How to Work With Bloggers and Influencers

This video produced by GasPedal caught my eye today.

Presented by Virginia Miracle, this class offer seriously relevant tips on how to build relationships with different types of bloggers and online influencers.

Virginia, Ogilvy PR, covered how to identify relevant influencers, what to use to get them excited and engaged, and how to make your program last.

For a recent PR grad, this is a valuable video. But even an experienced PR pro will find some interest in this.

Client requests: “I NEED THESE BLOGGERS TO WRITE ABOUT ME!!”

How can you get your client what he wants? Take the Inside-Out Approach –> do not start with targeting, look at these steps:

1. What it is you are trying to accomplish? Name what it is, before you start your outreach. Reason such as this one: “everybody else is doing it” is not good enough though.
2. Create engagement value. Look at what can these bloggers do for us and what we can do for them => focus on value exchange. Virginia’s big objective: “What is the value we can provide people so they will actually give a crap and want to spend time and energy with us?” Audit your assets = what do you have to offer? A sneak peek, fame, meet their hero, recognition, etc. Virginia uses the example of LifetimeMoms.com where contributors are paid for their content, transparently.
3. Identify who we want to talk to: bloggers and other influencers (conversations happen within forums too).
4. Design your outreach program in ethical and honest way, build it out of bricks. Virginia emphasizes WOMMA’s Ethics Code, FTC Guidelines, and others.
5. Keep up the relationships. Virginia says: “It’s critical you’re regularly talking to them, responding to their needs, and reacting along the way."

How to Work With Bloggers and Influencers -- presented by Virginia Miracle from GasPedal on Vimeo.

PR Spam: PROs know what to do now, what about Journalists & Bloggers? Do you have an opinion? Share it then...

Journalists and Bloggers have been complaining about being spammed by irrelevant and often unsolicited PR communication for ages. This bad practice is as old as Public Relations itself. The nature of the relationship between PROs and journalists (and bloggers since the introduction of Web 2.0) is sometimes quite difficult to define. Some say that PROs need journalists as much as journalists need PROs. So this should be a win-win relationship then, right? Apparently it isn’t.

The Inconvenient PR Truth campaign has brought to light a ‘bill-of-rights’, set of 10 demands on behalf of journalists. In my opinion, the most important ones are the first three, the rest of the rules follow from these three. These are: Permission required, Timely unsubscribe, Don’t rely on media lists exclusively.

By following these simple three rules when trying to sell a story to the media, a PRO can not only manage to do so, but also build his/hers reputation as a rational and sensible person who does the research and respect the journalists’ side ... simple as that. If you behave more like a human and less like a machine, you will get the results your client requires.

Thanks to the ‘bill-of-rights’ PROs know what to do, but what about the journalists and bloggers?

Journalists & bloggers are very good in complaining, posting shame-lists of names on their blogs and spending (and wasting) time on keeping this issue alive. What if they also made a step forward and published their key interests and topics they like to cover on their websites and blogs? Some of them have done it already, but some are still resistant to make the step and remain in the phase of complaining and moaning. This could save them valuable time (currently spent on deleting irrelevant PR pitches & Press Releases and complaining about it in their blogs) and actually improve their work. I said “could” because not all PROs’ ethics are the same. Some just generally don’t care.

Here I am, trying to get some response from the journalists & bloggers and PROs on the issue of PR Spam for my final year PR project. I thought that it was going to be much easier than it actually is. It seems like my target audience has no opinion! Is it even possible?

Journalists & Bloggers – please find the time to complete this 10-question survey on PR Spam. I need your opinion to find out the possible solutions to this issue. You have been complaining for quite long now, now is the time to make the next step.

PROs – do you think that journalists are right to complain about sending out PR communication in bulk? Or maybe you think that they should do something to improve your relationship... Let me know in this 10-question survey on PR Spam please.

Alternatively, feel free to email me with your thoughts on the issue.