines recommended above use a unique algorithm to return relevant and ranked results.

Search like your customers.

Think about your core audience and imagine what terms they may search for today.

Sure, go ahead and search for your products and services, but don’t stop there. What else motivates your customers? What are they searching for when they aren’t eating a Spicy Chicken Sandwich?

You should search for your competitors by name and by product. You may want to search for terms that merely compete for time or mindspace with your customers. If you know that a portion of your fans also likes a non-competing product or service, search for those terms, too.

After repeating multiple searches, you’re likely to find some repetition or a few headlines that stand out from the rest of the pack.

These will guide you as you explore further.

Read the blog, read the About page.

At this point you may be overwhelmed with blogs. It’s time to pan for gold.

Despite the large number of results you’ve seen so far, you’re only looking for one or two blogs now. And quality counts.

Click through the search results to evaluate each site. Does the site make a good first impression? How is the writing? Does the blogger write about topics that interest your customers? Do readers respond in comments? Is there an active Facebook Page or Twitter Feed?

If you don’t like the site as a marketing professional, chances are your customers aren’t spending much time there.

You should beware of automated sites and keyword monsters. Some web publishers create sites to trick search engines for traffic. They will pull RSS feeds from other sites or write articles that read like gibberish. A string of related keywords may fool a robot but it won’t fool human readers.

If first impressions are good, go to the About page and read what the blogger has to say about themselves and their website.

Your goal is to find at least one site that you feel comfortable contacting.

Visit the Blogroll.

Once you’ve discovered that one shining example of a quality blog that may interest your readers, the rest is easy. Find the blogroll on the homepage or visit a page labeled Links. These are the sites that the blogger you’ve  found cares enough about to share with his or her readers. There’s a good chance that you’ll find them useful, too.

After that, treat the blogger as you would any journalist. Give them a call and say how much you like their work. You can honestly say that you’ve been looking for a blog just like theirs.

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