Ok so ive been working at a place that throws a huge huge amount of technical Mumbo Jumbo at me everyday, oh wait every hour ( now im just exaggerating). Well anyways so I thought I need to start picking up on the technology front. As a start to that I’ve put twitter on my blog ( with help from the wat guy , the line is only added so that I don’t get picked in office for being non appreciative).

Anyways as a plan to get a head start at Self PR learning and getting a hang of Podcasts, I plan to listen to atleast a minimum of 3 podcast a week. So heres the 1^st one I caught up with. Its on Managing Blogger Relations. I fished it from NewCommRoad. The interviewer was Bryan Person and the interviewee was Doug Haslam. Heres the link to the podcast.

What did I learn after listening to the podcast.

- Research: A whole lot of it. In terms of what the bloggers writes about and what is his style, much like offline media. This reminded me of what a colleague says “the more you read the more you know” or something like that.

- Map your influencers.- This was also pointed out to me by moksh lately.

- Know what the bloggers write – this once again is much like what it would be for offline media. Its important to know their beat, their writing style .

- Know your topic – You need to know what you need to talk about. As Doug pointed out in the podcast, you need not be an expert in the topic but you require to know enough to make conversation. Regarding the same point I remember talking to moksh and saying that hey I don’t know much about this, he calmly said the same “you don’t need too”

- Read back into the blog post b4 u contact – I found this point rather interesting as even if I have done the research and saved the bloggers link some where in an excel sheet, I oath to go read back or rather skim through just to refresh my memory and then contact the blogger.

- Blogger may pick up the phone and email back but they may not cover. The challenge is getting them to respond than getting them to write about it. – Interesting point, something I quite don’t get, in that case a thought to fret about.

- Go for camps, Podcamps, Blog camps meet – So considering there’s a blogcamp coming in Pune ill have to visit and network away.

- You cant always pitch to bloggers the way you do to a journalist- Absolutely agree, and I have come to learn after being at WAT that a blogger is at his own league. Id like to use a term, that is very frequently used in office “ownage”. The blog is the bloggers ownage, so its got to be more conversational.

- Have a personalized pitch regardless to a Bloggers or Journalist. – Agreed. Though it would be easier to dig insights into a blogger than a journalist, unless offcourse if you spent a whole lot of time reading the paper.

- You cant Mail Merge and send a press release to a bloggers.- that would be funny, but I absolutely agree, personalization is the way to go.

- Say why you like reading a bloggers blog if your going to mention “ I like reading your blog,” and follow that with a pitch. – Interesting point this justifies that you have done research, which obviously means your reading his/her blog.

- Its not about pitching the A list bloggers only. Look at other bloggers. “Lift up the log look at the bugs. Pitch the bugs” – I like that phrase, so it basically comes down to who your target audience is, A bloggers should be pushed but those bugs under the log ( hahah) also get traffic and hence shouldn’t be ignored. POINT TAKEN.

Hmm that’s enough Intake for 2days. J

Labels: Bryan Person, Doug Haslam, managing blogger relations, new comm road, Podcast