How to Suck Up to a Blogger

Blogging has flipped traditional PR on its head. It used to be that ink begat buzz. Life was simple then: you sucked up to the Wall Street Journal, one of its reporters wrote about your product, and the buzz began.

(Here’s a collection of great speeches about the state of the art of blogging, courtesy of Garr Reynolds of Presentation Zen. In particular, check out Robert Scoble’s and Hugh Macleod’s sessions.*)

Nowadays buzz begets ink. Journalists no longer anticipate or create buzz—rather, they react to it: “Everyone is buzzing about FaceBook. There must be something to this, so I had better write a story about it.” This role reversal has fried people’s minds.

The latest development is that blogs beget buzz. Blogs have changed everything because they represent a cheap, effective podium for creating buzz on a massive scale. Technorati provides an easy way to identify the A-listers, so all you have to do is attract the most influential bloggers. Here is a guide to the process.

1. Create a great product. There is a big catch to this democratization of buzz creation: Bloggers have a very low tolerance for bull shitake, even lower than journalists do because bloggers seldom rely on editors to “cleanse” their writing. It’s easy to say you’re going after bloggers, but this assumes that they’ll like your product or service. The most important thing you can do to attract them is to create a great (DICEE) product.

2. Cite and link. “Linking is the sincerest form of flattery.” Imitation no longer sits atop this throne. It’s hard to trash a company, product, service, or person that links to your blog. Personally, I’ve never met a person who linked to my blog that I didn’t like. :-)

3. Stroke them. If you want to supplement citing and linking, you can send the blogger emails with these kinds of messages:

• “I love how your style sheets cascade.”
• “I set my RSS reader to refresh your blog every five minutes.” (contributed by Alex Krupp)
• “Not a day goes by that I don’t read your blog.”
• “Why don’t you publish your blog in a book?”
• “You could easily break up your daily entries into several parts because they have so much content.”
• “I’ve forwarded your blog to many of my friends.”
• “I ‘digg’ your blog almost every day.”
• “I don’t care how often my RSS reader gets your edited versions because your blog is so insightful.”

However, marketers are already inundating popular bloggers with such pablum. To break through the noise, you need to craft a compliment about a specific entry. For example, “I found your entry about rainmaking to be very helpful, and I’d like to make you aware of a new customer relationship management software product that we make.”

At the very least, per the suggestion of Jason Pettus, make sure that you read the blogger’s site. Many marketers begin with such a generic pitch that the blogger can tell he hasn’t even read the blog.

4. Give schwag. In case you hadn’t noticed, most bloggers don’t make a lot of money from their blogging efforts. Thus, samples of your product, t-shirts, tickets to the Stanley Cup Finals, etc can go a long way. I’m not saying you can buy bloggers, but you can make them happy pretty easily. Dollar for dollar, schwag for bloggers is one of the best marketing investments.

5. Make connections before you need them. Mediocre marketers try to befriend bloggers when they need them. Good marketers befriend bloggers before they need them. Great marketers have befriended bloggers while they were working at their previous companies. I learned this lesson well before the advent of blogs: the press connections that I made while employed by Apple have lasted twenty years. Also, make lots of connections. Today’s egocentric, self-indulgent blogger with five page views per day may well be tomorrow’s Technorati 100 stud. As my mother used to say, “You can never know too many bloggers or have too hard a slap shot.”

If you’d like to hear how friendly a conversation can be with a journalist, please click here. This is my unedited interview with Moira Gunn, the goddess of NPR’s Tech Nation. The interview was eventually heard by twenty five million people.

6. Be responsive. This is a common-sense “duhism” that is violated almost every day: If you want buzz, you have to return the phone calls and emails of bloggers. You are operating on their schedule; they are not operating on yours, so get used to it. Sure, if you’re a Steve Jobs, you can make the rules, but until you reach his level, you have to play by the rules.

7. Use a rifle, not a shotgun. Any company that carpet bombs bloggers should be shot. The effect is the same as sending two dozen people the same email requesting help. Not only will this approach fail, bloggers will conclude that you’re a bozo to boot. Your job is to find out exactly who you are relevant to. It is not the blogging community’s job to sort through your bull secretion.

8. Be a foul weather friend. Anyone can be friendly, happy, and available when times are good. The big test occurs when the weather turns foul: your company screws up, or the blogger writes something negative (justified or not). When this happens, some companies erect barriers and hunker down—a big mistake. Also, you should never, ever lie to a blogger. If you screw up, admit it. If you can’t admit that you screwed up, then at least signal that you know you screwed up by telling the blogger “I can’t answer that” with a wink.

9. Be a source. Face it: there are times when your company simply isn’t worthy of coverage. Don’t take your ball and go home. Instead, “pay it forward” and help the blogger with her entry by acting as a source of information, by introducing her to other sources, and by offering insightful analyses. The next time, you may be the subject of the blog, not just a source.

* This is an excellent example of sucking up. :-)

Addendum 1: Make connections after you need them too. Geekzone pointed this out. Let’s say you’re successful, and your great product has garnered the attention of bloggers. This doesn’t mean you can rest; instead, keep working the relationships because you’ll need these connections again. Even if you didn’t garner any attention, keep at it for the next time you need help.

