Are You Reaching Out to Bloggers?

In the old economy, if you wanted your product or business to get a lot of attention you might try to form relationships with the writer for the local or national paper, television station or magazine. These ‘media outlet’s’ dominated the communication between ‘big business’ and ‘consumer’.  With the decline of readership in newspapers and magazines and more people getting their news online, have things changed all that much or are they really the same?

With the advent of social media, it no longer was necessary for someone or a company to have lots of money to have a readership.  Now we have “Influencer Marketing“.  Influencers are people who exercise influence over a group of buyers. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association defines an influencer as ‘A person who has a greater than average reach or impact through word of mouth in a relevant marketplace”.

In the case of HOW you reach out to the “influencers” I’d say things are the same BUT its the “influencers” who have changed. Today getting the attention of a top industry blogger might do more for getting your product or business noticed than an interview by the local television station.

Let’s look at some quick tips for how to reach out to bloggers–espeically if you have NO idea how to get started.

First, do your homework.  Find out who the bloggers are in your industry and subscribe to their blogs.  Spend time reading what they write about and HOW they write about products.

So how do you find out who blogs about your industry? Check out these sites:

• Alltop – the Internet’s magazine rack.
• Google Blogsearch – search by topic.
• Twitter Search – find bloggers by what they tweet about.
• Postrank Topics – search by topic.

Next, its time to build a relationship.  In the Web 2.0 world that’s pretty easy.

1. Start by following them on Twitter. (Quick tip…to find out someone’s twitter name google ” ‘their name’ on twitter” and the first thing that will usually come up is that person’s Twitter link)
2. Listen to their tweets. ReTweet (RT) their message to your followers if you find the information valuable and useful.
3. Comment on their blog posts
4. Set up Google Alerts and comment on articles they write

Spending a few months ‘listening’ and responding to what they talk about will make it all that much easier when it comes time to send an email asking for help.  Don’t try to push your product or agenda on someone until you’ve done steps 1-4 a few times.

See its just like when you used to read articles in the local paper by the business writer and study their style before reaching out to them.  Same process different medium.

My Challenge for you…Can you add 2-3 hours per month to your marketing mix to start researching influential bloggers in your industry? If you spend 30 minutes today finding and subscribing to their blogs then next week you can spend 15 minutes reading their posts.  Week after that read for another 15 minutes.  In a month you should have a good handle on what type of style the blogger has and have the confidence to start conversations with them on Twitter or leave comments on their blog.

Good luck!