How to Engage Bloggers Down the Long Tail

How to Engage Bloggers
Down the Long Tail
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Chris Abraham

 Principal Consultant
 Avid Blogger/Contributor:
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 Director, Business Development
Your Speaker: Chris Abraham
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My Personal Digital PR Philosophy
 Find people where they live (and meet them
there even if it’s a forum or message board)
 Explore the long tail (there are millions of
people blogging, sharing, and posting online –
and PR tends to pile on the same 100
“influentials”)
 “We want you to take 50 million of us as seriously as
you take one reporter from The Wall Street Journal”
 (#83 of the 95 Theses from The Cluetrain Manifesto)
 Spoil everyone (like you would Guy Kawasaki)
 Be grateful (nobody is required to help you)

Campaign Questions
 Goal: what is it you need to do?
 Monitor: what are you looking to find?
 Discover: where are people talking?
 Learn: who are these talking people?
 Collect: what groups do you need?
 Engage: how best to connect?
 Outreach: how best to pitch?
 Analyze: how did you do?

Goals: What Do You Want to Accomplish?
 Build brand awareness?
 Increase community engagement?
 Prospect new brand ambassadors?
 Drive sales, traffic, membership?
 Drive conversation volume?
 Improve organic search?
 Get a feel for your neighborhood?
 Launch a new product, service, investment?

Monitor: Listen/Look Before You Leap
 Google Search is the best tool to get a feel
 When it comes down to it, Google does an amazing job
of giving you a 30,000-foot view of the blogosphere
 Spend some time understanding the space
 It’s not always obvious how people engage with you,
your brand, your space, or your industry. Allow your
community to lead your exploration; do not be willful:
people don’t always use your language
 Include message boards, forums, etc., in your recon
 Try out all the tools: it’s a buyer’s market
 SDL SM2, Radian6, Sysomos, Sprout Social, Lithium

Discover: Finding People Where They Live
 Social media is much bigger than Facebook
 There are a multitude of social networks, self-run message
boards, threads deep in reddit, and ad-hoc discussions
everywhere online (Dailymile.com, etc.)
 If it exists, there is blog of it (Rule 34 variant)
 There are more than a billion active blogs worldwide
 Always start with Google
 Influencer discovery
 GroupHigh – grouphigh.com
 Little Bird – getlittlebird.com
 Alltop – alltop.com
 eCairn – ecairn.com

Learn: Do They Want to Be Engaged? And How?
 Blogs (including online journalists, curators,
aggregators, group blogs, and bloggers)
 Can you find their name and email address?
 If contacting them is hard, maybe they don’t want to be
 Look for a “how to engage/pitch” message
 Follow their directions to a T (or don’t engage them at all)
 Forums (including bookmark & link aggregators)
 Engage forum owners directly, don’t jump in there!
 Social Networks (including FB, Twitter, etc.)
 Engage before befriending before pitching

Collect: Demo-, Geo-, Psycho-Graphic Lists
 The A-list (the crème de la crème of influence)
 Generally professional bloggers and journalists, including the blogs and profiles
of mainstream media platforms, celebrities, high Klout scores, high-traffic blogs,
authors, actors, scientists, pundits, newsmakers, and people with mad followers
 Will blog for free, but only if they’re compelled to (exclusive content, big news,
financial releases, new investment, etc.)
 Never, ever, include A-list bloggers in a bulk email pitch – hand-written only
 Prepare your kid-gloves and your checkbook – find ways to woo them
personally (over lavish meals, inviting them to HQ, or meeting them down at one of
the many conferences they attend)
 Become a persistent “bestie” – either as someone who is a communicator
pitching them good, consistent, and valuable content or, even better, a personal
friend who doesn’t just collect them as a method of access or a sign of prestige

 B-D-List (the mid-section of the long tail often asks for money)
 While not all B-D-list bloggers lead with an advertising rate sheet, many do
 Most PR campaigns aren’t budgeted for advertising spend so I don’t pay for posts
 Ideally, earned-media is the goal of PR campaigns, so it’s up to you
 Many of the B-D-list bloggers can get you what you need for less than a strong ad buy
 While disclosures are essential everywhere, they’re doubly so for “advertorial” content
 I tend to put any blogger who asks for money into a DNC* list
 Midrange bloggers are easier to access, harder to garner earn media mentions
from, but a worthy investment of time and attention toward a long-term relationship
 People help out their friends, so becoming close may curry favor for earned media pitches
 I generally include B-D-list bloggers in general long-tail bulk email outreach
*Do not contact list

 E-Z-List (the long-tail of the blogosphere, including ~1 Billion bloggers)
 While a billion active blogs are well out-of-scope, please remember:
 No matter how obscure your product or service, there’s probably a blog about it
 The original Rule #34 is: “If it exists, there is porn of it;” same for the blogosphere
 Collect email addresses, blog name, and maybe location only for E-Z-list
 While I might be willing to chase down the contact info of A-D-list bloggers via forms or
hunting them down via LinkedIn or Facebook Messenger, Dailymile mail, or Twitter DMs, I
only engage long-tail bloggers if they share their email address gladly
 If bloggers don’t make it easy to contact them, they may not want to be contacted; and, if
you contact someone who doesn’t want to be, there will be serious blowback
 Send everyone in your list a bulk email pitch but be ready to engage in person
 Don’t worry, most people aren’t fanboys – a cold-pitch is fine if your “gift” is generous

Engage: Pitch It Slow and Right Over the Plate
 Pitching is speed dating
 You don’t need to overwrite
 Allow people to be intrigued
 Less is more
 Attention span is limited
 Pre-masticate message into easy-to-
understand pabulum
 Don’t include attachments or inline
content
 Don’t BS, brown nose, lie, or flatter
 "Please don’t say you read and love my
blog, then pitch me on something that I
never cover here" -- Mack Collier

Outreach: The Catch Is the More Important Part
 The informational microsite
 Internally, I call it an SMNR
 Social Media News Release
 The kitchen sink theory
 Don’t limit the SMNR to just the pitch
 Bloggers are libertarian contrarians
 Give a lot to look through – give them options
 Steal me, steal me!
 Optimize content to be copied-and-pasted
 Pre-embed embed codes
 Pre-link and optimize for SEO, etc.
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www.mizunorunningnews.com

Outreach: The Magic Happens in the Inbox

Analyze: It All Comes Down to the Bottom Line
 Track using site analytics tools
 Google Analytics tracking code in the SMNR
 Server-side analytics tools: AWstats, Webalizer
 Track both SMNR & target site
 Track using media mention tools
 I presently use SDL SM2 (Alterian SM2)
 Primary, secondary, tertiary, etc., mentions
 Lots of free and fee-based tools
 Google Analytics is becoming more SM-savvy
 Track using specialized landing pages
 Using affiliate tricks-of-the-trade

Analyze: The Proof Is in the Pudding
17
133 earned media blog posts, 1,350 Tweets, 40 other

Final Words
21
“Hugs not horns”
– Chris Abraham
“Be kind, for everyone you
meet is fighting a hard battle”
– Philo of Alexandria
(or Plato or Ian MacLaren or John Watson)

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Email: chris@gerr.is
Mobile: +1 202-352-5051
Twitter: @chrisabraham
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Huffington Post: huffingtonpost.com/chris-abraham
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How to Engage Bloggers Down the Long Tail

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