courtesy Francesco Marino
Presently, I am a big fan of the LinkedIn social business network. On LinkedIn I like to participate in the Answers section. This is a great way to crowd-source your knowledge with other LinkedIn users, prep for interview questions, and understand the possible complexities of Internet marketing by watching the give and take reactions of your professional network or groups.
Recently, I answered a question correctly. This was a great question. I thought I would share it on my blog and expand on some of my answers. Special thanks and kudos goes to Natalia in Seattle for asking the question.
The question: We are presently creating specialized Facebook Fan Pages for the housebuilding industry and want realty/housebuilding bloggers to conduct reviews of our fan pages. How would you go about doing this?
Many companies entering the social media are faced with this situation everyday. How to digital seduce or drive bloggers to view, engage and review their product or expertise. Some bloggers, especially influential bloggers, can be “seduced” by offering special first looks of a product, or allowed to interview the creator of new idea of thought leadership. If a business has the money, they can always offer to sponsor a blogger’s website or pay the blogger for a posting. Often, influential bloggers are very busy people and will not often return your correspondence. Presently, new legislation about blogger endorsements went into effect and are still very hazy.
Most on-line bloggers are made of a mixed group of personalities with various styles. Blogging types are beginning, influential, specialty, thought leadership, evangelists/detractors, critics, connecting, problem solving, watchdog, and corporate. These blogging personalities blog frequently, motivated toward attracting new views/friends of the website, and building influence with on-line participants by introducing and sharing new concepts, experiences, and technologies.
So how does John Q. Citizen make contact with on-line bloggers to try to induce them to write about a product, experience, or new concept?
Remember this line every time you are searching and interacting with bloggers (this can be applied to various media agencies): Bloggers are content driven individuals and they are running on the content treadmill . You have the content they are looking for, suggest how your product or expertise will benefit their past and present blogging endeavor.
Here are some ideas to find bloggers to review your product or expertise!
- Do you know what keywords are generally used to describe your industry? You will need to find this out. Keywords will tell you how people are searching for items of interest in a particular industry. Also, keywords will allow you to notice present and upcoming trends in your industry. Present and new bloggers may Search Engine Optimize their sites around general, specific keywords and local geographies. Consider these type of organic searches using Yahoo, or keyword suggestion sites like Wordtracker .
- There is a very strong possibility that many of your friends of followers on Facebook could be blogging. If asked, they could point the way toward bloggers who may be interested in your content or product. Ditto for Twitter.
- Check on-line blog search engines to find and track these keywords. Also, remember to add words based around your targeted localities. Examples of blog search engines are Technorati , Google blogsearch , and IceRocket .
- Check on-line event management websites: Upcoming and Eventful . They will give you ideas for both general and specific events to attend. Attend events of interest and ask at the event about any bloggers writing in your targeted industry locally.
- Many listings exist for bloggers. For national listings, try SourceWatch . Also, many regional weblog directories exist. These listings are not updated by search engines but updated by the actual bloggers themselves. These listings may not be complete.
- Actively leave comments on blogs you follow or RSS. Remember to leave your website address if it pertains to the subject matter being discussed on the blog or in the comment thread. Watch who comments on your favorite blogs. Bloggers like to leave comments on blogs. You may be in luck and follow links back to the blogger you are seeking.
- Join social bookmarking, specialized social news sites, or social sharing sites. These sites are often keyword or tag based. Blog articles or postings, and news stories appear on these sites. These postings and stories are often recommended by on-line readers or fans. Use these sites frequently, they will point toward bloggers one is seeking and possibly any competitor activities.Delicious for social bookmarking and StumbleUpon for a social sharing site. Depending on the business category look for specialized social news sites like the one I suggested on LinkedIn.
When you find the right blogger….
To be continued next week! Please come back!
