Reaching bloggers with a personal touch
Why traditional media relations won’t work in the blogosphere

Bloggers and their blogs are considered by most in PR to be the latest addition to the media scene. Their unedited conveyor-belt media platforms take on diverse form ranging from public diaries to professional opinion, making them the most unpredictable and ill-defined media of all time. Some blogs are written by individuals, others are put together by a group. Some ramble about the day, while others give expert insight; and that's just the surface of the blogosphere. Blogging, broadly defined, takes place in any easily accessible medium technology provides. This increasingly includes short text messages from mobile phones, digital photos, audio recordings, and believe it or not, live video broadcasts.

So how do PR practitioners reach out to this diverse group of "new" media?

To begin, it is important to get personal with bloggers. By personal I don't only mean get to know them as friends (yes that's well and good), but getting to know what they want is paramount. What they are interested in, what they like to do with their time, what they like to eat, etc. Sending a press release that's unrelated to a journalist's beat can be ignored as "business", sending an irrelevant one to a blogger is just spam.

It is also fundamentally wrong to think of bloggers as journalists. Blogs are not publications but conversations. Unlike journalists, bloggers have no interest in filling space to complete a media product. The mainstream media has deadlines to meet, pages to fill, and programme timing to follow--bloggers don't. What a blogger would write and talk about has little to do with editorial calendars and plans and a lot to do with interest and passion.

Most shy young practitioners who first join the PR trade are often instructed by their seniors to "pick up the phone and pitch!" When it comes to bloggers, throw that out and try email, IM, and other online communication. Most bloggers don't blog for a living and would not appreciate being interrupted during office hours by PR pitches. Follow up is equally important with bloggers, as it is with journalists, and nothing would please a blogger more than having their readers leaving a permanent remark on their blog in the comments. But do mean what you write because generic comments and useless information are often regarded as spam and discarded.

Dealing with a blogger doesn't just mean dealing with his blog. A blogger's media platform may begin with their site, but it actually is the entire worldwide Web. Given the chance they will upload videos on YouTube, share photos on Flickr, or broadcast themselves live on Ustream.tv, etc. Reading what goes on their blog is merely the gateway to the vast amount of content generated by the blogger. It is statistically proven too that the majority of media produced by a blogger is consumed outside of the blog itself in RSS feeds, uploads to other social media platforms, or even copies of content and attachments floating around in forwarded emails.

Although Time Magazine crowned person of the year in 2006 as "You", bloggers tend to have a focus on "Me". Most bloggers write about themselves and their own experiences. Pitching a piece of news can be sometimes interest a few with a good sense for news, but having them participate in an event or activity with photos and video to share is so much more blog-worthy. Although some love to play journalist and do interviews, most actually prefer to observe and document proceedings from the common man's perspective.

Finally, an often overlooked aspect of blogger relations is getting to know the culture. Bloggers tend to have their own methods of linking, calling out to others, etc, and joining them is an excellent way to know how they think and work. At the end of the day, the best way to know the blogosphere is to be a blogger.

This article includes insights from Singapore bloggers Coleman Yee, Ivan Chew, Kevin Lim, and Walter Lim.

Tips:

1. Personalise the pitch. Because generic press releases hit like spam.
2. Blogs are not publications, they are conversations. Keep talking.
3. Communicate online. Don’t forget to leave honest comments.
4. The Web is their media platform. The blog is just the starting point.
5. Participation counts. Action works better than news.
6. Start blogging. Can’t beat them, join them.

Benjamin Koe is the new media specialist at Hill & Knowlton Singapore and blogs at http://eok.net