Valley PR Blog

How to pitch bloggers

By Linda VandeVrede on May 14th, 2009 In Advice, Best Practices

Agency people seem to be the biggest culprits of blog pitching mistakes.   The Valley PR Bloggers have received a number of irrelevant emails in the last few weeks, so in the interest of helping you succeed here and elsewhere:

1.   Ask first, before adding us to your email blasts about your latest product or service.  Please.

2.  Read your target blog for several weeks to get an idea of what topics are the most germane, particularly if the blog involves multiple writers, like www.valleyprblog.com

3.   Build your own target list of bloggers name by name, instead of relying so heavily on master lists purchased elsewhere.   Create electronic summaries for each blogger so you can note important details, such as what they blog about, where they’re from, what their pet peeves are, and how they prefer to be contacted (email, twitter, Facebook, etc). 

4.   Customize your pitches to the blogger, and explain up front why you think he or she would be interested in what you have to say.    “I noticed that you have covered new tech companies in Phoenix, and thought you might be interested in how my client is successfully using Facebook to launch new products to baby boomers.”

5.   Keep the pitch query short – you don’t need to throw all the detail in one email.   If the blogger is interested, he or she will get back to you and ask for more information.  

6.  If you have a short list of favorite bloggers, make an effort to attend functions where they post they are going to be, so you can meet them in person.  

7.   Stay in tune with how social media and communications are evolving.  What you know today may change tomorrow or even tonight.  NPR had a program on this week that focused on how voicemail is being used less and less, and one of the speakers wanted to do away with it entirely.    Part of the ever-expanding responsibilities of public relations now is dedicating a significant portion of each day surverying and analyzing what’s being said and in what venue.

We know – it’s tough out there

The challenge is how to manage all this while handling multiple clients who are trying to reach multiple communication channels.  We get it.   If you do the butt-busting work up front to research, qualify and maintain your lists, you’ll get better results than if you send out email blasts blindly.   PR was difficult enough when the internet was in its infancy; with the one-on-one nature of social media, it has become even more time-consuming.   Relationship-building takes time.   The more clients you have, the more time you’ll be spending developing good contact lists and personalizing your communications.  

Got more tips?

Some of you, I’ll bet, have devised really clever ways to stay on top of all this, levering social media tools that help track tweets, blogs and other information.   If you have any practical suggestions to pass onto agency folks to help them keep their sanity, please comment.  As an independent practitioner, the most number of tech clients I ever had at one time without any extra help was six, and I just about tore my hair out keeping everything straight.    I did build my lists painstakingly, however, to avoid as much as possible irritating the bloggers and other media.  And my pitches were personal.  

Share This

Hide Sites

Want Your Picture Icon? Go to gravatar.com and set a picture up to your email address for free. It also works on thousands of other websites, too!