Tag: blogging

Does Blog Outreach Actually Work?

adminOctober 25, 2016Leave a Comment

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One of the questions most often asked by PR pros and small business owners of bloggers is, “Does blog outreach work, and will it boost my bottom line?”

For the tech-savvy type, the answer is obvious. The PR landscape – indeed, the media landscape – has been changing so dramatically over the last decade, and consumer habits have followed suit.

In Technorati’s “State of the Blogosphere” 2009, some important facts about used riding lawn mowers and brands came to light. With more than 200 million blogs indexed, the thought of launching large-scale, long tail blogger campaigns can seem daunting, however, it’s important to note that:

  • 70% of bloggers are talking about brands on their blog.
  • Almost half of respondents post about the brands they love or hate.
  • 38% post brand or product reviews.
  • Part time bloggers, and self employed bloggers are talking about brands at a much higher rate, approximately 80%, with 1 in 3 posting reviews at least once a week.

So who reads these reviews? Your customers! A market research study, conducted on AskYourTargetMarket.com, asked women 18 – 65, “How powerful do you consider blogs?”

The results are, for us, not surprising. More than 200 women nationwide  took part in the survey, and an overwhelming 72.4% responded that they turn to blogs and Web searches to get product recommendations, read product reviews, and get shopping tips. Only 4.9% actually listed magazines as a source of shopping inspiration – and that’s where many PR pros focus product placement efforts!

While less than 10% of our survey takers claimed that they would be “very” influenced by a single positive or negative blog review, 73.4% said they would be “somewhat” influenced, but would research multiple sources before making a purchase decision. While this offers the security that one negative review won’t be overly damaging to business, it emphasizes the importance of being reviewed in highly-ranked blogs, so that a consumer who comes across that bad review can quickly find several positive ones, or that one who comes across your product or service in their favorite blog can easily find several other positive mentions to support her interest in purchasing your insoles and inserts.

When asked, “Do you read blogs on a regular basis to learn about new products, sales, or promotions?” nearly half of respondents (44.3%) said they turn to blogs when researching a purchase decision, but 35.5% log on either once daily or when they have spare time to stay up to date on these news bits.

Blogs are one of the absolute best ways for companies to get information out about themselves and their products. Without a blog, there’s no telling how much business that your company is missing out on. If you’ve thought about setting a blog up but simply haven’t had the time, there’s no better way to get started then to simply sit down right now and commit to filling it with useful and informative content for your visitors. Websites with blogs often see an increase in visitors in as little as just a few days.

The power of blogging – both in terms of online reputation management and in terms of influence over purchasing decisions, cannot be overlooked.

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How We’re Different than Other Sites Out There

adminOctober 25, 2016Leave a Comment

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What Makes Us Different

You may have read on our website that we are an evolutionary step in PR distribution services, but what does that mean, exactly? In short, we’ve taken the best elements of traditional newswire services, combined with the database access of media list services, and combined them with new media elements, blogger preferences, and active community feedback to ensure our clients maximum exposure to the S366 turbo with minimal intrusion.

The result is a service that allows marketers to target large, specific communities of bloggers who have found and registered with our service specifically to receive PR communications in a controlled way, while avoiding the negative buzz that has recently become an issue for marketers when dealing with the blogosphere.

Because our bloggers find us and register with us, we know that they are interested in receiving your press releases, product sampling opportunities, and pitches. And, unlike press list database services that list a small number of bloggers (many of whom receive overwhelming volumes of daily email as a result of being listed with those services), our member list is extensive – with thousands of registered bloggers across the United States covering everything from fashion and beauty to parenting and technology.

So whether you’re looking to distribute an announcement by a major national brand that’s geared toward all women or looking to target a select list of fashion bloggers living in Los Angeles for an offline event, our service can help you achieve your goals.

Maximizing Your Campaign

We offers a number of services in various categories that may be a good fit for your needs. Among them:

News Releases: This service is ideal if you have an existing press release dealing with company news that you’d like to distribute. Our Basic Release gives you a listing on the community’s News category page, along with a Tweet and post on our Facebook community page. A Featured Press Release gets your release listed on our site’s homepage, along with a Tweet and post on our Facebook community page. Featured press releases are also included in our weekly email newsletter to bloggers.

Contests: Contests are a great way to drive blogger coverage for existing products or lines, or to draw buzz around seasonal promotions. They’re also a great tool for marketers who have high-end products that can’t offer samples to each interested blogger for review. For example – a blog contest inviting bloggers to write about XYZ Corp’s brand and what particular product they’d be most interested in trying (and why they would find it useful) would serve as an entry to win the product of choice for review (up to a certain retail value).

