Have You Added Bloggers to Your Media List?

Who are bloggers? They are people like you and me who have something to say.

Malcolm Gladwell would call them the “influencers.” They are the people who others listen to before making a decision. They are the trendsetters. They are ones who could persuade you to buy or not to buy an item. 

Whenever I make a substantial purchase or go to a new restaurant, I turn on my computer and go directly to Bing or Google and research the product or place by reading blog reviews. The blogs tell me what people are saying. There have been many times that I have not purchased a book or gone to an eatery as a result of reading a blog post.

If you have a product or service that you want to get exposure and awareness for, don’t forget to target the bloggers. Obviously, media people are still important, but bloggers are just as important to get your message out.

What can you do with a blog post?

Well for starters, you can send around your blog post as a link to your contacts. You can also microblog about your blog post and include a link to it on all of your social networking sites so that others can repost it. This will help to make it go viral. In addition, it will help you build awareness and visibility to your consumers.

How do you pitch bloggers? 

First, you need to develop a list of bloggers in your industry. Go to Technorati or any other blog aggregator and do a search. You will get a ton of blogs in your selected industry. Make sure you read the blogger’s posts before pitching. See what they write about and make sure they are a good fit.

Another way to find bloggers is to do a Bing, Google or Yahoo search.  Google recently changed the order of their search engine results. Now blogs are coming up first or near the top of any search.

Don’t send the bloggers a long-winded pitch letter. Instead, when you pitch bloggers, email, tweet or microblog them a 140-character message to entice them to use your product or service in their blog. 

Put yourself in their shoes when you write the pitch. What would get them to be interested in your product or service? They won’t be interested just because you think they should be. Bloggers, like media people, want to know why this product or service is important to them. How does this product or service make an impact on their lives?

 Follow-up

Don’t be surprised if you have to follow up multiple times via email, telephone, tweet, etc. before you get a response. That’s okay. Everyone is busy and you may not be the priority. However, if you are persistent, you will see results.