Blogger outreach: it's about engagement

I met with a client’s marketing team team last week to give them a presentation on why they should do a blogger outreach campaign to help launch a new product, and how I would recommend they do it. To my surprise, they seemed to buy it. By stating my surprise, I don’t mean that I don’t fully endorse blogger engagement as a marketing tactic. I do, with the right brand and with the right product or service to promote. No, it’s surprising because the company in question is huge and probably amongst the top 10 most recognisable brands in the world. And it’s the big cheeses that have usually proven most difficult to get onboard before: they tend to be fairly conservative; have complex, multi-tiered decision-making processes; and are very protective of their brands. So something that’s both new and gives away control tends to be rejected from the off.

The main reason for this shift lies with the growing prominence of bloggers. Blogging is hitting the mainstream: bloggers are reaching huge audiences, and are increasingly being viewed in the same vein as journalists, namely people that can help spread your story. However I think the clincher in the approach I recommend lies in how bloggers are different from journalists, and how their stories can actually be made more interesting by asking them to engage rather than just write.

Bloggers don’t have editors, they’ll usually only write about what they really want to write about, and they don’t have deadlines, which means you don’t need to approach them in the same way in which you’d approach journalists. Sure, the old PR approach is required: providing high-quality and high-relevance material; but bloggers have more time and more space to write on a single topic or theme if it’s caught their fancy, while journalists follow editorial plans and deadlines set by editors. So rather than sell a great story for a single article you can actually say to a blogger: try my product and write about it if you fancy it, and assuming you’ve got faith in it and it really is a good product, you’ve got impartial users testing it and spreading a positive message, which in an age in where consumers are trusting “people like me” far more than traditional media or PR, can prove invaluable.

There should also be a hook, however. It’s not as simple as “try it and write, please”. The hook can either be an incentive e.g. one winner gets to keep the product or get a discount on the service? I don’t really like this approach to be honest. Although I think it can be done with total honesty and transparency, I prefer an approach where you make the blogger’s engagement with the product/service so interesting, funny or challenging, that they really want to do it. To pull this off, you need to do plenty of research to: 1) define the right type of engagement e.g. set a challenge, compare service A to mainstream services B and C, find the whackiest use for Product A; and 2) find bloggers that are really interested in your area and are capable of the right sort of engagement.

What’s more, the engagement approach does not just make for a better story: it also minimises risk. Bloggers get in a huff when they receive material from PR professionals that they really do not want. But whereas with a journalist, a PR professional only risks his/her pitch being binned and in the worst case being placed on a block-sender list, bloggers control their own space and can publish whatever they want. Including the atrocious pitch they really did not want. Every few months the blogosphere is buzzing with conversations on how PR is dead and PR professionals are worthless, sometimes starting off from a post where a PR pitch has been cut and pasted, sender and all. This then does the rounds and is seen by up to millions of people within days. Humiliating to say the least, for agency as well as consultant in question.

Instead, by focusing on engagement, you ensure that you’re actually seeking bloggers’ expertise rather than just their fanbase, which makes for a better story AND helps to ensure that you do not incur their wrath in case that they’re not interested, because you’ve shown them the respect they deserve.

UPDATE: came across this entry from B.L. Ochman’s what’s next blog – a couple of examples highlighting that dumb PR pitches are both a waste of time and a liability.