Do bloggers want to be treated like media?

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Permalink Reply by Dave Duarte on February 15, 2010 at 12:30pm

Hi Sandra,
Good question. From my perspective, there are few SA pro-bloggers, but those who do it professionally (have a look at the top 10 on Afrigator) would probably appreciate relevant press-releases.
For the rest, I think that bloggers like to share interesting and unique experiences, and want freebies. Seriously. While journalists can't accept freebies, bloggers generally love them. Another thing bloggers are keen for is interviews. I think.

The big difference is often that journalists are paid to write, and often tone down their opinion. Press releases are useful for journos because they state the facts and they save a lot of writing time. Bloggers publish because they care about their topic, and they generally want to share their opinions. Press releases may not be so useful for bloggers in long-form, because they need space to air their own opinions and differentiate the content in their own way. Bullet point press-releases with links might be more useful for bloggers.

If you can create opportunities for bloggers to gain media access to events, meet special people, try new products, or have memorable experiences, then the payoff will usually be a good number of Twitter/Facebook etc. status updates and hopefully a couple of blog-posts.

I think the ideal with blogger engagement strategy is to build an army of blogger-advocates. Give these bloggers special insight, help them form a closer connection with your client, and they will keep writing, publishing and discovering more advocates for you. Of course, the blogger needs to care about what the client does.

With regards to blogger lists. I think that Encyclomedia has one, but it would be a great asset to your firm to develop your own one... and treat it differently to the traditional media lists you have. Different blogs do different things - so if you have someone who wants to be interviewed, for example, contact Izimvo.com and you can be pretty sure you'll get interviewed.

I'd be interested to hear from more bloggers on this topic.

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Permalink Reply by Melissa Attree on February 15, 2010 at 12:44pm

From a DigiPR point of view I often engage with key bloggers / social media loudmouths.

I think key online people hold a degree of public influence so it makes sense to invite them to launches, send info or media packs etc.

As for a master media list....the online industry changes so quickly, so for me a 'list' is never the same, yes, you have certain key people who are consistently on a list but I think it's about keeping in touch with what's going on online, doing your homework and pitching appropriately.

Even more so it's about building relationships with people and understanding what they like, dislike, support and are interested in...that means a lot of listening and rapport building. So in my opinion to be successful and credible in an onlinePR capacity means that to a degree you need to be successful and credible in the relevant online spaces.....conversation :)

The online space is verrrry different to traditional media so you need to package and pitch accordingly....also some key online people may not actively blog but are perhaps influential on micro-blogging sites or other industry specific social networks or forums. Keep in mind the multimedia aspect also, so keep up with who us vlogging / podcasting / photo-blogging also - where relevant to your brands.

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Permalink Reply by Dave Duarte on February 15, 2010 at 12:50pm

Agree with you 100%, Mel.

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Permalink Reply by Mark Kaigwa on February 15, 2010 at 1:43pm

Excellent stuff, Dave and Melissa. Much appreciated insight. Agree with both of you, especially on the aspect of rapport building with the bloggers and webfluentials if you can call them that.

I especially like the highlight of there being both the bloggers and the influential microbloggers who can't be ignored. A Retweet from a high place can make quite a difference. So can a linkedin discussion in the right context.

Great question, great answers and great discussion. (Glad you asked it, Sandra)

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Permalink Reply by Sandra on February 15, 2010 at 2:08pm

Excellent, thanks everyone, you've answered my question. I've found bloggers to be really valuable from a pr perspective so will continue to engage. Thanks again, and thanks Dave for creating a universe where we can ask these questions.

I guess my next one would be on how information suppliers can help bloggers bridge the revenue generation gap!

Take care,
Sands

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Permalink Reply by Christopher Mills on February 16, 2010 at 1:00pm

If you find the solution to bridging that gap, you'll make a lot of people sm:)e!

