Speak to me in my own language! Why winning over bloggers means doing your homework for PROs

The relationship between PROs and bloggers may not always be an easy one, but as it is such a useful partnership, it deserves to be worked at. Alex MacLaverty, technology managing director at PR consultancy Hotwire says: “Building up a good relationship with a blogger is often hugely advantageous, as it is with journalists, and requires the same degree of give and take.” Kim Hong, digital social media expert at PR firm Fleishman-Hillard has made great efforts to nurture associations with bloggers in the past few years, and says: “My relationships with bloggers have truly developed into friendships.” And it is the PROs who are friends with bloggers who are going to be the first to get their messages across.

In order for PROs to reach niche audiences through blogs, it is imperative to carry out research to ensure information is relevant, as well as interesting enough to gain the blogger’s attention. Hotwire’s MacLaverty says that, as with contacting a journalist, it is vital to offer pertinent content in the right format, and at the best time. Although she offers these words of warning: “The fact that bloggers report in real time requires a greater element of caution, particularly when sending news under embargo.” Get it wrong and bloggers are within their rights to flag the sender of poor information as a spammer, and may feature the item as another example of a “bad pitch from a PRO”. As bloggers also benefit by having great content sent to them, Fleishman-Hillard’s Hong suggests that it is in their interests to include a section on their blog outlining what exactly they want to receive from PROs along with contact information.

Bloggers and journalists have contrasting expectations of PROs, so there are some ways that they need to be approached differently. Bloggers write because they are passionate about a subject and PROs need to bear in mind that bloggers typically have full-time jobs and are writing in their free time. Hong points out that unlike journalists, they are not receiving payment in return for their posts so they do not need the hassle of PROs harassing them about deadlines and messaging points. She adds: “Journalists have received bad pitches for many years and have developed a tolerance for them, mainly because it’s simply part of the package.“ This is not to suggest that is acceptable to send journalists poor press releases, but if they are received by journalists they are likely to be ignored, rather than flagged up as a poor piece of PR work on a website.

In order to become a PRO that bloggers respect, rather than ridicule, PRmoment asked PR strategists for their advice about how to best use blogs:

Five top blogging tips
1. Be relevantPROs have to beware, as just with those traditional journalists out there, bloggers are busy people that don't want to be pitched useless content and irrelevant stories. There needs to be value in what you are offering to a blogger and treat their outlet, be it a blog, twitter feed or social network presence, with as much respect as the broadsheets.
James Poulter, digital strategist, Ogilvy PR London

2. Avoid tetchy bloggersAs with journalists, bloggers also have the odd spiky character and so you need to avoid those that you think may give you a rather good beating if you present them with a story that is not relevant.
Andy Barr, co-founder, 10 Yetis

3. Prepare to micro-blogThe next thing to hit blogging could well be multimedia microblogging via a service like 12seconds. Driven by self-publishing, managing online reputations using social media and SEO techniques is set to become a major part of a PRO’s role over the next couple of years.
Paul Sutton, digital media director, Cirkle

4. Do it yourselfThere can be no better experience of working with bloggers than blogging yourself, just as some of the best PRs are former journalists. But then I would say that, I’m a blogger and ex-journalist.
Stephen Waddington, managing director, Speed

5. Link upReciprocal links to a company's website from an external company blog add a lot to the SEO rankings of the websites concerned. For this reason it's better to have a company blog on a separate url such as wordpress or blogger.com. Many companies miss this simple trick and host blogs on their own internal websites.
Jeremy Walters, independent PR consultant