Blah, blah blah. So many PR blogs tell you what to do. Do this, don’t do that. Can’t you read the signs? I thought this was a conversation after all.
I’ve got a better idea. Rather than lecture to you, I want to know what you’d do in a a couple of hypothetical situations. I want to know how you’ll engage with me. Well, me and some others.
I’ve compiled profiles of three separate social media ‘influencers.’ These are based on real people, with enough details changed to protect the innocent (and for transparency’s sake, one of them is based on a friend of mine.) Here’s the catch: none of the following details are available in the person’s ‘about me’ section. The only way you’d know any of this is if you’d read each person’s blog, news feed, or Twitter stream; or otherwise engaged that person in conversation. And all of this information will be pertinent to how you talk to each person. When someone says ‘I want a list of mum bloggers I can spam,’ this is the key component they’re missing. So now you get to fill in the gaps.
Think of it as a workbook exercise. Leave your thoughts in the comments. Ready? Here we go.
- Justin
- I’m Justin. I just turned 30, am a lifelong Democrat, married but have no children. I hold a college degree and enjoy drinking wine. I regularly go camping and hiking, I like horror movies and I travel a bit for my job and for fun.
In addition to my personal blog,I run a video blog about video games. My relatively new YouTube channel has received more than 100,000 views in just a few months. My reviews and commentary are often picked up on other, older video game blogs that have a much higher readership than my own personal blog. My combination of humor and ‘insightful’ (according to someone else) views on the video game industry have earned me many loyal followers.
How would you engage me?
Victoria
- I’m Victoria. I run one of the oldest blogs in my city – can you believe I’ve been writing since 1997, more than 10 years?! Over that time, I’ve built up a loyal following hundreds of thousands strong. I am quite active in the local community, attending events for bloggers and Twitter meet-ups. I’m unmarried, in my 40s and black (in the UK, we can’t really say ‘African-American,’ nor would we!) I vocally opposed a recent run by a Tory mayoral candidate in my city who ended up winning the election.
I write about a variety of issues affecting the city, offering a wry commentary and peppering my posts with pictures I take myself. Although my blog is not nominally about technology, I have been known to write about various kinds of tech products from time to time.
How would you engage me?
Cindy
- I’m Cindy. I run a blog about domestic violence issues, both reporting on developments in my country and documenting major court cases. I myself am a survivor of domestic violence and blog primarily to encourage other victims to seek assistance. I’m an immigrant here, and English is my secondary language. My blog has become a major resource for people worldwide, and my calls for action have raised thousands for victim recovery programs.
I have written several times about not trusting PR agencies as they often have hidden agendas. However they must be looking at my readership numbers (more than 100,000 per month now!) because I’m getting more and more pitches all the time, especially for things I don’t care about. Why would I want to know about a new sports car anyway??
I will only listen to someone who has something I’m genuinely interested in, and if you don’t respect that, I’ll probably post your name, email address, phone number and anything else potentially embarrassing in your email.
How would you engage with me?
Save on Del.icio.us
Digg this
Google Bookmarks
My Yahoo
Facebook
Subscribe
Posts
Comments (4)
This post hits the critical target of any engagement strategy. With the right tools you can get to know those talking about your brands and reputations before you reach out them.The first rule of engagement is to know the person on the other end of the conversation.
We are in the social media monitoring space and we provide a lot of meta data that can help you parse this 'hidden' information. You can listen, then drill down via categories, keywords and analysis tools that provide sentiment, gender, location, age and authority. These tools help you build a profile of important influencers quickly.
Posted by Martin Edic | October 20, 2008 2:18 PM
Posted on October 20, 2008 14:18
What is your definition of engage?
Meaning how do these people keep my attention with their profiles?
Or things that bind me with the blogger/profile with similar interests?
Posted by Nick Schmidt | October 20, 2008 3:59 PM
Posted on October 20, 2008 15:59
Martin: I guess the point of this post was to emphasize the need to know the people to whom you're engaging 'beyond the lists.' There are nuances that simple statistics do not convey, and frankly there is absolutely no substitute for reading blogs on your own.
Lists may be good as a starting point but after that, I would encourage any PR practitioner to read blogs, click through links, and still go beyond to get to know targets before they outreach - rather than just emailing a database without putting in the legwork to get to know each and every person they intend to contact.
Nick: I suppose for us engagement is beginning and maintaining conversations with people who may be interested in our clients. I intentionally left out a key component of this post: the account or client or product that you might want to contact these bloggers about. Ideally this would be an ongoing relationship where the blogger or influencer could contact the PR professional with questions when they arose, and the PR professional could offer the blogger or influencer information he or she thought they'd be interested in, whether it's on an ongoing basis for one or two accounts (an ideal situation in my opinion!) or with several clients on smaller campaigns.
Posted by Jason Mical | October 22, 2008 2:40 PM
Posted on October 22, 2008 14:40
Assuming your goal for all three influencers is to build a preliminary relationship, get the conversation going and/or at least get your future emails read, here's what I'd do:
Justin - Regardless of what you'd eventually like to talk to Justin about (hiking equipment, new horror movie, etc.), make the first conversation about him. Send him an email calling out a recent video game blog post you liked and share your own personal perspective on the topic (you could also do this in the comments section first).
Your note needs to be more than "Hey, I like your blog! Great post about the Mega Man series. Now about me..." Flattery is nice, but smart people would much prefer real discourse, so do some research beforehand if you're not a video game native (you're already at the computer). Follow the same rule he does when posting - be interesting/relevant or be gone.
Closing the email, disclose who you work for but don't ask anything of him, unless you truly believe your client's product/service would be of immediate value. This is just a handshake, after all. Bloggers get tons of emails every day, but very few are personal and relevant ones from real people. So sit back and wait patiently for the reply, and keep reading.
Victoria - all of the above, but you need to add value right from the beginning. Send her an article or nugget that she hasn't already uncovered to spark conversation ("Also - did you see this? Thought you might find it an interesting contrast to your article on the recent election...") When recommending tech products, get to the point. ("I noticed you're taking a lot of low-light photos at evening events - you might want to check out XXX, whom I represent. It's a bit lighter than most SLRs but has a wider ISO range...etc.")
Cindy - Tread very lightly, obviously. Instead of pitching her a product, ask for her opinions and insights, and show that you listened. Find a way to help her achieve her goals.
Posted by Will Zweigart | November 9, 2008 4:25 PM
Posted on November 9, 2008 16:25