As a public relations practitioner, I’ve had a fair amount of success reaching out to bloggers. It’s not because I’m a blogger myself, nor because I am conversant in new media technologies.
It’s because I don’t reach out to bloggers. I reach out to the blogger in question.
Individual outreach is the only reliable method of pitching public relations pros can use to ensure their name isn’t thrown up in lights on a blog, embarrassed for all to see. Bloggers don’t like spam any more than we do. So using the BCC field to mass circulate your message simply won’t work, and is liable to force your crisis communications hat on more often than you care.
But if individual outreach in the blogosphere is key, how do you know which blogs to target to reach the most people?
Heidi Sullivan and Jay Krall, both from Cision, and I will present Not All Blogs Are Created Equal at the PRSA 2008 International Conference to help answer some of those questions and share some simple steps to avoid blogger backlash.
Between now and then, however, I would challenge each of you to review how you reach out to not just bloggers, but traditional media members as well. Do you use e-mail blasts? If so, chances are many of your outlets consider your outreach spam, or at least spammy. Even opt-in e-mail blasts are becoming tiresome for those covering our clients or industries.
We as a profession must find relevant and compelling ways to reach mass audiences without falling into the category of being spammers. My hope is that our session at PRSA International Conference, along with others, and the accompanying discussions, here on ComPRehension and elsewhere, can lead us all to a new idea.
By Jason Falls of Doe-Anderson, the fifth-oldest brand-building agency in the United States, and SocialMediaExplorer.com, one of Advertising Age’s Power 150 marketing blogs. Falls is a 16-year public relations veteran and the director of Social Media for Doe-Anderson. In his role he advises clients like Maker’s Mark, Knob Creek and Jim Beam bourbons on the use of social media. He is a frequent speaker on social media strategies and tools, public relations in the new media era and communications strategies, and is the co-founder of the Social Media Club Louisville.
Join Falls for his co-presentation with Heidi Sullivan and Jay Krall, Not All Blogs are Created Equal, at the PRSA 2008 International Conference: The Point of Connection on Monday October 27, 2008, in Detroit, MI!