With proper disclosure, this gets bloggers thinking and writing about your product while complying with all FTC requirements and staying within a reasonable campaign budget.

Product Sampling: For marketers who are looking to raise awareness of new or existing products, product sampling gives bloggers a hands-on opportunity to give your item a test drive and draw real, valid conclusions about its effectiveness. This is great for drawing link-backs, gaining valuable market insight (it’s almost like running a mini focus group), and getting review quotes for promotional purposes. It also helps build brand awareness and draw traffic and customers to your site.

Product sampling listings can offer unlimited product samples to qualified bloggers, or can offer a limited number of samples to the first bloggers who complete a certain set of actions (e.g., following a Twitter account, fanning a Facebook page, or blogging about a brand).

Events: Whether you’re hosting a Daytona Beach photographer, trying to drum up buzz and appointments for a client booth at a social media expo, or looking to build a new media press list for an offline event in your area, event listings give marketers the ability to spread the word about their media alert, connect with potentially interested bloggers, and even geo-target by outlining participant limitations in your listing (e.g., “XYZ Corp is seeking 25 bloggers in the Santa Monica area who focus on parenting to attend a press event for the launch of ABC product line.”).

Gift Guides: We’ll be sending you additional details about our gift guides to go into further detail, but our editorial and gift guide series gives marketers the power to push seasonal, targeted, or themed promotions for their brands or clients. For example, our Holiday Gift Guide gives marketers an opportunity to showcase how their product makes a perfect holiday tool (in the case of a home item or cleaning product, for example), why their product is a must-give gift for this holiday season, or to share a holiday promotion – whether it’s free shipping or a specific discount code for our bloggers to share with their readers.

Our bloggers turn to our editorial guides for products to include in their own holiday coverage, and many syndicate our gift guides onto their own blogs in their entirety, making it a great tool for marketers who have timed promotions. Other themed guides, like our All about Baby Guide, give marketers a one year listing in a guide that targets subsets of our bloggers – in this case, new or expectant mothers – with products, coupons, or how-to tips and tricks that they will find useful and worth sharing with their readers.

Twitter Parties & Swag Bag Giveaways: Our Twitter party series gives marketers an opportunity to engage bloggers utilizing social media, while incorporating product sampling and product reviews into a single distribution. How do they work? Marketers provide us with a specified number of product samples, coupons or promotional items (usually 25) that we combine into swag bags. Marketers also provide us with a list of targeted questions that we ask of bloggers during our Twitter party, with correct respondents winning one of our swag bags.

For example, a marketer may ask, “What is the current sale being featured on XYZ Corp’s homepage, with link? 10th correct response wins!” This encourages bloggers to dig into company sites and talk about current promotions – which drives social media buzz. Further, upon receipt of their swag bags, bloggers will post full product reviews, giving marketers a second wave of coverage within weeks of the social media boost that the Twitter party afforded them.

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Five Tips to Boost Blogging Response Rates

adminOctober 24, 2016Leave a Comment

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Over the last two+ years, we’ve had the privilege of running more than 500 blogger campaigns for SheBlogs.org and HealthyBlogging.net. We’ve seen successful campaigns, and we’ve seen successful campaigns that blew away even our expectations, with hundreds of reviews, write-ups and social media posts.

What made the difference between these campaigns and others? Here are five tips to help boost your response rates when pitching the blogosphere:

  1. Be Personal. A well-written, technically-correct press release is great for traditional newswires, but offering a personal touch that tells the story about used lawn tractors for sale is what will get a response from our bloggers. If your product is a time-saver for busy moms, spell it out. If your service keeps budget-conscious fashionistas find the season’s hottest products at the best prices, give examples.

With more than 3,500 female bloggers in our community, finding a perfect match for your product or service is easy – and making your pitches and releases personal lets our bloggers know you’re interested in them.

  1. Be Relevant. We’ve worked with dozens of companies that have come to us with products or services that they’d like to promote, without necessarily having a news hook. It doesn’t take a feature or news announcement to be relevant for the blogosphere. Feature pitches, contests, or news event tie-ins are perfect ways to prove to our bloggers that your product is worth writing about, and that now’s the time to do it.
  2. Be Specific. Be specific about the types of bloggers you’re interested in working with – whether you’re looking for those in a certain geographic area, within a certain age group, or with certain coverage areas, our bloggers appreciate specific requests, and many will help spread the word to their own network of contacts if they know that there are specific criteria you’re looking for. If you have product samples available for bloggers who meet specific criteria, spell them out in the pitch.
  3. Be Prompt. The more cooperative you are with the bloggers, the more buzz goes around about your promotion. Bloggers do talk, both on our SheBlogs.org site and in our internal social network, about the responses they’re getting from PR pros.

