Pitching Bloggers The Right Way

Raul PachecoChief Content Creator, Hummingbird604.com

http://hummingbird604.comhttp://www.facebook.com/hummingbird604Http://www.twitter.com/hummingbird604

http://gplus.to/hummingbird604comraul@hummingbird604.com

SFU PR ProgramMay 3rd, 2012

Hashtag: #hb604sfu

Credit: Rob Cottingham (Social Signal, Noise To Signal)

My background

By day I'm an academic

By night I'm a socialite

What do I write about?

What else do I write about?

I write about...

Travel and tourism Food Wine Music/Dance/Theatre Entertainment Queer issues Non-profits Cancer Mental health HIV/AIDS Homelessness

In a nutshell, I'm a travel and lifestyle blogger with an academic slant.

While I have a PhD in environmental studies, I rarely blog about environmental issues anymore (mostly because I put those on my research blog, http://www.raulpacheco.org/blog

I don't cover the Canucks, nor Real Housewives of Vancouver. And I think Snooki's pregnancy is a presage of the world's perils.

How do you pitch bloggers?

I'm going to my PREVIOUS presentation here...http://www.slideshare.net/raulpachecov/pitching-bloggers-101-guest-lecture-at-simon-fraser-university-pr-program

Know my name

Don’t EVER do this.

Know my blog

Local PR company: “We didn’t even know that you blogged about the arts”

Know my fellow bloggers

Know my rules

Disclosure and transparency

My readers are my priority

Photographers need to be credited

Send me visuals

Accept that I have very limited time

Follow up, because I receive hundreds of emails

Know my fields

Food and wine

Nightlife

Travel

Lifestyle

Dance

Theatre

Non-profits

Unique, unconventional stuff

Build a relationship with me

Build community WITH me

Show me you care about the community

Three additional tips...

Train your interns. Your interns are an extension of you. They need to

behave equally professionally to how YOU would behave.

Your interns should reflect your image. And yes, I know it takes a while to train them, but I did it and so should you.

Three additional tips...

Follow the rules uniformly (and don't lie)

If you say X “can't be done” don't go and offer X to blogger Y. Because the rest of the blogging world is going to find out. And your PR company will lose its reputation.

Three additional tips...

Don't break down the rapport you've already established

If the blogger tells you they don't like non-targeted press releases, and you've done specific, tailored pitches... don't revert back to blanket press releases!

Make sure your pitches are always targeted to the right people. Even after you've had success.

More resources:

On my site, search for the following posts/pages:

4 additional thoughts on pitching bloggers and online influencers

http://hummingbird604.com/pitch-me/ (My Pitch Me page)