How To Get Blogged About : Top 10 List

Approaching bloggers is totally different to approaching mainstream press. With mainstream press, a press release is standard – but bloggers don’t like to receive the same cookiecutter release you just blasted out. With bloggers you need to handle things a little differently to get blogged, and most of it comes by building a relationship with the blogger you are approaching. Understanding why they blog, and what they blog about is a must before you even start to type them a message. Over at techcrunch.com, there’s a great article on how to get blogged about:

Top Ten Things You Can Do To Get Blogged

1. Build a kick ass company. You can ignore everything else in this post (although you shouldn’t) if you build an awesome web 2.0 company that solves a real problem in an efficient manner.
2. Approach Bloggers Directly. Most bloggers have email and other contact information up on their site (email: editor@techcrunch, GoogleTalk:techcrunch, Skype:marrington). Use it to contact them directly with your thoughts.
3. Be Persistent. We are all busy. Emails get pushed down in the inbox and forgotten. Send a reminder or two and try to get a conversation going. Don’t be defensive when you are asked hard questions.
4. Start a Blog. This is important for multiple reasons. First, it is an easy way for bloggers to see what you’ve done over time. It is also a good way for bloggers to find out about new releases and milestones via your RSS feed. Most company blogs have only a few subscribers but don’t let this discourage you. Those that have subscribed are keenly interested in what you are doing. It is very likely they have a blog. Make it easy for them and they will post about you.You can also use your blog to promote bloggers who write about you. Other bloggers will see this and want to write about you too.Jeff Jarvis says
   

   In this new world, links are currency. Links grant authority. Links build branding. Links equal value.

   If you don’t have a blog, you don’t even have a wallet, let alone currency. Having a blog gives you a tangible way to say thank you” to bloggers who write about you.

   Encourage your employees to blog too. Go easy on the blogging policy in the early days.

5. Be humble. The more humble you are, the more outstanding I assume your product is. Showmanship often equals desperation.
6. Be confident. Find the right balance with humbleness. Don’t be humble to the point of mumbling or leaving important stuff out.
7. Be descriptive. Tell me what your product does immediately in crisp and interesting prose that is FOA (Free Of Acronyms). FaceBook is a social networking site for college students. Pandora is a music recommendation engine. See? I need more details down the road, but give me something to hold on to before you jump into the cool way you’ve implemented ajax into the FAQs, or whatever.
8. Tell a Story. Bloggers want to tell a story. Help them. Pandora is different because they break down music. Technically interesting! 60% of FaceBook’s users log in daily. wow! Writely is allowing people to visualize a world without thick clients. big story!
9. Don’t hide information. Put your location, contact information, team bios, faqs, blog and other important information up on the site in an easy to find location. Don’t make bloggers look up whois information or read your terms of service (for legal jurisdiction) just to guess your location.
10. Don’t be a Jerk.If someone just won’t write about you, move on to another blogger. Don’t heckle them. If someone does write about you and you don’t like what they say, deal with it by sending an email or leaving a clarifying comment. Don’t attack. Other bloggers will see it and avoid you like the plague.It’s hard to determine tone in a written blurb. Bloggers easily take offense. Think twice before you post something that can be taken the wrong way, and be very quick to apologize if you screw up. Don’t try to explain yourself – just apologize. If you are going to say something nasty or controversial, do it via email, not in a public comment.One example of this came up today. 9rules network has been adding blogs to their network and people have been writing about them. Paul Scrivens doesn’t like the fact that people sometimes refer to 9rules as 9Rules (capital R), and Mike Rundle wrote an arguably condescending post about it today on the 9rules blog that said:
    

    Since our company/service/network is getting links from everywhere nowadays, I wanted to quickly clear up some confusion regarding the name of what it is we’re doing.

    The company is “9rules, Inc.” and the network is “The 9rules Network” or just “9rules.”

    These capital R’s dropped everywhere are making our CEO cry in public, and believe me, that’s not pretty. Lowercase r’s are where its at. Uppercase is for suckers

    The post was picked up by TurboBlogger and BlogHerald and 9rules has been roundly trashed in comments.

    Bad idea. Don’t do stuff like this. Once you have done it, apologize immediately and sincerely.

    I won’t even bring up the Rollyo thing. Perfect example of how poor/hasty communication can hurt a company. Like I said, bloggers are touchy and I’m a blogger. The company handled this the right way and in the end everything was fine.