As a blogger and a PR consultant, I’m in an interesting position. I can see how useful it is for companies to have relevant and targeted bloggers writing about their company and products. At the same time as a blogger, it’s really great to receive interesting information from PRs that will help me to write posts that add real value for my readers.

But like David Meerman Scott over at MarcomProfessional I’m a big believer that blogger relations has to be done well to work effectively. Bloggers aren’t like journalists - we are a lot more independent, don’t have set deadlines, write about what ever we like and importantly, we don’t all have a lot of resources.

As a PR professional then, what should you be doing to work effectively with bloggers. Does the standard press release work?

What about as a small business owner, how can you work with bloggers to drive a little traffic to your site, or build a little coverage, interest or awareness of something newsworthy you’ve been doing?

Step 1 - get to know your blogs.

This may seem an obvious point, but it’s strange how many people miss this step. For example, I write about marketing, blogging and web 2.0 stuff mostly, but last year I was approached by a company wanting me to trial a mobile phone and write about it on my blog. First of all, I doubt I’m reaching the right audience and secondly, when are you going to take the phone back, it’s been on my desk for almost 5 months. Had the PR read my blog, they would see that technology reviews are not really my specialism and saved themselves some time and effort. I haven’t even taken the phone out of the box.

On the other hand, a chap from Microsoft sent me some stats about the value of advertising on AdCentre versus Google AdWords which I will be writing about soon. Weloveloval also sent me the results of some research they conducted recently about the value for small businesses of advertising online vs in print. Again, perfect for me and my audience - expect to see that published soon as well.

Step 2 - identify and prioritise

Once you’ve found a handful of blogs writing on your subject area, start to prioritise those which are likely to add the most value to your PR campaign. How do you do that? have a think about:

> PageRank - this is Google’s own score for the importance / relevance of a website. It looks at a number of factors including how many other websites link to the blog - the more of these there are the more likely it will be a valuable blog. The score is available in the Google Tool Bar and goes from 0 to 10 - although there are very few sites on 10.

> Alexa Rank - this is a score that ranks roughly how much traffic websites attract. The lower the Alexa score the more traffic. As an example the BBC has an Alexa Rank of 64 which means it is the 64th most popular website on the (Google comes in at number 38). You can see then that the lower the score the more likely it is the blog gets a lot of traffic. More traffic generally equals more influence.

> Technorati - head to Technorati and search for a blog by name. You will then be able to find a score for the blogs authority - another measure of how many backlinks a blog has, again the higher the score the better.

> Participation - actually head to the site and start to look through the content. Look out for the number and quality of comments the blog receives and how engaged the blogger is with the comments. Consider whether the writing is generally positive or critical and identify if there are adverts on the site other than Google AdWords? Is there a RSS feed published and if so how many people have subscribed?

All of these factors will give you clues as to how popular and influential the blog is.

For some more ideas, head over to Brendan Cooper’s blog and read his excellent post on quick and dirty blog analysis.

Step 3 - participate

Bloggers write to air their opinions, express their feelings and often to make money. The lifeblood of a good blog is the content and the participation it drives with readers.

Once you have identified your top 10 or 20 blogs to work with, start to actually read the content. Add some comments, sign up to the blogs RSS feed, look for flickr streams and twitter feeds from the blogger and start to understand what drives them to write. This will give you a real helping hand for the next step.

Step 4 - engagement

Contact the blogger, have a conversation with them, identify if they are interested in receiving information from you and if so in what format. This doesn’t have to be particularly onerous, a quick email would probably be a good place to start, something like..

Hi Blogger,

I just read your post about the use of chocolate for making a good chilli. I had no idea you could use chocolate in such a way.

I’m working with Cadbury’s and would be really interested in hearing some more about your ideas for using chocolate in innovative recipes. Would you be happy to have a chat at some stage? I would really like to keep you up to date with the latest chocolate ingredients we’re making..?

Or something along those lines…

If you are a small business, you might even offer to write a couple of posts for the blog. This is of course a little more than PR, but I for one would be happy to add a couple of guest writers to my blog every now and again.

And there you have it, a really simple explanation of how to manage blog PR / outreach programmes. Remember, the most popular blogs may not always be the easiest to influence. You really should consider reaching out to a mix of blogs, perhaps tiering them based on the factors above. Given that people read blogs in different ways to journals, newspapers or other print materials, you don’t necessarily have to reach out to the biggest blogs to make a difference. TechCrunch would be great, but a handful of other smaller blogs may make an equally impressive impact.

Of course, if you need a more robust programme, have some budget and tougher targets to reach, you could always engage a new media PR professional. Check out Grapevine Consulting or Shiny Red.

A couple of weeks ago I attended an Own-IT event all about the legal side to blogging. I was introduced to the event by Improbulus and a huge thanks there as it turned out to be a very educational evening.

