Saturday’s Type A Mom session about bloggers and companies drew a large crowd. Everyone was curious to see, from a PR perspective, what agencies and brands look for when selecting bloggers for programs.
Much of the discussion, moderated by Amy Lupold Bair, centered around numbers. David Griner told bloggers to make sure they’re familiar with how they are viewed on measurement sites such as Compete.com – and importantly, to let PR and marketers know when their own numbers from metrics tools like Google Analytics are vastly different.
It’s also a relatively new concept to PR people that bloggers want to know “What’s in it for me?” PR people continue to send press releases to bloggers without realizing they are not media outlets in the traditional sense. They only want to write about something if they’ve had a personal experience with it and can feel confident about providing an opinion; it’s not a platform to tell people that latest news from Brand X.
Although PR agencies do look at blog traffic, Heidi Bobier said she’s also looking at interaction by seeing how many comments blog posts have and what sort of reception previous reviews and giveaways have received.
Another point for bloggers to remember is context. If you write about coupons and I work with a retailer or discount provider, I know we have the same target audience. If you’re edgy, you may be a better fit for another client. It’s up to the PR person to make the best possible matches – and for the bloggers to contact them when they know they have a good match, too.
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