From Dates to Diapers, and beyond!

The following was written by Melanie Seasons, a PR gal who first contacted me last September. She works at a PR firm that does product review/web site campaigns with bloggers. They conduct every campaign as an opt-in, and do not participate in any indiscriminate spamming or pay-per-posts. Most of their clients are in the consumer, health, nonprofit, or technology fields and are very family-oriented.

There’s been a lot of back-and-forth about how and why some Mommy bloggers are feeling left out about never having been contacted with PR pitches. As a PR person who works in the blogosphere every day, I’m hoping to be able to shed a little light on the selection process.

On Wednesday I made a comment on Christine’s Mommy Blogging post seconding her advice to “pitchless” bloggers to let PR people come to them. As a result, I was asked to write a small piece on how PR people select blogs for campaigns. Never one to turn down the opportunity to dispel the myths and rumors surrounding online PR, I happily obliged.

The truth is, it really is all about posting the right content at the right time. The smart PR people don’t spam random bloggers with e-mails or comments about random products the blogger probably won’t have any interest in. After all, the last thing a PR person wants to do is risk sullying their name, their client’s name or their company online. Most of us do A LOT of research on a blog before we decide if they’re a good fit for a campaign. (As a shameless plug, feel free to check out my post on exactly how much research goes into finding the right blogs to pitch.)

Personally, I never contact a blogger unless I have a concrete reason why I think they might be interested in what my client has to say. The criteria used are pretty simple:

• You’ve mentioned one of the agency’s clients before
• You’re clearly in the target audience for the campaign
• You’ve mentioned the product the PR agency is trying to promote
• You’ve talked about a cause related to the campaign’s subject matter
• You’ve mentioned wanting to participate in PR-related initiatives
• You’ve been referred by one of your bloggy friends
  

If you haven’t been pitched yet and you want to be, it’s nothing personal. Honest. You just haven’t been found yet. But there are ways to be noticed…

Put simply: Tell us! Follow us on Twitter, get involved with our online conversations, ask your bloggy pals whom they’re working with, or at the very least put up a PR badge in your sidebar that lets us know it’s ok to pitch you.

Thank you, Melanie, for taking the time to share with us!