Republican or Democrat; Coke or Pepsi; Auburn or Alabama. We live in a world of opposing sides and the blogosphere is no exception: to pay or not to pay for product reviews.
Last night, I received an e-mail from BlogPaws, a network of pet bloggers whose annual conferences I've recommended to clients in the past. The e-mail and blog post can be read entirely
here, but here's the part that has me up in arms:
Some [pitches] will make you feel sad because they are about shelters, rescues or a program supporting shelters and rescues, and you want to write about them but... you can't write 10 different posts about 10 different things going on, and still get your own writing done. And, some will make you mad. Because they will assume you're going to cover their product for free... free product, that is. It's not the message, sometimes, it's the assumption that your time if not worth anything.
Here's the skinny on all of this.
Every time you do a free product review, you sell yourself, and your fellow bloggers short. Be selective. No, I am not advising you stop doing free product reviews. I am saying, weigh the free product and your influence carefully. Ask yourself, "Should I get paid for this review? Did the newspaper or major magazine in which an ad was placed for this product, do it for free? Why is my blog any different?" Truth is - your blog has more relevance than a major magazine or newspaper ad.
I do a fair share of social media marketing and consulting. At any given time, I'm running between 5 and 10 blog tours for various CPG companies. I recognize that product reviews on blogs are extremely important. The last statistic I can recall on the subject said that people who read about a product on a blog are 9x more likely to buy that product versus only 3x more likely if they read about it editorially (both metrics are compared to seeing an advertisement).
But to resonate with the consumer, that post needs to be objective.
And it's that reason that I do not advocate paying for content.
Why would a blogger do this? Simply put: content drives traffic. It's the same for traditional media and it works for blogs, too. My good friend Tim Wagner at
WrightIMC explains it nicely, saying "If you provide good content and do good search marketing, your audience will come. And, with that audience will come advertisers. PR people help you build good, unique content."
So, how can a blogger make money? I buy ad space on blogs on a daily basis. I've sponsored bloggers to attend conferences and other events. I've even been known to pay for an advertorial (or two).
As Jeremy Pepper says, You need the traffic to command and demand a cost structure.
I'm going out on a limb here and I'm sure I'll make some enemies by saying this: It boggles my mind that some bloggers can't see the forest for the trees. They have a money-making mechanism at their disposal. But, it's not in the content. It's in the advertising.
I've sent this link to BlogPaws, fellow bloggers and several people I respect in the PR world for comment.
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| Blogger relations is a lot like Alice's ventures! |
A few weeks ago,
Entreprenette Sarah Shaw called and asked if I would share some tips with her readers on working with bloggers. We did a short call (details
here) and then had a follow-up conversation.
We do a lot of blog tours at MLMC (so many, in fact, that I co-founded the
Blogger Black Book, an opt-in directory of bloggers who want to talk to marketers, but I digress...)
There was a phrase Sarah kept mentioning: Going into the rabbit hole. This is exactly what it's like to find new bloggers.
The number one question clients ask me about working with bloggers is how to find the *right* one. The answer is fairly simple:
the right blogger for your company or product mirrors your target buyer.
You'll need to do research on the Internet (google your target audience and the word "blog" in quotations) and that's when you'll find yourself in the rabbit hole. Even after years of doing these tours, I still get sucked in. Reading a blog is like visiting another world. It's like finding someone's diary and stepping in their shoes for an afternoon. It's fantasy but real. Click on one blog and that leads to another and then another and before I know it, an entire hour is gone!
After you find your first blogger, look around on that blogger's site. You'll often find he or she belongs to a network (or several). Contact those networks for future reviewers--aim for working with 10-15 at a time so you don't get overwhelmed. You'll find that bloggers lead to other bloggers.
In that case, it's more like a trail of breadcrumbs. But that's a whole other fairytale!
~ml
Ask most public relations professionals what their least favorite part of PR is and the answer is usually the same: follow-up calls. There is a legitimate reason for the distaste most feel for the follow-up call and it is pretty straightforward: Reporters hate them.
Now I know what you are thinking: “If reporters hate them, then why do them?” It’s simple, really. Reporters are human beings. It may be true that most of the time the reason the reporter never responded to your pitch is because they were just not interested. But, and this is a really big BUT, sometimes they are genuinely happy you called because they: a) never got your email; b) accidentally deleted your e-mail; c) got distracted by some other news bit; d) forgot.
The point is that reporters are very busy people. Our job as public relations professionals is to help reporters. I know reporters don’t always see it that way, but it truly is one of our main priorities. And in case you have forgotten why it’s important to be helpful to reporters, it’s because they remember it. Next time they are looking for a story idea they might just come asking you because they know you are easy to work with.
Another reason it is important to make follow-up calls is because it provides an opportunity for some personal communication. In today’s world, e-mail is the preferred means of communication, and because we are all busy people, it’s understandable. However, taking the time for the occasional conversation is not unwise. It reminds us why we got into this business in the first place: we like people, and we like communicating!
So, while the chances are fairly good that your follow-up calls may annoy or be ignored, there are those occasions where a reporter is glad you called. And those occasions almost ALWAYS lead to an article!! Well worth the effort, I’d say.
And remember, that article is much more valuable than an equivalent ad buy, because of the third party objectivity.
You can’t put a price on that!
