So How DO You Pitch a Blogger?

by Mack Collier

One of the highlights for me, as a blogger, during last week's Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference in Houston, came when Jennifer Laycock instructed the attendees on the proper way to 'pitch' a blogger.  As a blogger that has received hundreds if not thousands of horrible pitches over the last 3 years, it was music to my ears!

For some reason, PR firms, agencies, companies, and even other bloggers, take something as simple as a pitch, and often find every reason to make me not to want to write about the item they are pitching.   Many refer to me as 'Blogger', or not at all.  Often a press release is sent with no explanation for why I should care. 

I am going to plagiarize heavily from Jennifer's presentation simply because she did such a good job, but here's my criteria for pitching bloggers:

1 - Refer to me by my name.  It is 'Mack'.  Not Mark, not Matt, and not 'Blogger'.  Any pitch that doesn't refer to me by my correct name is deleted immediately without being read.

2 - Do NOT simply send me a press release.  I also delete these instantly.

3 - Read my blog.  If you read my blog, then you already know whether or not your pitch is relevant to me.  And don't try to fake it because we will figure it out as David Armano did when he received a pitch from someone claiming to be a regular reader of his Logic + Emotion blog:

4 - Before you send the pitch, ask yourself 'Why should he/she care?'.  If your answer is 'because this campaign rules!', then don't send the pitch.  If your answer is 'Because this campaign is a great example of empowering customer evangelists, and since Mack blogs about customer evangelism often, he'll likely be interested', then you've done your homework, and should send the pitch.

5 - Make every effort to establish relationships with bloggers BEFORE you pitch them.  The simple fact is that I don't have enough time to respond to most pitches, even if I want to.  Right now I actually have 3 good pitches that I want to write about, but don't have the time (and it's rare to have one).  But the one I will make a point to follow up on came from Tara Anderson, who is the Community Catalyst for Lijit. 

Several days ago, Tara, who I met in NYC a few weeks ago at Blogger Social, sent me an excellent email pitch for Lijit.  She opened her email by referencing our brief meeting at Blogger Social.  Then she briefly mentioned that she'd like to talk to me more about Lijit and better explain what it's all about.  Then she closed by telling me to enjoy my trip to Houston (For Small Business Marketing Unleashed), and to tell Jennifer Laycock that she said hello (Tara says hello, BTW Jennifer!).  Now by mentioning my trip to Houston, that tells me that she reads my blog, because I posted multiple times earlier this month that I was going to Houston for SBMU. 

So I'll be checking out Lijit, because Tara gave me an excellent pitch. 

The bottom line is, be considerable when you pitch bloggers.  Understand that we little time for pitches to begin with, so if you do pitch us, make sure it's a good and relevant pitch.  If it's not, we definitely won't blog about you, and if it's bad enough, we might just blog about your crappy pitch on our blog, Chris Anderson even called out hundreds of bad pitchers on his blog, and blocked them ALL!

Be considerable, respect us and our time, show us that you actually read our blog, and we'll do our best to blog about you.

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