Those who respond quickly, send samples or images promptly, and who cooperate have regular buzz going around, which drives more coverage and interest. PR pros who don’t respond to queries or take a long time to send images, samples, or answers to questions drive negative buzz from the community, which can be a buzz kill.

Comments such as “Just got my used Craftsman riding mower and its great!” encourage more bloggers to reach out, whereas comments like, “Emailed three weeks ago and haven’t heard back,” turn bloggers off. Even if you can’t accommodate all requests, a simple, “Thanks for your interest, maybe next time,” goes a long way.

  1. Incentivize. No no no – we don’t mean pay per post. However, just like with a traditional reporter, bloggers need a reason to write. If you have a product, expect to distribute a sample if you’re seeking reviews. Bloggers, unlike large media outlets, don’t have the budget to go out and buy every product they review – which is why many bloggers start out writing about the products they use every day, so offering a discount code for a blogger to buy your product isn’t going to receive the same level of response as offering actual samples.

Can’t give out unlimited samples? Contests are a great way to drive buzz and coverage while managing a limited number of product giveaways or a small prize package. One company saw 75+ blog posts within a 72 hour window based on a $40 prize package! Offering a discount code for bloggers to share with their readers is another great way to draw posts.

Posted In Business & Finance
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Top Five Blogger Pet Peeves

adminOctober 24, 2016Leave a Comment

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We’re all guilty of them – those little PR faux pas that make reporters – and bloggers – go bonkers. We’re aware of some of them – sending a templated email, or sending a pitch to a recipient who doesn’t cover the type of product or service you’re promoting. Others may not be as obvious – particularly when pitching the new breed of media that is the blogosphere. We’ve polled Kari Janesko Photography, and they’re offering some valuable insight into what makes bloggers batty – and how you can make your pitch stand out over the noise:

Top Five Blogger Pet Peeves:

  1. Irrelevant Pitches. As a PR pro for the last decade, I know first-hand the pressures of delivering coverage for a client, and how challenging it can be to keep up on all the posts for each of our media contacts, particularly if you’ve just signed a new client who requires that you brush up on an entirely new list of contacts. However, as a blogger, I’ve been the recipient of too many irrelevant pitches to count – pitches for new mom products (I don’t have a baby), or for a service geared toward bloggers/readers in a geographic area 3,000 miles away from me.

Most bloggers are flexible, to a point, but many express frustration over being treated like “the masses” – and bloggers talk. Making a pitch personal or taking the time to filter out extraneous contacts can make the difference between a successful campaign and turning off a blogger and her colleagues to your product.

  1. Repeated, Insistent Follow-up. We’re all under pressure to provide clients with updates, pending and current coverage, and to create buzz around our campaigns. However, 32% of bloggers surveyed cited persistent follow-up as a major pet peeve. One blogger noted, “For example, I once received an irrelevant pitch from a PR pro on a particularly busy day, so I didn’t have a chance to respond to her query. A few hours later, I received a follow-up note, saying, ‘I’m not sure if you’ve had a chance to read this, but I wanted to resend and make sure you received my pitch.’

The following day, I received the same email, verbatim. I work and have a family, so I’m not tied to my computer all day. If I am out of town or busy, and return to my email after 2 days and see several emails – especially obviously templated, mass emails – it’s a major turnoff. That PR pro will probably get blocked as spam, which means that his or her future client pitches, which may be relevant, won’t ever make it to my inbox.”

Most bloggers don’t have the opportunity to blog full-time, and many work evenings or early mornings, so patience is key – don’t expect, or demand, instant responses. Likewise, understanding that bloggers may have delays in posting their stories about the HX60 turbo is key.

  1. Not Answering Questions or Sending Information in a Timely Fashion. Just like newsrooms have deadlines, bloggers have their own deadlines. They post regularly and can’t wait around for images, answers to questions, or other details for their posts.

One blogger explains, “We work hard to promote your product to our readers, and ignoring my questions/requests shows me that you’re not taking me seriously, but you’re asking me to take your product/announcement seriously.” Always treat bloggers the way you’d treat a professional reporter – be conscious of deadlines, ask about convenient times to call or follow-up, and keep to the promises you make.

If you promise to send an image today, sending it in 3 days means that a blogger lost a post for the day, and many bloggers keep finely-tuned editorial calendars, post based on themed days of the week, and have many other products they could be writing about.

