Type-A Mom Conference – Bloggers and Companies: How to Work Together for Everyone’s Benefit

This session is Bloggers and Companies: How to Work Together for Everyone’s Benefit. Our moderator is Amy Lupold Bair, with speakers Heidi Bobier and David Griner.

We’ve got a lot of cheering going on as everyone introduces themselves. (Thanks to David for bringing Little Debbie to the Type-A Mom Conference here in Asheville, North Carolina!)

Heidi points out that, most of the time, when we want to work with companies, our pitches have to go through people like her, someone in their early 20s who isn’t exactly an expert.

How did this all begin?

David says that blogger outreach started in 2007-2008 for him with a very PR-heavy approach. Bloggers were treated like media outlets, and there was no pay offered. It was not considered a vendor-based partnership. There was little compensation offered, and little was expected in return. David saw the potential for a great partnership with bloggers, building long-term relationships, but it took his company a little time to come around to that sort of thinking. It has evolved as time has gone on.

When a blogger receives a PR pitch and asks, “What’s in it for me?” is that a relatively new thing?

It was relatively rare when David started with this. It started out with them sending out products and not having any obligation on the side of the blogger. It was very rare for him to hear from people who wanted to know how they would be compensated. Things like BlogHer bring these issues to the forefront. It took some convincing with his clients to get them to provide products for bloggers, and now they don’t want to shell out money for reviews.

Heidi says she’s seen the same thing. Her company stumbled into the blogosphere, sending the same pitch to the New York Times as they sent to bloggers. Decisions need to be made now on advertorials.

What’s the difference between earned media and an advertorial?

David explains earned media as, “You’re just so awesome that people have to talk about you.” It’s a traditional PR term. They measured the number of inches in coverage in national newspapers and magazines, compared it to how much they would’ve had to pay for an ad of that size, and that’s how much that coverage was worth when the PR agencies told their clients about ROI. The same sort of model doesn’t work with blogs.

Heidi’s agency tries to make the difference between earned media and paid advertorials pretty black and white. For her, earned media means you can say whatever you want about the products you receive. If you’re getting paid, though, she expects you to only talk about how awesome her client is.

David wants to know if he can trust a blogger before he’s willing to trust her with the tiny amount of money his client provides. Companies Nike may spend $18 billion on TV ads but only provide $5,000 for online campaigns.

Is there anything bloggers can do to get connected with the people who have the money to make media buys?

Heidi says ASK. It might be the person in the next cubicle, or it might be someone in the next state. Ask if your PR contact is the person who can handle media buys or ads. The answer is probably no, but they may be able to point you to the person who is responsible for marketing who has the larger budget and can work with you on an integrated campaign.

David says that the enemies of blogs are not people. They’re Facebook advertising, which has a 10 cent CPM as opposed to $4-$12 CPM. Marketers need to diversify. Intergrated marketing is big, and these campaigns are really complicated. You can ask, “Who else is going to be involved in this?” You can find out who else in the agency is working on an integrated campaign who may be able to work with you in a capacity your PR contact cannot.

Heidi adds that getting the thumbs up from PR for working on a review can prove your worth. You can come back two weeks later and say, “Look at what I did for you. Can we work together on advertising?” You may get hooked up with the advertising folks who can pay you to run their ads on your site.

Bureaucracy is a big hurdle to ad buys on blogs because the rates have to be negotiated with each individual blogger, and that’s pretty tedious for the guy in charge of Internet ad buys.

What can bloggers do to make working with us easier?

Be detailed and be specific. If your goal is to work with Heidi to get ads on your site, tell her. If you don’t have time to review a product in the next six months, tell her. Keep her informed.

David says to pull your metrics for how well you did on your previous marketing campaigns. That’s impressive if you can give them proof of your results. You’re showing them that you’re not going to waste their time. How engaged are you going to be? Make your own case study. The minute you’re done with a campaign, contact the person you were working with, and ask them for data on your performance. You should be able to get a report that you can pass along to potential PR partners, and that will make you stand out.

How do you measure influence? What do you look at to decide who is an influential blogger?

Heidi says that pageviews, unique visitors, Twitter followers, and FB friends matter, but the qualitative stuff is also important. How many comments do your posts get? Do you have good sentence structure?

David says that engagement is a big buzzword. It’s not about how many readers you have. He doesn’t work with really big bloggers because they’ve already partnered with big companies with big budgets. It’s becoming less about your blog. Read “The Death of the Web” in last month’s Wired magazine. We’re on the Internet now, but we’re not on the Web. Facebook is like a big biodome you never have to leave. YouTube. Xbox Live. It’s no longer good enough to just write a blog post. You have to start conversations in different mediums. If you’re engaging your readers and followers, this is what means a lot to him.

From the Audience

In response to an audience comment, David points out that PR and advertising have traditionally been completely separate. They didn’t know each other. They didn’t like each other. The fact that they have to start working together right now makes things very awkward. They need to get better about communicating their expectations for bloggers, because advertising folks may get upset when bloggers say negative things, and he has to point out that, no, he can’t say, “You need to take that down.”

David uses Compete.com to look at your stats. Heidi uses Quantcast. Always put your source for your stats, because every different analytic tool gives different results.

Heidi says pageviews, uniques, and comments would be the first three numbers she’d want if she was going solely by numbers. (Which she doesn’t do.) David says, “Yep.”

The second a campaign is up and live online, PR folks like David spend every second analyzing the data from the campaign, he feels bad that they don’t have time to email all the bloggers and thank them and let them know they did a good job. If you don’t hear back from your PR person, it’s not because they don’t like you; they just got caught up in other things.

Christina Gleason (976 Posts)

That’s me: Christina Gleason. I’m a writer, editor, and disability advocate. I'm a multiply disabled autistic lady doing my best in this world built for abled people. I’m a geek for grammar, fantasy, and casual gaming. I hate vegetables. I cannot reliably speak, so I’ll happily conduct business over email or messaging instead.