Worker Bees Blog

This time I chatted with Lisa Orrell from Chickonomics on her marketing-focused podcast: Marketing Matters with M7.

The subject is green blogging, and marketing to green bloggers. But I think my advice to marketers who want to reach out to green bloggers is really pretty universal.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. To me there are four steps to effective blogger relations:

1. Start by reading blogs. Stop caring about the "A List" or any list of famous blogs...start building your own A List...30-40 blogs that are absolutely relevant to what you do, and who seem to care about the kind of things you do.

2. Spend some time getting to know your A-List. Read them regularly. Figure out their attitude toward being approached by companies. Figure out their individual ethical approach. Not only to dealing with companies, but, given green bloggers are a particularly ethos-driven bunch, in general, because, using myself as an example...you might discover from reading hip & zen that I'm totally open to being approached with marketing pitches, but if you read me even a little while you'd discover I'm a vegan, and you wouldn't pitch me for an organic beef product.

3. Be honest about who you are: Never never never pretend to be a fanboy or fangirl, rather than an actual representative of the product. If you have a green initiative, then I hope you're proud of it and proud to be honest about your identity and your offering.

4. Don't think of it as what the bloggers can do for you and your initiative...think about what's in it for the bloggers and their readers

Those tips were included, by the way, in a recent Best Practices Tip Sheet from the Society for New Communications Research, of which I'm a founding advisory fellow.

Labels: green blogging, Lisa Orrell, SNCR