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Permalink Reply by Christopher Mills on February 15, 2010 at 5:36pm

Difficult topic to just jump into; let me share some of my thoughts:

- I work with several PR companies, each of which represents several brands. These PR companies send me press releases under the agreement that if I want to blog about the topic at hand, then I may. There are several things that I put in the mix right before I receive the first release: 1) I demand that the PR company takes the time to familiarise themself with my blog, I don't want press releases around topics that are totally irrelevant, so it is up to them to decide which releases will fit in with my audience. 2) I make it clear that they understand that I am not being paid to do this and therefore they can't expect crazy turn around times and such. 3) I ask that my time can be compensated for, not in terms of cash, but if they're representing a big brand, then perhaps a little something - This is not all about self gain, it's more about being involved with the brand, I'll give an example: I deal with PUMA's PR company and on Friday I received a Valentines Gift from PUMA - A lovely bright red bag with a soccer ball, lanyard, water bottle and a few other little things. What this allows me to do is blog about and then link back to previous press releases I've done with PUMA, this creates a brand alignment and association and becomes less of a copy/paste exercise. 4) I explain that I don't want press releases that are sent to hundreds of people, the news needs to be fresh, unique and interesting - Any serious blogger will explain how duplicate content is damaging and this is what I explain to the PR companies.

Now, naturally I am talking about myself here, my blog receives 5,000 uniques a day and I've worked hard to build up a decent reputation, so I feel that I can call the shots a bit; not everyone will be able to do this, and obviously some bloggers will refuse to do it unless they're paid. With that in mind, creating a list of bloggers will be tricky, you'll have paid-for bloggers, free-bloggers, gift-bloggers and so the list goes on; bloggers will also change their minds quite quickly if they hear other bloggers are getting freebies or payment, which thus results in the list going through constant change.

I think another thing is that those people who work with bloggers, don't really want to share their connection. For example - I'm pretty sure PUMA's PR company is stoked to have me blogging about PUMA - that's a great deal of brand awareness creation at literally no cost - if that makes sense.

Ok, I best stop here, I could go on for hours on this topic, hope something I said adds value to this conversation :)

For discussion sakes, my blog address is imod.co.za

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Permalink Reply by Kojo Baffoe on February 15, 2010 at 10:32pm

Delayed response. Having been in print and now blogging, I think it is really up to the PR agency whether to engage with bloggers or not. I, for example, have people who will send me info or invite me to their events because, if I do write about it, will probably do so long before the print journos will. Interestingly enough, I have had people ask me, in some instances, to rather blog about something than write about it in the print media I freelance for.

And then what everyone else said.

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Permalink Reply by Dave Duarte on February 16, 2010 at 10:41am

I think the advantage of having stuff blogged vs printed is that it gets indexed by search engines and can continue adding value for years to come (long after the print edition has been used to wrap fish).

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Permalink Reply by Christopher Mills on February 16, 2010 at 12:59pm

Dave, you couldn't have put it better; once a website features some information, that information remains on the Internet for years and years, and never stops attracting traffic. I guess you could say that in the long run, you get much more bang for your buck.

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Permalink Reply by Robynn Burls on February 16, 2010 at 11:35am

Hi Sandra
I'm from Encyclomedia.co.za - the media database company that Dave mentioned earlier. To answer your question, we do have profiles for South African bloggers that are interested in receiving media releases or event invites.

Our experience with these bloggers is that they like to be in the know, as long as it is relevant to their audience. If they can be the first to tweet or blog about something, then you're adding value to their online profile and helping them to attract more followers/readers. But just like Mel, Dave and others have said here, the PR pitch to bloggers is often completely different to the approach you'd take with traditional media.

From what we've seen, Mel's suggestion is spot on: the best approach is to get involved with the conversation first - check out the blog, post some comments, get to know the main angles and topics, and then perhaps suggest a story angle that matches a previous post in some way.

As with any (media) relationship, you can get what you want, by giving others what they want first. I hope this helps.

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Permalink Reply by Christopher Mills on February 16, 2010 at 12:58pm

I have to agree,

Leaving some comments on popular threads, starting some discussions and so forth will paint a very clear picture of what angle could be used to approach the blogger and his/her audience.

There's definitely room for this.

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