Professional Blogging For Dummies®

Chapter 12. Responding When Companies Come Calling

In This Chapter

• Discovering why companies reach out to bloggers

• Figuring out best practices for working with marketers and PR reps

• Staying focused on your objectives

The media landscape is a very different place now than it was even four or five years ago. People used to rely on TV, newspapers, magazines, and even media Web sites to deliver the news. Now, people rely on each other as much as on the mainstream media, possibly even more. People read blogs, chat on Twitter and Facebook, and trust the recommendations of online friends.

In this chapter, I cover how blogger relations evolved out of the public relations function and give you some tips on how to evaluate the offers, or pitches, that you may get from organizations that want you to write about them on your blog. I also suggest some best practices that you can use to attract the attention of companies you're interested in.

Understanding Public Relations and Blogger Relations

Blogger relations is the business practice of contacting bloggers with company or product information in the hope that they'll write about it. Blogger relations is also referred to as influencer relations, to reflect the fact that some online influencers are active on social networks like Twitter and Facebook, and not on blogs. Another term, blogger outreach, is used to emphasize that a company is reaching out to the blogger. The terms are interchangeable; I use the terms blogger relations and blogger outreach ...