The Rise of the Blogger.

Guest Post from Erica Harbison, Waggener Edstrom and member of the PRos in Training “advisory board”

It’s almost a new year – perfect time to resolve to learn more about blogging and bloggers.

So you’ve been hearing a lot about the rise in influence and importance of bloggers, eh? I’m here to tell you that from a PR perspective, what you’re seeing and hearing is true.

Bloggers are here to stay for the foreseeable future and they (we) are powerful. I say “we” because if you haven’t gotten on the blog bandwagon by now, you’re already behind. Being a blogger, as Kelli has evangelized many times before, is the first step in knowing how to reach bloggers. If you’re driving a PR campaign, it’s nearly always appropriate to think about how to reach include bloggers in your strategy.

Your first piece of homework is to research bloggers who are writing about your client / product / industry. How do I do this, you say? Check out Technorati as a first stop. As you do this, take note of who the bloggers are. Where do they live? What are they saying? What blogs do they read and link to? What seems to influence them, and what bloggers or media outlets are linking to them? Besides the average joe blog sites, are you finding sites maintained by pundits in a particular area (e.g. marketing, technology, sports, etc)? In most cases, these should be your target blog audience.

Now reaching bloggers via traditional PR tactics is a tricky business. They are not like reporters who want to be “pitched.” The rules are completely different. The agency I work for has been trying out different strategies to reach these guys and it seems to be working (hosting special blogger-only events and organizing suites for bloggers to post/podcast at tradeshows). The key thing with bloggers is they don’t want to be PR’d. Here are some things I’ve learned:

• Like traditional press, always know what they write and their slant before outreaching.
• When you contact a blogger, whether its via posting a comment to their recent blog entry or in the way of a “buddy mail” (essentially an email pitch), keep it casual. Establish yourself and your client with the blogger before coming on too strong.
• Don’t offer interviews with your spokesperson. Bloggers are not like traditional press. Interviews should be organized only if you feel very confident that you will not be putting your client at risk for a bad experience. Remember, bloggers can write what ever they want; no one is editing/reviewing. There is always a risk for bad “press” when dealing with bloggers.
• Does your target blogger seem to have a favorite news site? Plan to place a story about your client on this site to get your blogger’s attention. He/she may end up linking to it, or better yet, writing a stand-alone blog post about your news. This is a great way to extend your media relations efforts.

I could go on and on, but that’s probably enough for now to get you started. Happy blogging (and blog reading).

photo: Kelli & Erica, January 2006