PR companies and bloggers

There was an article today in the NY Times Style section about a blogging bootcamp that had recently taken place.  It seems like it was more aimed at mommy bloggers, but I think its along the same path of what we'd like to accomplish with The B-List conference.  Its all about learning from each other, banding together and showing that we as bloggers are a viable resource in the bridal industry.

Anyway, I followed some of the links to bloggers that had attended to see what their impressions were and came across Resourceful Mommy.  This post had nothing to do with the conference, but had everything to do with PR companies and how they should be approaching blogs.  It was incredibly insightful so I'm copying a portion of it here for you to check out, but check out the full post on her site for the entire story.  Feel free to comment your thoughts, because I'm sure we can all relate a similar story.

1. Engage with bloggers, but don't forget if this is not your first outreach. Yes, we receive a ton of pitches each day, but if we can remember you while we're running our home, our family, and our business, you can remember us if we did something for you. For free. More than once.


2. Continuity: I understand that there is a very high turnaround rate for PR/marketing employees, and that even if your staffing remains the same, your blogger outreach team may not. However, I have very happily and proudly worked with some of the biggest names in the PR business who assign different staffers to work with me on continuing projects - sometimes even different offices across the country - and they always are professional enough to begin their e-mails: "Hi, my name is Joe Smith. I believe you worked with my colleague Jane Doe on this account." It is so critical that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing because at the end of the day, you're hoping that we respect your company enough to promote it to our audience.


3. Love the Little Blogger: Clearly the company in this example took enough interest in what I was doing to attempt to bring me in on the ground level, but at some point they lost that interest in me....several times. Had they continued to keep me involved in their company, they would not need to ask me for a Twitter Party quote because most likely I would have been promoting them for free as a partner for the last 18 months. All of the top bloggers of today were the little bloggers of yesterday.

Comments

[Svelte Brides by Victoria]

Hello, I came across a similar article and comments from a Duct Tape Marketing blog. Among other things, they suggested a)giving a straightforward and succinct intro at the beginning of the email, with more detailed info or links to video, podcasts, etc later on; b) maintaining a casual but respectful tone (too formal was a turn-off, and too "buddy-buddy" was also annoying); and c) thinking about what you could offer the person or company you are pitching to make it win-win; and d) not using a template or form-letter-looking email- these got deleted a lot more quickly when you have to quickly scan 100's of emails!

Info along these lines is very useful to someone like me who is relatively new to the blogging world, so thanks for posting this and I hope this helps someone else!
Victoria
www.sveltebride.com

[Ten23designs.blogspot.com]

Very useful information, thank you for researching & sharing. I have a blog that I know I do not utilize as I should. Hopefully using these strategies, the ones listed in the comment above mine & the full post Resourceful Mommy I can begin to take my blog to the next level.