How To Pitch a Blogger
We source information from blogs – recipes, opinions, news – but did you know you can pitch stories to bloggers just like you to journalists?
The first thing to note when pitching an idea to a blogger is – they aren’t journalists. They have a very personalized medium where they interact with their readers through comments on their blog. So you need to make the contact with them personal.
Sending an irrelevant media release to them is obviously a big no-no but rather than pitching a general release, be sure to make your contact with the blogger a little more personal than you would with a journalist.
Read their blog first, make mention of posts that interested you and if possible make this friendly contact before sending a ‘pitch’ email. You can also start building a relationship with relevant bloggers by posting comments on their blog and engaging with them.
When a relationship has been built, a blogger will generally be more receptive to your ideas. The pitch should be in the form of an email – which needs to be clear and to the point. Busy people do not read long emails, so in the first paragraph clearly outline your idea and why their readers would be interested.
Bloggers won’t always publish a phone number on their site so a follow up phone call is not always possible which is why building the relationship first will usually deliver more promising results than a one-off email pitch.
Obviously if you are asking them to review a product – send them the product but first ask them if they would like to receive it. Blindly sending products in the hope for a review is a waste of time.
To sum it up: The best thing to do first is watch, listen and read what a particular blogger is doing. See what they’re writing about now and in the past, what they’re tweeting about, who they’re chatting with.
Then if you still think your product/service is relevant to the blogger and their readers contact them and arrange for a general chat before going into specifics about your current campaign or pitch.
