What PR Agencies Should Know About Pitching Bloggers

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.

Now for a brief plug: I've decided to put some of my tips and tricks into a new, half-day 101 training workshop for any PR agencies that are interested in pitching bloggers, and gaining insight into how to identify, evaluate and work with blogs more successfully - you can see more details over on the 101 PR training website, or you can email me. At the moment this course is going to be run in-house for agency teams, but depending on interest, I may look to run a public workshop in January, so please drop me a line if this would be of interest.

Comments

[Craig McGill]

Some good points in there, especially the one about traffic (I think a lot of PRs are too scared to ask in all honesty). I did some tips for PRs dealing with bloggers and also for bloggers dealing with PRs at the following:

http://www.contently-managed.com/2009/08/30/15-tips-for-prs-dealing-with-bloggers/

http://www.contently-managed.com/2009/08/30/15-tips-for-bloggers-dealing-with-prs/

[Joanne Mallon]

Oh I would love to be a fly on the wall at your training course Sally, you tell 'em like it is.

Where do these random pitches come from? Yesterday I got two about Christmas cheese. I do not write about food, so wasn't sure if this is an oblique comment on my cheesy jokes.

Have also written about PRs & bloggers here: http://joannemallon.typepad.com/joanne_the_coach/2009/10/the-mummy-bloggers-the-prs-and-working-for-chips.html It's quite fascinating how all this is developing, from both sides.

[Tim Atkinson]

You mean when they tell me they've just read my latest post and loved it that they're LYING?

(Does anyone do that kind of thing...?)

[Mags]

I've got to be honest - I'm not sure how the new FTC regulations have any effect on review blogs unless the blogger always gives a favourable review to a freebie. And anyone wanting to build a repuatable blog will surely review realistically, regardless of whether they got it free or not. I don't expect the Guardian review to say "BTW, Random House sent us a review copy of this book for free", so why be alarmed over accepting review items?

And do the FTC regulations even apply to sites published by UK bloggers?

[Sally]

@Craig - scared? Of me? Pah. I don't believe it. Thanks for sharing the link, too.

@Joanne - I do indeed. WTF is Christmas cheese? Mind. Boggles.

@Tim - They do lie. But never to you. I'm sure they have ALL just read your latest post and loved it.

@Mags - in reality the FTC regs won't even affect US bloggers much less UK bloggers. But there's a lot of fear and confusion, and bloggers are genuinely worried, which just further complicates the PR/blogger relationship - to some extent, there's an opportunity for PRs to know the rules and HELP bloggers understand the rules and the role of reviews/freebies.

[Ranbir]

I agree that most PRs are probably too afraid or embarrassed to ask since they probably wouldn't Ask a journalist how many readers read their sites or mags.
As a PR we are told by journalists to read the publications so I guess some of the people who are targetting you are doing the same, but maybe they could start with a slightly different approach.
Good luck with the course.

[Matthew Stibbe]

I get precisely the same experience with PR companies in the UK. Having been a freelance writer for some very well-known magazines (Wired etc.) I know the difference between good PR and 'throw some mud at the wall and hope some sticks.'

For some reason, although I blog about writing, marketing and aviation, I get a lot of pitches about baby and children's products. This leads me to believe that PRs generally don't even look at the blogs they pitch.

[Melanie Seasons]

The traffic one is interesting...

I educate clients that traffic on a blog is not always what they need to be paying attention to. We look at a number of things: comments, inbound links, page rank, Twitter followers, etc., and base our evaluation of a campaign or piece of coverage on what the original objectives of the client were. A lot of the time it's traffic to a website (which would be influenced by huge traffic), but sometimes it's sentiment or even just general online awareness/breadth of coverage.

In online PR, I'm more interested in what those numbers mean, rather than how many of them there are. And when PRs are talking to mums about products, it's about word of mouth, relationships, and the positive endorsements that may influence purchasing decisions. Quality over quantity.

(And as a side note: with the ridiculously over-inflated numbers of unique users that clients are used to seeing, *real* blog traffic numbers would scare them.)

I'm curious though: How did you react to having a PR ask you your traffic?

When I used to work in the States, a lot of mommy bloggers told me they were always worried about publicising their traffic numbers because they were afraid PRs wouldn't think they were worth it.

I run two blogs that receive a fair amount of pitches from PRs (oh, how I love being on both sides), and have never been asked about traffic numbers on either of them. I'm not sure how I would feel about it if I was though. I reckon it's like asking a girl how much she weighs.

[Sally]

Hi Melanie

You might be interested in this post from last month, about how PRs should (in my view) start to evaluate blogs:
http://gettingink.typepad.com/getting_ink/2009/09/how-to-do-due-diligence-on-blogs-and-why-some-prs-are-stupid-.html

Yes, I totally agree traffic is just one metric and given the nature of traffic figures, it's often a number best treated with extreme caution!

But actually I welcome the PRs who ask me about traffic and audience on blogs - it shows me they're taking their client and my blog seriously, that they care about the outcome.

I expect them to be savvy enough to know that 1,500 very targeted readers of a trusted, active, well discussed blog are at least as important to their client as 10,000 generic readers on a bigger publication.

I've had occasions where I've told PR agencies the traffic stats on a blog (hello Porter Novelli!) and been told in no uncertain terms that I'm not popular enough for a particular client, but I'm not overly fussed by that - I've worked in media long enough to know there's a pecking order in any media, and you start at the bottom and hopefully you work your way up. I also just comfort myself that one day they'll really want to be on hte blog and I'll tell them that unfortunately I have limited resources and unfortunately need to prioritise them carefully and can't help on this occasion ;-)

[Melanie Seasons]

Wow, I can't believe they told you you're not popular enough! That's insane to me. Must have a word with @timhoang ;-)