How I "pitch" Bloggers

I occasionally "pitch" bloggers for clients – it's becoming more and more common.

The general technique is to find bloggers that write for the target audience, or sometimes bloggers who are read by bloggers who are read by your target audience (since most bloggers read lots of other bloggers).

The blog search engines are very helpful for this - Technorati.com is certainly one of the best and where I always start.

Once you've found a few bloggers you can "pitch" them. Never use the word "pitch" - bloggers hate it, and expect them to blog anything and everything about the interaction. Nothing is "off the record!"

Unlike pitching traditional media, when pitching social media the keyword is "social." Read their blogs first - maybe even leave comments where appropriate. Eventually send a personalized email or otherwise contact them. If it's obvious you've been reading them it's ideal. You might offer a free trial, information on the service and why you think they might be interested, etc.

You can't expect or predict any behavior, but some of them will blog about their interaction and hopefully positively. You can expect bloggers to keep NO secrets!

Bloggers read their email - sometimes they literally cannot respond to all of it due to volume, but they read it. I'll usually pitch a blogger twice, with maybe a couple of weeks between pitches, before giving up. There are plenty of others out there.

Actually I wouldn't call this pitching! It's important to offer them something of value - which might be information, a free sample, trial service, promo copy of a book. Hopefully they'll like what you send and blog positively about it.  Expect them to be totally honest. Expect total transparency.

For maximum effectiveness it helps if you are one of them and like what you're pitching! I can't pitch anything I don't believe in very well, and in fact I won't try! Hmmm, maybe that's why I'm effective?

If it's crap, or you otherwise don't like it, well, why are you wasting your time with it? :)

Comments

[John Cass]

good post, great example of how to use PR in the field of blogging.