Blog Outreach: How to Pitch Bloggers

Going through the NewPR wiki, there are easily over 40 blog posting covering the area of “How to pitch a blogger”. But there lacks a good, single, comprehensive list, this is Emergence Media’s attempt at building such a list based on this outline:

• Overall Strategy
• Messaging and Approach
• Making the Connection: First Contact
• After the Review Blog Posting

The full article is on the Emergence-Media Wiki (seldom used admittedly) to encourage everyone to contribute ideas to the “Blog Outreach: How to Pitch Bloggers” article. Here are some excerpts:

Build Your Relationships: Recognize Them Publicly
Lots of companies may send “thank you’s” for reviewing their product (good or bad) on the blogger’s website. But how many create a “Blog Mentions” page on their corporate website (or blog)? Think beyond listing the generic press releases under your “Press Room” section. As they say, give some “link love” back to the blogger (regardless of the review).

Be Clear with Your Blogger: On Reviews, On Embargoes etc.
The big Microsoft Vista incident with the free Acer Laptops was due to the lack of clarity and consistency on what conditions were bloggers given the review units. Bloggers are like lack amateur journalists, they may not know exactly what you mean by an embargo or what a review unit is. Be clear and consistent – but in human language, not legalese. Bloggers will compare notes and see if they received different emails, they did this publicly with Microsoft Vista with embarrassing results.

Know the Landscape Part 1: Look Beyond the A-Listers
It’s one thing to know the A-List bloggers, its another to know what mid-tier blogs they read. Just like in regular PR, you may need to hit the mid-tier bloggers (who are read by the A-List bloggers) before you get covered by the big leagues. Don’t be fooled by looking only at Alexa data or Technorati rankings, see who links to them too.

Please see the entire “Blog Outreach: How to Pitch Bloggers” article at Emergence-Media Wiki (seldom used admittedly). Everyone is encouraged to contribute ideas appropriately.

Not sure how well this whole wiki thing will work out, but it’s an experiment I’m trying out.