Thorny path? Yeah. Minefield? Not so much. But there are some things to know ... and I'm capturing the tips as they come (and I know I've missed a few ... so readers, pls fill in the gaps). Janet, Buzz, and Halley are on stage.
Don'ts ...
- Send irrelevant material to me to write about.
- Send materials without links to what you want me to write abot
- Send a huge, detailed e-mail for me to read about you want me to write about
- Send my an 8 meg PDF about your product (at least without warning)
Do's
-
Read the blog for about a month to get to know them ... do your homework.
- Tools, RSS aggregator
- Be honest why you're asking for my help
- Remember this, bloggers are people, we do have lives (sometimes even outside of blogging ... which is an odd concept, I'm not sure that it is ;-) ).
- Read the comments on blogs in your topic area too ... you can find smart people who are talking about your topic too
- Build real relationships with bloggers. You have no idea how valuable this can be for you
- Follow your company on the blogosphere so you can find the good and bad stuff ... fast (hint use RSS)
- Be customer sensitive
Jim Turner turned to me just now "This is the best session so far ..." Hmm maybe he write a post ... oh yeah the power cord on his laptop is wonky and he can't fully charge it.
The Blogosphere is free market intelligence and focus group (Dave talked about this too) ... you need to leverage this (see point 6 above under Do's).
Halley: RSS hasn't been discovered ... yeah, totally. Aggregators are just getting to the point of baby steps. Mitch Ratcliffe has a great post on this part of the talk too.
Tags: BBS, BBS06, blogger engagement