blogger outreach

Expanding Your Outreach Campaigns Beyond the Blogger, Part 1

June 29, 2012 by Kari Rippetoe

You may have read an awful lot about blogger outreach campaigns – how to build one, tools to find bloggers, etc. A blogger outreach campaign can indeed be an effective complement to your existing marketing efforts. It can help you identify new customer segments, build relationships, and reach new prospective customers. But if you’re just focused on bloggers, you may be missing a some crucial pieces to the outreach puzzle.

As we like to say here at Tuvel, our outreach campaigns go “beyond the blogger.” The research we do before launching an outreach campaign digs deep to find marketing channels that reach potential customers where they hang out online. Think about your customers and where they might be searching for information on your product, company or event. Sure, they’ll be reading blogs; but they may also be looking in other places:

Forums: Forums are certainly not dead yet! They were social media before Twitter and Facebook came along, and there are still many active online forums going strong. If your company is in the technology industry, for example, you should definitely take the time to identify the non-corporate support forums out there where thousands of your customers are discussing your products.

E-mail Discussion Lists: Yes, these are still going strong too. In fact, I’m a member of a very active and useful e-mail list, DC Web Women. These can be great for campaigns focused on specific topics, such as advocacy campaigns. By reaching out to list moderators to educate them about your cause and provide them with useful content, you can build valuable relationships that lead to fruitful discussions.

User Groups: Again, if you’re in the tech industry, it would behoove you to identify the top user groups for your products or related products and look for ways to build mutually-beneficial relationships. Many user groups offer discounts and free product trials to their members that have been provided by corporate sponsors. You may also be interested in presenting at meetings of local user groups to introduce your company and products to them.

Newsletters: Almost every industry has professional associations, societies and communities – many of which communicate with members with regular e-newsletters. Look for opportunities to provide information to those groups that can be included in their next newsletter, but make sure you understand what kind of content they would want to include first. If possible, find an archived copy on their website. Then, approach the editor with content they would be interested in.

In the next post, I’ll be giving you some tools and tips for finding and reaching out to contacts within these marketing channels.

What’s the Definition of Value?

May 31, 2012 by Mitch Arnowitz

Earlier this week, I participated in a Facebook discussion kicked off by Toby Bloomberg, the Marketing Diva. In addition to Toby, other way bright people in the conversation included B.L. Ochman. If you don’t already know who these fine folks are, make it your business to do so!

Turns out that Toby, an influential blogger, received an email from the PR Director of a major brand asking her to support their latest campaign. The discussion thread covered areas like pay-to-play and bad PR pitches. But, the part of the conversation that caught my eye was the definition of perceived value. Not value to the brand or PR Director sending Toby the note, but how the blogger or person receiving the communication defines value.

We execute influencer outreach campaigns on behalf of clients and sometimes reach out to bloggers. We don’t typically begin a conversation asking someone to support our brand or cause. Rather, we try to find out what turns the reader on, where the value is for them – usually referred to as the Whats In It For Me. Sometimes the value is not a free pass or sample! A free trial download may be valuable to our client, but may not be valuable to the person that they’re trying to impact. Instead, value may be defined as access, education or an audience.

Recognition of community participation on a leaderboard can be an example of value, demonstrated by the rise of social gamification. As these dated (but still on-point) articles detail, value to some customers can be offering product input or even involvement in product creation. Having said all of that, sometimes people do want dollars off!

On the Internet, beauty truly lies in the eyes of the beholder. While the end game may be brand support or sales, experience has taught us that the reception of our campaigns is greater when the focus isn’t solely on the client brand. It has to be about the people.

The other interesting issue discussed in this thread was relationship-building. B.L. Ochman nailed it when she said “we’d like you to support our brand” is like saying “can we pick your brain.” In other words, building relationships by focusing on the other persons needs is a good place to start. You may not always be able to deliver, but listening goes a long way.

But enough about us. How do you define value?

What We’re Reading, July 29th: The Too Damn Hot Edition

July 29, 2011 by Kari Rippetoe

It’s hot…damn hot. And while you may not be able to avoid going outside, at least we can provide you with some insightful posts to keep you inside and in the A/C a little longer. Hey, if you keep reading you might even get some free JELL-O Pudding out of it!

Research: 2/3 of CMOs Prefer Working With Smaller Firms from PRNewser: If you’re shopping for a marketing firm, take note of this research – it illustrates the value that smaller shops can bring in the form of client service and intimate partnerships.
The 9 Creative Uses for Google+ Hangouts You Didn’t Think Of from Business Insider: We haven’t tried Hangouts yet, but thanks to this article we can definitely see the potential!
Google+ Tips: Where to Begin and How to Share Content Quickly While Mobile from HuffPost Tech: For those just getting started with Google+, our friend Chris Rauschnot shares his tips for success – both at your desk and on the go.
How to Incorporate Influencers Into Content Marketing from Content Marketing Institute: Outreach is just one part of influencer marketing. This post from Amanda Maksymiw of Openview Venture Partners provides some tips for integrating influencer and content marketing to build your content program.
What Klout is Really Good For… from Never Stop Marketing: Speaking of influencers, the takeaway here is that community trumps influence.
HOW TO: Utilize Social Data More Effectively from Mashable: If you’re only using the data mined from social media to measure the success of your efforts, you’re not leveraging it in the best way. This post from Nate Elliot of Forrester Research talks about why.

And now, some fun stuff (as if social media wasn’t enough fun):

JELL-O Offers Free Pudding to World’s Saddest Tweeters from SocialTimes: With all the economic woe in the world right now, it’s easy to get a little depressed. But JELL-O wants to help turn those frowns upside-down by giving free pudding to people tweeting with frowny emoticons ( 🙁 ). Now if only the U.S. government could pay its debt in pudding…
Alex Trebek Chases Suspected Burglar, Inspiring Awful ‘Jeopardy!’ Jokes from NYTimes.com: IBM’s Watson may have beat the Jeopardy Grand Champion, but let’s see it do this.

And remember how hot we said it was? Here in DC, it was actually hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk: