Promoting Your Business via Blogs

Promoting your business via blogs is a great way to reach a targeted audience at a place where they are at their most engaged. But how should you go about approaching a blogger in relation to promotion or advertising?

Here are a few points to consider when approaching blogs;

1. Quality not Quantity

Don’t just approach every blog you can find. Consider your product or offering and do some research to find a good fit. Decide who is the target audience for your business and approach blogs that have the correct target audience for your product. Depending on the size of the niche and the number of blogs you may choose to target just one or two leading blogs, or you may choose to target half a dozen. You don’t want saturation: you don’t want the blogger to feel that they are one of many sites promoting the same thing. If you have a very exclusive offer choose one blog and let them know they are the only blog that you have approached.

2. Plan Your Budget

What’s your budget for promotion? At the very least, if you are offering a product to review you need to take into account the trade price or cost of manufacture of the sample, plus the cost of sending it. You might want some promotional materials to offer the blogger too. To develop a longer term relationship with a lead blogger you could send something to say ‘thank you’ for a review. Some bloggers will take advertising or sponsored posts for which you’d need a budget: this can get you coverage on sites that might not review your offering, and/or it can provide a site’s readers with another opportunity to view your message or call to action. People often need to see your promotions more than once before they buy.

3. Do Your Homework

Email your chosen bloggers, keep your first contact brief. Introduce yourself and your business. Demonstrate your knowledge of their blog, don’t say ‘I really like your blog’ or mention the article they posted most recently. Instead describe what you have to offer and refer to the information you have gleaned from your research. Say something like; I noticed you live just outside of Edinburgh and you have a preschooler, I have a four year old myself and know how difficult it is to keep children occupied over the summer and wondered if I could send you my product X to try. I would appreciate any feedback. .

4. Promotional Strategies

Have a specific promotional idea in mind but be open to suggestions. The blogger knows their audience the best and will know what will and will not go down well. If you would like to secure a banner ad on the site say so. Being upfront will make the negotiation process much quicker and easier. Here are some other strategies you may consider. There are big variations in what bloggers are open to so try and figure out what sort of promotions they have done before.

• Unpaid Review – This involves you providing a complimentary product that may be reviewed by the blogger, a positive review can never be guaranteed.

• Sponsored post – You pay the blogger a fee to do a write up on your product or business.

• Competition/Giveaway – You provide a ‘prize’, the blogger carries out the competition on your behalf. You may be required to pay a fee for this. These giveaways can be promoted on the blog, in a newsletter and via social media.

• Banner Ad – A more traditional form of advertising involving displaying a hyperlinked graphic in the sidebar. These are usually sold by the month/quarterly/yearly for varying fees dependent on traffic and other factors.

• Advertorial – You provide an article or feature and pay to have this placed as a post on the blog, usually with links back to your site.

• Newsletter Marketing – Some well established blogs have email lists that may run into the hundreds or thousands. You can pay to have an advert placed in the newsletter to promote or raise awareness for your business.

• Blog Sponsor – This would involve being the sole sponsor of a whole blog, this may include your logo in the header, a banner advert as well as ongoing joint promotions. You would need to have a very close relationship with the blogger and be prepared to pay top dollar for exclusivity.

I hope this guide to promoting via blogs has been useful for you and you might consider how to use blogs as a way to promote your own product or service.