Blogger relations tips from Womma’s Andy Sernovitz

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Andy Sernovitz has an interesting post on ‘How to get a blogger to write about you’. As well his advice on the correct and incorrect approach he also has some comments on hiring a PR company to manage blogger relations. I’ve commented on Andy’s blog, but thought it was worth expanding on them here:

1. Hire a firm with proven, long-term, personal relationships with the bloggers

This sounds good until you start to analyse it and realise that it would be almost impossible for a client to actually find a public relations firm that had relationships with the specific bloggers it needs to have a relationship with. Most clients that we work with what us to advise them on what the relevant blogs for their industry, sector or products are. Sometimes the answer will be blogs that at least one person in our team knows well. In other cases we’ll be operating in a new space and the challenge and enjoyment is exploring it and really getting to understand it, before ever engaging in blogger outreach. To expect a client to find a public relations company that already has relationships with “the” client’s specific bloggers is asking the impossible.

What is right is that if you’re hiring a PR firm to do blogger relations then you must make sure it has done it before and that it’s team totally embraces, lives and breathes social media. Check out the team’s social media profiles and ‘rankings’ before you appoint them. Don’t fall for appointing a PR company that only superficially uses social media and has set-up blog and Twitter accounts etc just to show that they are ‘doing it’.

2. Supervise them very, very closely

I understand why Andy is saying this – there are so many examples of PR firms doing social media and blogs really badly. However, just supervising them closely isn’t going to make much difference as it assumes the client knows what to do. Most don’t, that’s why whey hire PR consultants as advisors, because the consultants have more experience and expertise. That’s the main point about hiring a consultancy is that they know more about it than you do.

3. Insist on complete disclosure of the relationship

On this one I totally agree with Andy. But it is no less than is required by trade and professional associations such as the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), Womma and WOM UK.

4. Do NOT let them delegate the job to a junior account exec

This is a very nice idea, but totally unrealistic as many clients might not have the budget to just have senior folk do the work. What you do need to do is assess the calibre of the whole team that will work on your account and look at what training and other quality control processes are in place.

5. Review every email that is being sent on your behalf

In my view this is just the same as point 2 and just doesn’t make sense. Indeed it could back fire very badly with the client trying to put some of the marketing hype back in, that the PR consultancy has taken out!

A good rule of thumb: Do not trust someone to pitch a blogger for you who has never eaten food with the blogger.

A good sound bite, but not such a good rule of thumb.

If your PR firm embarrasses your company, you take the reputation hit forever. They move on to the next client.

Too true, that’s why you need to have the right public relations company to advise you on social media and blogger relations.