Paul Dyer wrote, “You PITCH Media. You ALERT Bloggers,” on a very well thought out post (his site now appears defunct).
Succinct. Useful. This struck me as sage advice.
One successful PR professional, who’s name will remain unmentioned in this post, had conducted a very successful PR campaign, of which a substantial portion of that success was derived from working with what he calls, “Mom Bloggers” and “Family Bloggers.”
PR people often note there’s a difference in pitching traditional media versus pitching bloggers. How is it different from a traditional pitch?
The answer struck me as consistent with Dyer’s assessment and I thought worth sharing.
“We don’t call it pitching bloggers; we call it blogger outreach. So, we don’t “pitch” bloggers. We reach out and share information with them. Unlike journalists, most bloggers don’t have to write stories every day, week or month. So, we need to engage them in a conversation, instead of pitching them a story on deadline.”
Now, the lines are starting to blur. For example, 35% of technology journalists maintain their own blog.
So, we focus on the person, not the platform (online media vs. blog) that they are using. We read previous posts and get a sense of their interests and their point of view. And if a blogger is selling advertising on his or her blog, then we recognize that they are blogging for their audience, not just for their friends and family.”
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Photo Credit: Flickr, Dennis Skley (CC BY-ND 2.0)
