As a company, we have found working with bloggers is beneficial in two ways one expected, one unexpected but the second we are grateful for.
- Traffic - Expected: Driving organic traffic is the goal of any business, but it is tough. Just because you build it doesn’t mean they come. And when they do come and you aren’t ready, they never come back. You can always improve, but first impressions are priceless. Regardless a great review drives great targeted traffic and as we build our relationships in the blogosphere we are realizing this is our best source of traffic and it is sustained traffic.
- Market Research - Unexpected: We realized we would get written up by bloggers sometimes good and sometimes bad, but we didn’t realize how much great bloggers care and how valuable their feedback is. I had a great conversation this morning via email with Justin who runs the Taddict blog. We have been growing as a company, but not as fast as we liked. He helped point out some key business model changes that would help us compete in the current market as well as produce top quality designs. The feedback was constructive/positive criticism. Not always what you want to hear, but what you need to hear. A few of his points could possibly be the difference between success and failure in the current market. Thanks Justin.
So the point I want to make is not just that working with bloggers is important for traffic. More so that if you really engage with bloggers and have real open conversations, you will not only grow traffic, but achieve some of the best market research you can ever hope to achieve.
Plus loyalty among users and the blogosphere is what builds value in a great brand. We are going through “Brand Summer Cleaning”. I picked this up from an article in Entrepreneur in May discussing constant revaluating your brand. We want to make sure we are staying true to our message of “Fashion for Independent People” but also our mantra “Fashion and Opportunity”. Opportunity for our designers is what a company like ours is built on.
So to wrap up, here are some tips on working with bloggers to build your business
- Read their blogs consistently before approaching them. If you are interested, they will be interested.
- Address them by their name and make a connection. “Hey, ” doesn’t work. “Hey Alex, I loved your post about _____ and agreee about ___.”
- Ask for honest feedback, before you ask for promotion. We have made this mistake recently and realized the feedback is more valuable than the promotion. If someone likes you they will naturally talk about you. If you can get honest feedback, this is worth it’s weight in gold.
- Don’t bribe, but show gratitude. We realized alot of companies throw product at people for promotion. This is short term vs. long term thinking. Bloggers write about great products. So make a great product and you’ll get written about. We love to send shirts to people who write a great post or do something out of the ordinary as a thank you. We believe it is genuine appreciation and the old saying “giving is better than receiving” still holds true.
So I would love to hear your stories about how blogging has helped your company and here are 2 more great articles about working with bloggers.
http://www.core77.com/development/hack2school/bloggers.asp
So dont think like this:
Embrace this:
great post emailed to me
That’s a great post. Unexpected learnings are the best. To the list of tips for approaching bloggers I would add:
-Inspect the site for information on how they prefer to be approached before asking them for anything. It might be an “advertise” link or something to that affect. If they this is outlined and you don’t follow their instructions it’s upsetting to them. Especially if they are highly trafficked, they get approached all the time.