In recent times, blogger’s have been gradually winning the title of ‘Best Influencers’ on social media because of their vast, dedicated and loyal reader base. A survey conducted by Technorati.com has found that out of all those who were surveyed, 40% claimed that their views tend to match closely with those of bloggers and that their trust in the mainstream media’s content is fading. Thus, I believe that you as PR personnel should not ignore the influential power of bloggers whom you can use as a springboard to garner widespread online coverage.
In order to help you understand the basics of blogger’s outreach I chose to write this post in a Q and A format as follows:
What is blogger’s outreach all about?
It basically is an online PR strategy where you reach out to those bloggers who help you with the goal that you are trying to achieve. You make a list of those bloggers who matter to you the most based on the page rank of their blog or their relevance to your industry and their influential ability. Then you keep communicating with them on a continuous basis in order to build strong relationship with them. Once you do this, you can then ask them to help you promote your company or brand and its products by blogging about them, reviewing them or by simply providing links to your company website. I know, I have put it very simply but remember that doing this requires skills which mostly PR pros tend to possess and if you do it in right way it will prove to be a successful online PR strategy.
Why is it important for PR?
With a continuous increase in number of blog posts and active blog readers every day, blogger’s outreach has gained significance as a part of social media PR. Blogger’s outreach adds credibility to your brand by building relationships. The relationships that you build with the key bloggers are equally important to the ones you build with journalists. You can build numerous relationships in an instant with targeted readers as a result of their trust associated with a single blogger with whom you have built a strong relationship. More number of journalists are turning to blogs in search of stories. So, there are high chances of your story getting picked by them if they come across it on one such influential blog.
What are the basic tips for doing it?
1. Firstly try to find out which bloggers are most relevant to your industry and have a reader base that you are looking to target and then compile a list of these bloggers.
2. Most of the times bloggers tend to be active across many social networking sites like Twitter and Google+. It is the best place to get in touch and socialize with them. Reading their blogs and commenting on their posts will help you garner their attention.
3. Don’t ever send spam to them since most of them will block you when you do this.
4. While sending content to them make sure that it goes with their style of blogging and is in sync with what they blog about. When you do this on a continuous basis it will help you build relationship with them faster.
5. Once a blogger starts taking interest in your stories he may ask for additional information and content. When they do so, you need respond quickly to their requests otherwise an unresponsive behavior will prove to be fatal for your relationship with them.
6. Lastly, remember that it should be a win-win situation for you, the blogger and his readers.
So, as you can see this strategy can help you create awareness by building and nurturing relationships. When it comes to building and managing relations who can do it better than PR pros? In case of blogger’s outreach all you need to do is pay attention to every detail required to build this relationship and you will get this strategy right!
Can you suggest some more tips to PR pros for doing blogger’s outreach?
PR 2.0 Evolved! 