It started with a presentation from Dan at MindCandy and then moved on to a chap called Robert Lands from legal firm Finers Stephens Innocent LLP . (Incidentally Robert, the invitation to speak at the London Bloggers Meetup still stands. If you’re interested do please let me know when you’re available).

I found Robert’s presentation very engaging and his relaxed style made it easy listening. No disrespect to the legal profession, but they are not known for their humour..

So what are the top 10 tips I took away from Robert’s presentation**

2. Yes you can get fired if you blog about your job, employer or other employees, even if you change the names involved. If it’s possible for readers to interpret what you’ve written as being about your employer, you’ve had it.. and there are plenty of examples of this.

3. As a blogger you are seen by the law as a professional journalist and publisher. Therefore anything you write about a person or company in a defamatory way leaves you open to being sued for libel (this is more relevant in the UK than the US as apparently we have tighter controls on freedom of speech).

4. If your server is in India how can I be sued by someone in the US? Well it seems you can, the law of the land where your media is consumed is most important. So in the understanding that nobody knows the laws of every land, you might want to add a ‘terms of use’ page to your site stating something like ‘if you read this blog you agree to be bound by the laws of (your home country)…..’ or words to that effect. Contact your local legal beagle for advice on this, or if you’re in the UK contact Finers Stephens Innocent LLP.http://www.fsilaw.com/.

5. If someone takes a disliking to the content on your blog / web 2.0 site, probably the first you will know about it is when you get a letter asking you to take down the content. It might help to have a page on your site with “Notice and Take Down Policies” i.e. telling people how you will deal with any complaint.

6. With copyright, you can get done for linking to a site that infringes someone else’s copyright. Incredible if you ask me, but I don’t set the rules. So be careful what content and blogs you link to as they may be putting you at risk. It’s called ‘making available’.

7. Don’t ever blog about the intellectual property you are generating at work e.g. technology you are developing for your employer, or content you are writing. This will land you in hot water as they will own all this content and you giving it away is not a good thing. Equally, make sure your own employees know your policy here.

8. If you are publishing content written by others, either who you have paid or not, make it clear who owns the content. Get it down on paper with each writer to avoid any problems later on with intellectual property rights.

9. If you write about a company don’t be tempted to include a copy of their logo in your post (I’ve done this a lot). If the company doesn’t like your content you could be done for things like Dilution of the brand, or incorrect usage of a Trade Mark.

10. remember, you are seen by the law as a professional journalist, so you should be prepared to be treated as one. Get some legal advice or do some research so you understand your legal position, before it’s too late.

So there you go. If you haven’t realised why I started on point 2, it’s because point 1. is below. Hope all that was helpful.

** disclaimer. These comments do not constitute legal advice and you should consult a qualified legal practitioner before using any of this advice (point number 1. do not offer advice you are not qualified to give..)

Don’t you hate it when you have a LOT of good ideas for blog posts, but without the time to write them up..? Well, that’s been the case for me so far in January. In fact I’ve only made a lousy 3 posts.

It got me to thinking about how important it is to set the expectations of my loyal readers (..?). Just like when you have clients and customers who get accustomed to a certain level of service, you have to keep it up, or at least manage the process of changing that level of service.

So, to set your expectations, I am going to write the following blog posts in the next two weeks:

• a round-up of the next London Bloggers Meetup - yes it is tomorrow and yes it is going to be great!

• a summary of all the other promises I’ve made on this blog - think back to subliminal advertising, reader polls and more,

• 5 Top New Year Business Boosters (yes that’s right, you can see that idea has been lingering for a while),

• a review of the excellent Own-IT event I attended recently.

So there you go. Now you know what’s coming, your expectations are set, and I can carry on happily neglecting my blog for another couple of days..

All the best!
Andy

In the past year or two there’s been plenty of talk about the value of blogging for business, with plenty of positive and negative sentiment. My own opinion, not biased at all by the fact that I write a couple of blogs, is that they’re fantastic for businesses.

Why do I think this, well a couple of reasons off the top of my head:

• blogs open up a manageable two way dialogue with customers, creating an open relationship and possibly even community,

• blogs are quick and easy to setup and present a cheap way for small businesses to develop a web presence,

• blogs are great for search engine optimisation i.e. improving your search rankings and attracting traffic,

• blogs provide a creative outlet for your employees to show the human side of your business,

• blogs are great public relations tools where you get to control the message.

But it seems I’m not the only one who thinks this. A recent article on Startups.co.uk also supports the value of blogs, referencing case studies like Stormhoek Wines - check out their guide to blogging - and a handful of others.

I had intended to post the link up here but for the life of me I can’t find it, but why not check out www.startups.co.uk anyway, it’s full of very useful advice for entrepreneurs.

If you’re new to blogging or want to find out more, why not come along to the London Bloggers Meetup for some inspiration! Or instead just get started with a blog at www.wordpress.org.