It's been around five years since I first started blogging. I’ve been blogging here at Getting Ink since 2004, and this year started a parenting blog over at Who’s the Mummy, where I've also been publishing an index of the UK's top 100 Mummy bloggers. As a freelance journalist, I've also been ghost-writing a number of blogs for clients in the technology, HR and consumer sectors.
Despite this, it's probably only in the last six months I've really started getting a lot of pitches from PR execs for blogs, in the same way I'd expect to get pitches as a journalist. My impression certainly is that PR agencies are hugely interested in tapping into the blogging community, but are also unsure quite how best to go about it. Here are some things I've noticed about UK PR agencies pitching bloggers:
- Most PR agencies don’t know one blog from another. So I get a lot of irrelevant pitches, for nappies (my child is four), or crafting products for a photography blog (hmm). Today, I got pitched a recycling bin. I have no clue what blog that was for.
- Most PRs don’t know how to evaluate blogs. This tends to result in companies taking one of two views of blogs. Approach A is the big retailer that said to me this week: “There are too many blogs we need to look at, so we’re not looking at any this year.” Then there’s Approach B, where a PR agency said to me: “We’re just sending to everyone we see on Response Source.”
- Of the 100 or so PR agencies I've dealt with as a blogger, I can count on one hand the number that have asked about my traffic. And I can count on one finger the number that asked any detailed questions about my traffic.
- It’s tempting to assume bloggers are less savvy than journalists. This is a big mistake. And when you start your pitch with “I just read your post on [insert title of most recent post here] and it really made me laugh” it's just as cringe-worthy as when you take the same tack with a journalist.
- Bloggers talk to each other – on social networks, via Twitter, through email and at meet-ups. So when you send the same offer to 50 people at once, it’s safe to assume we know everyone else has been offered the same thing. And if your pitch is bad, people will hear about it. Remember that ‘name and shame’ debate in journalism a few years back? Bloggers are now having that exact same debate - except, unlike journalists, most bloggers don't NEED PRs and don't see dealing with bad pitches as just part of the job, so they're less tolerant of poor practice, if anything.
- Some PR agencies treat bloggers with much less professional courtesy than they would journalists. As a journalist, if I reply to a PR pitch to ask for more info, I don’t think I’ve ever been deliberately ignored. As a blogger, it’s an almost daily occurrence. I’d say, personally, this doesn’t seem like a good long-term strategy. I certainly take down names, and make a note of who plays nice and who doesn't.
- Nobody seems to know whether you offend a blogger by offering to pay them, or whether it’s more likely to offend if you ask them to do something for free. There are some really clumsy conversations going on as a result. Bloggers are scared witless by the stories around the FTC regulations, and there's a lot of uncertainty going on.
- A lot of PR agencies think bloggers should provide free consulting. Bloggers get sent a lot of questionnaires and surveys by PR agencies. "Would you just fill in this survey, it should only take 15 minutes, to tell us how you like to be approached and what sort of thing you're interested in?" Well, that's all well and good if blogging and working with PR agencies is my job - but the majority of bloggers don't do this for a job (or it's a sideline) so why should they take 20 minutes out of their day to provide you with free consultation? When one blogger replied to a PR agency pointing out that she charged an hourly rate for consultation, she got an INCREDIBLY rude reply that I guarantee that agency would never have sent to a journalist.
- The companies that REALLY get blogger outreach REALLY get it. And they’re building really strong, interactive relationships with key bloggers, that are going to give their clients a massive advantage in 12 months time and beyond. But these companies are still few and far between.







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