Blogger Outreach Program

One of the most exciting and overlooked marketing tactics is to generate crusaders for your product or service. And you "get crusaders" through bloggers. Reaching out to bloggers is not the same as "running a blog." A Blogger Outreach Campaign continually feeds post ideas (or fodder) to influential bloggers.

There are influential bloggers in every industry. By successfully getting a popular blogger who writes about products or services in your industry to "highlight" or mention your company, you can reach thousands of their readers. Many of these readers (of the blog) are key influencers in the industry. Perhaps some of their readers even include your employees?

In some cases, a blog in your industry may receive more readers and appear higher in the search engine results than a traditional news organization.

Appealing to bloggers is an easy win. These bloggers are hungry for "fodder" to add to their blog.

Companies make a mistake by treating bloggers the same as every other consumer. Reaching out to bloggers can be as simple as assuring they receive your news releases.

A more extensive program would assure influential bloggers receive advance notice of new product releases or new happenings associated with your company - before anyone else.

Meeting Bloggers Face-to-Face

I advocate meeting bloggers face-to-face when possible. Conferences and trade shows (that your staff already attend) are a perfect opportunity to give special attention to bloggers who attend the event. Instead of only having your staff stand behind a table or trade show booth, offer a hospitality suite (or any other chance to meet) and invite bloggers who attend the trade show. This meeting gives your staff a chance to demonstrate your company's product or service to these influential bloggers... to give them special attention. Think of a special event for bloggers as being similar to a news press conference.

In some cases, my company has paid for bloggers to travel and attend a trade show.

Bloggers may become great champions and crusaders of your product after the event. Your company's message can reach a lot more people beyond the number who can be reached at the trade show alone.

How to Find Influential Bloggers

A key challenge is to discover which bloggers have the most readers. You do not want to focus your efforts on bloggers who only have a handful of readers per month.

I research the "players" in an industry and locate the bloggers who reach the most readers in your industry.

TIP: Chances are, your employees have the most appropriate bloggers in your industry bookmarked or favorited in their Internet browsers. The trick is to obtain this information from your employees.