These days, if somebody said, “I don’t have a blog, do you blog?” – he or she would probably be laughed at. Having a blog is practically having your online diary. A blog reflects the personality of its author – as this is usually the writer’s personal life experiences being published for all to see. In the beginning, blogging was seen by many of the older generation as a creative way of spending idle time by the younger generation. In fact, some see it as an inane activity.
Lately, however, blogging has proven to be a powerful tool for marketing. Bloggers generally talk about their personal experience and most of the time they mention products or services that they’ve used. They use their blogs to tell other people whether they’re happy with the product or not. This is why blogs are so attractive to search engines. When consumers want to know about a product or service, they look it up in the Internet. Commentaries or reviews from different blogs are usually listed first.
Gone are the days when only the big corporations (having budgets for advertising) had exposure in media. According to Buzz Bruggeman, blogs have levelled the playing field between big and small companies. Today, many small companies get the word out about their product or service through reviews and commentaries of personal experiences of the consumers. Perhaps bloggers can be considered as small scale journalists. Because of the noise that these blogs are generating, bloggers, like editors and publishers, are now getting a lot of spam.
So, how can you generate a buzz on the blogosphere using your press release?
You can send your press release to these blogs but always keep in mind that these blogs are usually just hobbies of their writers. So, your release has to be more personal. How?
- Communicate with the bloggers. Get to know them. Treat them as well as you would editors, publishers, producers and journalists.
- Send a short email announcement instead of a full blown press release.
- Attach pictures to your email to make your release more interesting.
- If your story is interesting, you do not need to ask the bloggers to allow you to do the blogging on their blogs. After all, they blog because of something that they find interesting.
- Give something exclusive to the bloggers – something that their readers can only get through their blog (e.g. freebies of the product, or free testing of an online service for the first 100 testers, etc.)
- You don’t pay anything to send your emails. So, don’t limit yourself to the top 10 blogs. Go for the top 100 or top 500 blogs on the web.
Businesses today have a much better chance of being known. The Internet has made it easier to reach millions of people worldwide. Still, you have to establish a good working relationship with people like the bloggers who are almost always online.
Remember that the Internet can also be easily accessed by determined detractors of your company or product. But even if this happens, blogging can still come in handy since you can ask other consumers to share negative experiences that they might have had and you can solve all issues through discussions and suggestions to improve your product or service.
Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites
Subscribe to this comment's feed
