Chris Clarke of The Blog Herald has an outstanding and informative post in regard to reaching out to bloggers and the right and wrong ways to do so. I totally agree that as a blogger – I have two blogs at Allbusiness.com – Professional PR and the Must Read Business blogs, that one of the things traditional PR folks or for that matter many of these so called "virtual PR experts" don’t get is that you simply can’t approach a blogger and just assume if you keep posting they will pay attention in the comment section, or that you have any right to try to pin down if they’re going to cover you or not.
On my Must Read Business books blog I recently got several comments in one week that were touting a particularly mediocre book and they were all posted by someone named Joe Greene. However when I responded to Joe Green and asked him for more information or if I could interview him further about the book – surprise – no response!
Bloggers are not stupid and there is a giant learning curve in PR that is going on in regard to clients and what they are promising clients they will do as far as getting clients coverage on blogs. If you have anyone that guarantees you coverage on a blog – think twice before inking a deal with them. The reason? Unless they’re guaranteeing you coverage on a blog they themselves are writing, then there is no guarantee.
On the up side bloggers do respond to well-crafted, non-irritating, authentic queries that fit with their readership coverage and they might consider covering you if you take it one blog at a time and meet their honesty with genuine honesty as well.
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So a couple of days ago, this guy sends me an email about reviewing his new excel related product (my blog discusses MS Excel among other things).
I replied – “great, no problem, I just need a couple of sentences from you about the uniqueness of the product” (it was not obviously unique).
And then…
Silence
Whats up with that?
Hi Yoav,
On the good side it means your blog is being read! And you’re doing a great job. On the down side it means the guy could not come up with something unique.:>)
Nettie