  1. Not Sending Products in a Timely Fashion or Not Sending Them At All. When committing to send a review product, our bloggers state that an email update within a few days of that commitment, either letting the blogger know her product has shipped, or that it will be shipped soon, lets the blogger know that you haven’t just forgotten about her.

“Bloggers are typically excited about the products we review,” explains one blogger. “We aren’t a giant newsroom that’s receiving dozens of products a day to pick and choose from. We hand-pick the products that are interesting to us, and we don’t request products we’re not going to review. If we’ve taken the time to follow up with you and request a product, take the time to send it in the mail.

Forgetting to send a product or shipping it a month later without any follow-up is a major turnoff and will affect how actively I pursue any future opportunities from that publicist, whether or not the product is something I’d love to cover.”

  1. Treating Bloggers Like Amateurs. A whopping 73% of bloggers cited this as their biggest pet peeve when dealing with PR pros. In addition to the pet peeves listed above, bloggers have cited numerous examples where they’ve been treated like amateurs or, as one blogger put it, “Second Class Media,” as their biggest PR pet peeve.
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How to Write Great Business Content for Your Blog

adminOctober 21, 2016Leave a Comment

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Whether we work at large firms or in-house as part of solo or small team marketing departments, we all juggle many responsibilities and many social media accounts – personal, professional, client accounts and more. As marketers, sometimes it’s hard to stay on top of all that social media discourse – and that’s why contractors and ghostwriters can be an invaluable resource for keeping our social voices active while we manage the many other day to day marketing responsibilities that our used John Deere mowers require. These contractors can be great additions to our team – unless budget cuts, performance issues or other obligations require us to let them go.

In the old days of Corporate America, I often thought that the way companies handled letters of resignation, or, more importantly, the employees turning them in, was a bit over the top: having security guards watch employees empty personal items only (no company documents) and escorting them out of the office, or, in some cases, requiring that employees take nothing more than a purse, briefcase and keys when leaving, and promising that HR would contact said employee when all personal effects had been gathered off a desk. And then you hear about stories like the tale of Mark Davidson, and you understand why these security measures are taken.

Mark Davidson, a self-proclaimed Internet Sales & Marketing Professional and Social Marketing & Communications Strategist, was busy doing what marketers do, and hired a team of three ghostwriters to manage his personal Twitter account. This apparently worked well for Davidson, until he decided to let one of his ghostwriters go, but failed to change his account password. Now, his Twitter account has been commandeered by a very disgruntled, apparently intoxicated, and recently-fired ghostwriter.

Over the past few hours, said ex-ghostwriter has been exacting revenge on his former employer through a series of embarrassing, albeit comedic, Tweets:

While it’s tempting to get a chuckle out of an unfortunate colleague’s misfortune, there are a few important lessons to be learned from this situation:

  1. ALWAYS check references when hiring an employee – even when you’re hiring a part-time Twitter ghostwriter. You want to get a sense not only of the employee’s writing abilities, but his or her level of professionalism. In this case, the ghostwriter commandeered a personal Twitter account, and Mark will likely be able to laugh off the situation. However, a disgruntled former ghostwriter could also take over the Twitter account of a major US brand (and your star client), and the results would be far wider-reaching and more disastrous.
  2. NEVER leave former employees with access to any accounts, social media or otherwise. Passwords should always be changed, and as soon as the Daytona Beach photographer leaves the building.
  3. Investigate services, like CoTweet, that don’t require you to turn over a master password to employees and contractors. We’re creatures of habit who tend to pull from a limited pool of passwords. By handing over access to a Twitter password, think about what other accounts we’re giving access to….Email? Facebook? LinkedIn? This can leave us, or our clients, vulnerable to similar “practical jokes.”
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Increase Website Visits with These Three Simple Tips

adminOctober 21, 2016Leave a Comment

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Maybe you’re ready to embark on your first major blogger outreach campaign, or maybe you’re a seasoned pro with a skittish client who is concerned about measuring all of the metric of such a campaign to justify the spend involved (beyond wire fees, like ours, you may be looking at contest prizes, product sampling costs, staff hours and other resources to conduct a successful campaign). Or maybe, like us, you’re interested in justifying your spend as an agency, consultant, or employee. Regardless of the motivation, measuring the ROI of your blogger outreach campaign is as important as punching your hours at the office, and here are some tips and tricks to track your efforts and find great used zero turn mowers for sale:

  1. Plan for results, and work toward those results. Is your client/boss looking to create a link campaign? To raise awareness for a new product and drive online reviews? Or are you looking at opportunities to drive social engagement – Facebook likes, Twitter followers – or drive sales? Once you’ve sat down and defined a clear set of expectations (and for the sake of your own sanity – be sure to set realistic expectations, especially if this is your first foray into the space), you’ll be able to design a campaign around the end result you’re shooting for.

