How to Engage Bloggers
Leslie Shares a Few Case Studies
This afternoon I was on a panel with the talented Danielle Brigida of the National Wildlife Federation and the illustrious Dan Riehl of RiehlWorldView at Direct Marketing Association of Washington‘s “Social Media Day.” My presentation is embedded below as a downloadable SlideShare PowerPoint. Four take-aways I cobbled together from the panel and from those in the audience below the jump.
1) Blogger engagement is all about relationships. Nothing terribly profound or new about this statement, but a reiteration of the basic principles of what it means to have a contact that you first connect with in a meaningful way (e.g., shared interest, friends in real life, lend a helping hand) and then, down the road, potentially ask for a favor (for a blogger, this can range from a full story, to a link, a mention, or embedded content). Danielle made the point that her job is building relationships, which often ranges meeting bloggers for coffee, talking with them on listservs and even helping them promote their content through her StumbleUpon and Twitter accounts (she has over 9,000 Twitter followers at the writing of this blog post –which tells me she has done a few things very well, to say the least).
2) Be direct, be relevant, be brief. Dan Riehl, the highly-credentialed blogger on the panel, shared some great best practices for communicating with bloggers. In particular, he highlighted by his own lived experience: Bloggers are often engaged in a number of other stories and, possibly, a full-time job or side consulting work. For this reason, Dan recommended keeping the subject of the email personal and catchy. And, before you even send the email, make sure you have done your research — get to know the blogger, their content, interests… and connect your pitch with it. PR 101, I know. Still surprised that folks don’t take the time. So that’s why I am paraphrasing Dan’s words of wisdom.
3) Consider your assets. Especially in the world of DC, issues can be complicated and / or obscure. And, brands can have a hard time being relevant, even when they might want to be (ahem, orange juice… and the elections?!) But don’t be discouraged. This is where you get creative. Whether it is building a site that does something interesting with user generated content (such as the NMS / JESS3 collab for Tropicana during the 2008 Elections — 1 year and 1 day ago today), or creating a reciprocal link-love program of ‘hey, you link to us… we’ll link to you’ (like the C-SPAN Convention and Debate Hubs — as well as the way Danielle runs things over at National Wildlife Federation‘s blog).
4) Twitter placement is the new blog hit. Okay, maybe not. But it is a statement that I have said out loud a few times based on the awesome work the NMS team has done engaging high-profile Twitterers around causes (such as John Mayer’s tweet about the Special Olympics’ “Spread the Word to End the Word” campaign and Ann Curry’s tweet about Save the Children’s World Pneumonia Day involvement) or around cool technological feats (such as Twitter CEO and co-founder Ev Williams’ tweet about Tropicana’s “An Orange America” campaign). These tweets can not only draw in additional eyes, but most importantly, likely to catalyze further tweets and actions (petition-signing, donating, etc.) — John Mayer’s tweet alone was retweeted a few hundred times, Ev’s a few dozen. Views, click-thrus and actions could all be traced back to their involvement. How else would you be able to get in touch with these people — perhaps know someone who knows someone who knows their publicist? Maybe. Or, get busy tweeting (not in a spammy way, but in a targeted and engaged way).
+++
Big thanks to friend and former NMS co-worker Melanie Phung, her company Red Engine Digital (where she is the Director of SEO), the Direct Marketing Association of Washington and a big shout-out to fellow NMSer, Sam Huxley, who rocked the morning panel on metrics.
Author’s note:
Originally posted on my WordPress blog, Leslie Shares a Few Case Studies: How to Engage Bloggers [November 6, 2009]
