After spending a day at the wonderful Blog Potomac a few weeks back, we started thinking about how to best reach out to bloggers on behalf of clients.

Here’s the thing:  It’s not terribly hard.  If you do good research, read up on the blogs you’d like to pitch, and make sure you’re a good fit, you should have some success in collaborating with bloggers for PR.

Here’s the other thing:  It’s kind of hard.  You have to be willing to give up control of your information or product, and you have to make yourself very transparent about what you want.

But the payoffs can be great.  If you want exposure in a targeted community of people, and you want to participate within that community, blogger outreach can really help.

For instance, we partner with small businesses.  There are tons of opportunities for our clients to get involved in the literally thousands of conversations happening all the time in the blogosphere.  The scale is just right, and the personal level of attention fits, as well.  Small or large, there’s a way for everyone to participate.

After initiating our own blogger outreach efforts, I created this list of dos and don’ts.  Super helpful was reading a couple of different posts at Krishna De’s Biz Growth News, as well as reading the excellent Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics from Kaitlin Wilkins at Ogilvy PR.

Here’s the list below.  I hope you find something helpful here.  Feel free to share this- just please link back to us so we can see where the conversation goes.

Blogger Outreach:  A Primer

Bloggers are people who publish.  If the man-on-the-street had editorial control over what showed up on the news, it would resemble a blog.  For marketing, think of blogs as digital, scalable word-of-mouth.

In a PR sense, many of the same rules apply to blogger outreach that apply to distributing a press release.  You must be courteous, establish a relationship, and understand the blog you’d like to connect to.

But there are significant changes, too.  Bloggers are researchers, stringers, and editors-in-chief.  They make the decisions, including the decision to write about you in an unfavorable way, if they so choose.  New rules exist, and you must understand them before using blogs as media sources for marketing.

What follows is a Do and Don’t list for blogger outreach:

Do

-Do get to know your blogger.  This is a lot easier than it was traditionally, as most (good) blogs are highly, or at least somewhat, personal.

-Do read your blogger’s posts.  It’s the best way to get to know your blogger (see above).

-Do respect a blogger’s posted directions for PR.  Contact them in whatever way they prefer.

-Do acknowledge the blogger’s influence and expertise.  You want to give them information for exactly this reason.  Saying so is polite and helpful.

-Do be transparent.  Tell bloggers exactly who you are, who your work for, who you are representing, and the purpose for which you’ve contacted them.

-Do encourage the blogger to be transparent about you, and their relationship with you.

-Do be clear about why you think they might be interested in the information or product that you’re presenting.

-Do relinquish control of your information from the beginning (yes, even if the blogger decides they hate the product).

-Do leave bloggers alone if they don’t respond or don’t want to participate.

Don’t

-Don’t feel as though you’re giving a blogger a gift.  There’s plenty to write about without you.  You’re asking for a favor.  Sure, it’s something you believe would help the blogger.  Still, be personable.

-Don’t pitch a blogger that’s not the right fit.  You have to be able to provide value to their audience, so make sure that that’s your audience, too.

-Don’t forget who you’ve pitched- make yourself available to bloggers that respond.  Make sure there is contact information in your correspondence.

-Don’t pretend to have read a blog that you haven’t read.  Be upfront, clear, and honest about it.

-Don’t pitch bloggers if you are going to try to control what you’d like them to say about your information.   Bloggers have a responsibility to their readers, and not to you.

-Don’t make bloggers search for research material about your information.  Try to provide everything they need in the first email without making them have to click through to somewhere else.