Courting Bloggers
How should public relations professionals engage with bloggers? Chris Barger's presentation at the IABC conference in New Orleans provided some important tips.
1 Bloggers are in charge - When dealing with bloggers, you must play by the rules, even more so than with traditional media. There are no workarounds to get to bloggers--it's just you and the blogger engaged in an information exchange.
2 Don't think blogs and podcasts will increase sales - Blogs start conversations, but rarely generate sales. Evaluate your motives before working with bloggers.
3 Don't blogify corporate news - Sending press releases to bloggers -even if the language is changed to first-person "blog style"- won't impress bloggers. You've got to give bloggers information they can't get elsewhere.
4. Don't blog for the CEO -- PR people can generate speeches, op-eds and a whole lot else, but not blogs. A blog is better in one's own words, so hands off!!
5 Give bloggers what they want:
- Low rez photos
- Embeddable video
- RSS feeds
- Rights-free or creative commons licensing
