First and foremost, dear readers, I am so very sorry for being late in publishing your comments from the past few days. I wasn't ignoring you, nor was I deathly ill, nor feeling lazy. Typepad stopped sending me notification emails to approve the comments, and since I wasn't checking the admin board, I had no idea there were any new comments. (I'm working on trying to fix that)
So today I thought I'd share a little piece of advice to the Internet marketers out there, especially the ones targeting travel/international blogs such as this one. While some of this may seem obvious, you'd be amazed by some of the emails I get. I'm not a big time blogger like Dooce or Kibe Loco, but what I lack in big reader numbers I make up for in reader quality (oh yes, I do love you guys!)
Here it goes:
1. Look up the blogger's name. I will always read through an email if a person bothers to look up my first name, which is not that difficult to find, but when I see, all too often, that the person hasn't bothered (i.e. "Hello!" "Greetings!") I instantly lose interest.
2. Send a sample of the product, if possible. If it's a TV show, send a clip or a link. If it's a blog, post more than one link. You have to make sure the blogger has to do as little work as possible to see whatever it is you want him/her to see. It should be right there, in his/her face.
3. Prove you've actually taken time to read the blog. I received a lovely email awhile back from a woman at Lijit after I added the search tool to my blog (you can now search my blog for old posts or whatever topic you're interested in! See the column on the right, under the archives). She told me about her favorite posts and wished me luck on my job hunt, clearly showing she'd looked through the blog. It makes all the difference in the world.
4. Compliment. Brown nosing is one thing, but throwing in a compliment or two always helps butter up a blogger. That's what we love most, and it never hurts to hear. But make sure it's honest and sensible, or else it's just obnoxious.
5. Produce a great product. Some of the things I have raved about the most have been sent to me by readers or friends, or things I've discovered myself. Ultimately, if your product is something that fits a certain blogger's profile, he/she is going to love it and embrace it without any help from a marketer. The key to getting bloggers to promote something is making sure you create a quality product that they somehow find out about. The Internet works in different ways than traditional marketing, and word of mouth is a great tool for Internet marketing, be it through Twitter or Facebook. If the product's great but the email is terrible, the blogger may not even look at the product. If you're not great at emails, you have to get the blogger's attention through other means.
all good hints - taking the time to just address people by name is so huge. Thanks for posting these!
(btw we're fixing the thing with the comment notification emails ASAP. Sorry about that!)
Posted by: Ginevra | October 06, 2009 at 04:38 PM