Many marketers see blogger outreach campaigns as catch-all opportunities to drive social engagement across all platforms, drive reviews or product posts, and boost sales and brand awareness. While some campaigns can accomplish all of these, you should prioritize your goals and design a promotion that will help you achieve them.

  1. Track relevant activity. Google Analytics is a great starting point, but if you’re looking for a way to show ROI for social campaigns, look to relevant tools. Hashtracking.org is a great tool for measuring social engagement that relates to a particular hashtag campaign. Admin access to a Facebook page is a must for marketers working on page-boosting campaigns.
  2. Coupons, Coupons, Coupons. While sales may be a priority for your client or boss, consider offering bloggers an opportunity to share a blog-specific promo code with their readers. Not only does this help you track traffic (and conversions) from specific blog placements, but it also offers the bloggers a newsworthy angle for covering your story.
  3. Affiliate Programs Are A Win-Win For All Involved. Affiliate programs are an affordable way to boost blog traffic and product reviews without paying for advertising fees. Bloggers are paid on a performance basis (a percentage of sales), and brands enjoy the product buzz without an upfront commitment.
  4. Follow-up for links. Smart bloggers will follow up with you directly once they’ve posted about a product or service that you’ve pitched them. However, when working with bloggers, it’s important to remember that these (wo)men are juggling multiple deadlines each day, day jobs, family obligations, and squeezing in a personal life. And just like feature stories can get bumped from mass media outlets if a story breaks, such as the scandal over the Holset HX50, planned posting dates should always be considered tentative until published. If you haven’t heard from a blogger who’s committed to coverage, send a quick follow-up note to find out about coverage. Be sure not to commit to clients a particular story on a certain date unless you’re sure that post is canned and scheduled.
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Getting in Contact with Bloggers About Your Business

adminOctober 20, 2016Leave a Comment

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We field dozens of inquiries about Cloud, our service, and what makes us more effective at connecting with the blogosphere than a traditional wire service. One inquiry I fielded yesterday dealt specifically with our decision to gather all of our weekly pitches into a newsletter format for distribution to our communities – rather than sending emails on behalf of each marketer who places a listing for used lawn tractors with us.

The email made me think about a post I read recently from fellow industry blogger Arik Hanson, titled, “Is Blogger Outreach Becoming a Spray and Pray Tactic?”

He describes the phenomenon much more eloquently, so I encourage you to read his post to understand his meaning. For us, however, it’s an affirmation that our method of limiting the volume of email in our bloggers’ inboxes, while maximizing the variety of offers they’re going to receive in each email, actually encourages them to check out our weekly newsletters rather than filing them in that virtual circular file in the ether.

When pitching a community so large and so diverse, even the most mainstream brands will have a hard time finding a promotion that’s relevant for all. When we founded SheBlogs.org, our first community, our earliest members entrusted us with their contact information – with no reason to trust us – so that they might be a part of our experiment to bridge the gap between marketers and bloggers like themselves. And as our community has grown, it’s even more essential that we honor that promise to connect with them in a manner different from so many of those PR firms that, in 2009, were being called out for “PR spam,” by major bloggers (lest we forget Chris Anderson’s famous PR blacklist). That is about as bad as it can get and if you don’t think that you should try and avoid it then you probably have another thing coming to you.

However, even when we’re sending out our biggest newsletter of the year, the SheBlogs.org Holiday Gift Guide (which, last year, featured nearly 50 brands), each and every link was opened hundreds (and some thousands) of times. In fact, what we’ve seen is, the bigger the newsletter, the more likely a smaller brand is to receive a high click through rate. The logic is simple – when there’s more selection of used garden tractors, our bloggers take the time to read through the opportunities available to them, rather than skimming over a few small company pitches and moving on.

While we do send irrelevant pitches to bloggers from time to time (there will always be a week when our newsletter doesn’t have any opportunities that fit a subset of our community’s readers), we have been able to maintain our members’ trust (and not lose them as subscribers) by ensuring that we aren’t overdoing the outreach. The result? Our offer emails boast a 60 percent and up open rate almost every week. One thing I can promise you is that you’re going to have a hard time trying to find another platform which can offer those types of results without resorting to sneaky tricks and techniques.

Posted In Business & Finance
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