Next week, Liz Gumbinner (Mom-101 and CoolMomPicks), Mir Kamin (Woulda Coulda Shoulda and WantNot.net), Maria Niles (ConsumerPop and BlogHer Contributing Editor) and I will be presenting a session called Improve This Pitch, first as a teleseminar for the Women Who Tech telesummit on Monday afternoon at 4 pm EDT and then as a panel at BlogHer Business in NYC on Friday afternoon at 1:15 pm.
As the title implies, we will be talking blogger relations, and specifically what marketers should do to improve their pitches. I’ll do a more comprehensive write-up of the session after we’ve given it at BlogHer — after all, the attendees should get first look at our collective brilliance — but I decided to share a few thoughts as a sort of sneak preview.
Some pitches cannot be saved. There is so much wrong with them that the only kind thing to do is put them out of their misery. There’s no good reason to send a 900-word email pitch about breakfast cereal. Or a pitch that talks down to the blogger.We’ll share a few specific examples and tell you what we would have advised the company.
Some products just shouldn’t be pitched to bloggers. That doesn’t mean the company can’t reach out to bloggers. Or that the blogger might not buy the product. It does mean that the company has to find some other connection point with the blogger. We’ll share some ideas on what marketing people can do if they are tasked with reaching out to bloggers about products like bleach and bathroom cleanser.
Read the blog and address the blogger by name. You’ve read that here before, and you will again. This does not mean "personalize" the email by mail-merging the names of a mom blogger and her children into a generic pitch. Added demerits if the pitch is bad as well.
Another tip I’ve mentioned here before is to give bloggers exclusive access to information. But it has to be exclusive access to something that the blogger will find interesting. Odds are, that’s not going to be a scripted conference call with a company exec. There are a few general exceptions to this rule, including highly anticipated product launches and extending access to financial results calls to the public, not just the financial media and analysts, but not many. We’ll talk about what sort of exclusives do appeal to bloggers, and how you should go about inviting participants. Generic email blasts addressed to BLOGGERS are not it.
If you will be attending Women Who Tech or BlogHer Business and have an example you’d like us to discuss, either yours or one you received, we encourage you to share it. You can send it in advance to me at sgetgood@getgood.com and I’ll forward to my co-panelists, or just bring it with you for the Q&A.
UPDATED, 3/31/08: PDF version of my Custom Scoop article: Some Advice for Reaching out to Mommybloggers.
Tags: blogger relations, pr, public relations, blogher, blogher business, women who tech