Building Blogger Relationships: MarketingProfs Webinar

MarketingProfs produced a great online seminar today titled, Social Media 2.0: Building a Blogger Relations Program. Josh Hallet, social media consultant and voice of HyKu blog, delivered a lively and info-packed presentation.  He provided plenty of from-the-trenches insights and tips useful for small business owners and marketers trying to reach out to business blogs and business bloggers.  Well okay, for businesses of all sizes really.  This approach really is the way to go for small business to business companies on small budgets, a.k.a., public relations 2.0.

Josh provided a tight overview of the basics that apply during business blogger interactions when you’re interested in getting help from an editor, journalist, blogger or industry analyst.  He also offered smart suggestions for those of us working to help companies boost their online public relations such as how to develop meaningful (fruitful) relationships with bloggers in your industry. 

Some of my favorite recommendations for blogger relationship building from Josh are:

• Become familiar with the blogger’s viewpoint/interests. Review their latest writings. (Always a good reminder)
• Make sure that the information or content you are sharing with them is relevant to their topic/interest area(s).
• Do not place the blogger on your press release distribution list. (This is business blogging 101—but a good reinforcement nonetheless.)
• Create a personal contact that leaves the blogger with a unique impression of you/your client/your company.  (Hint: Do not send them a blanket email.)
• Share relevant content with the blogger that has nothing to do with your company.  Bloggers are busy people; you might see something first that they did not. Being helpful in this way pays off when you have something you’d like to have covered for your client/your company.  Josh believes that up to 90% of the time he is sharing non-company/client info with bloggers.
• Ask the blogger if and how they would like to receive content from your company.   RSS feeds or email, etc.
• Local news stories on their topic of interest, from your geographic area that a blogger might not otherwise find, fall under the heading of topical, relevant content you might share with him or her.

Here is one personal recommendation I will add from my own experience (shameless self promotion). 
Often bloggers will tell you on their sites how to contact them (always review the ‘About Me’ section).  For example, at Gizmodo, the Gadget blog, we learned for a client of ours that the bloggers preferred, at that time (July 2006) to receive an email first. By sending the email first, and pointing the blogger to our client’s web site, he learned a bit about the product.  Here is the write-up our client received on Gizmodo.

Nice job MarketingProfs and Josh Hallet!  MarketingProfs offered the first webinar yesterday, titled Social Media 1.0: What B2B Marketers Need to Know About Video, Widgets, Blogs and More. here is link. (These are Premium membership offerings.)

Any one else have blogger relationship building suggestions, experiences to share?