Sucking up is not an event—it’s a process.

Addendum 2: Pitch reporters through their blogs. This excellent tip comes from Jason Baxter. He makes the observation that it’s often difficult to pitch journalists “through the front door” of their big-time publication. However, many journalists have their personal blogs, and they are much more accessible through these than through their “day job” publications.

Comments

[Gavin Clarke]

Guy’s checklist is essentially a list of best practice in how to deal with traditional media (off-line pubs) and the old new media (newswires), updated to take into account Web 2.0 concepts such as linking.

These are the kind of practices that distinguishes a PR or marketing person who can successfully deal with the press from a PR or marketing person who gets the brush off.

For example: use a “rifle not a shot gun?” Combine that with Guy’s tip to “make sure you read the bloggers site” rather than posting a generic pitch and suddenly you are sounding like a PR person who reads a news publication and tailors their overall pitch to the needs of that particular title before approaching the journalist.

The industry has convinced itself a lost Holy Grail exists on pitching bloggers, when all it need do is go back to the basics - with some suitable updates.

[jammy]

awesome is the word mate...

[Gautam]

Hi Guy

I had someone leave a comment on my blog signed "guy kawasaki" ! Was that really you??

regards
Gautam

[Steve]

Pathetic. You PR clowns are shameless whores devoid of any ounce of self-respect. Tell me, do you even remember anymore where your garbage ends and you begin?

[steve]

My two blogs are 620,491 (http://betahat.com/blog) and 498,378 (http://salemfood.blogspot.com) right now. You better begin sucking up soon! I could hit 450,000!

:) Awesome post

[olivier blanchard]

It's so interesting to think that we've gotten to the point (already) where people need advice on how to deal/work/collaborate with bloggers. :)

[vinnie mirchandani]

Bad advice... As a Gartner analyst I could not handle all the sucking up...now as a lonely blogger I could not handle any of the traffic!

Besides, vendors need to suck up to buyers (and if private VCs). That's mother's milk...analysts, bloggers etc are pacifiers ...as I wrote on my blog True North is on Main street not tech.memeorandum...if I hear about a vendor from a CIO I will gladly blog about it...

[Real]

that was quite advising. thanks

[Guy Kawasaki]

Wyatt:

RE:

This is just a collection of b***s***
One rule;

think before writing

Are you admonishing yourself and telling yourself to think before writing? Or telling me to think before writing? It wasn't clear to me.

Guy

[Vijaychandran]

Hello Kawasaki. I am a admirer of ur book Art of the Start Actually its a sylabus book for us..

Good article abt the blog thing. You always find some way to distinguish among other.Good way of thinking..

Vijay

[Wyatt]

This is just a collection of b***s***
One rule;

think before writing

[Jack Decker]

Very interesting post. Only thing I would have said differently is to make "you should never, ever lie to a blogger" as one of the top points. Nothing makes a blogger feel disrespected, and in some cases used, like being lied to (particularly if they repeated the lie to their readers, and now have to retract it)!

[leroy]

Boy for everyone who commented on this post outside of Guy's blog in a negative, and trite manner there are many more positives here. I thought everyone else just didn't understand the point being made (or points) by really attacking this at a very superficial level. I think the bottom line is to operate in good faith with BOTH perties interest and time in consideration. Being new to the medium, I found the tips helpful even outside of the medium when broaden or generalized. http://innovastorm.blogspot.com

[TekTrekGamer]

What a great set of tips for bloggers. I am a blogger, http://tektrekgamer.blogspot.com
and I am looking to get some more exposure for my blog. I am also a podcaster and have talked about my blog on there but I am not getting alot of traffic on the blog. Do you have any suggestions that would be relavent to my blog and blogging methods? Oh and I heard about your blog on GeekNewsCentral Podcast!

[Pamela Stewart]

Hi Guy:

In my short time blogging, one of the most refreshing things I have found is the open and honest feedback and support I have recieved from other bloggers. When I find a blog, product or service I like, I promote the hell out of it. I know that if I want to have another decade of good business, I will have to build real relationships with people I trust. So instead of looking at who is the next hot person to schmooze (or suck up to as you term it), I look for those that I would enjoy inviting home to dinner. How nice that we are moving into an era where being supportive, honest and open is good for business.

[Jim Walton]

Great points, Guy!

[Eric Mattson]

Might I also humbly suggest commenting on posts as a way to build relationships with bloggers?

Especially if you add value to the conversation.

Eric - MarketingMonger.com

[Matthew Wilder]

Nice post. This is barely on topic, but I just finished listening to your interview, and I fully agree with the positioning of your book. I also think you did a great job giving the two examples of expecting and job loss to frame where your book comes in. And remember, you and your publisher don't determine the positioning, your market does. ;)

[Guy Kawasaki]

Javier,

Stroking is a subtle skill. Going overboard can produce the following problems:

- You insult the blogger because you're saying, "I think you can be bought."

- There are hard and fast ethical issues about what people working for some publications can accept.

- You look too desperate--that is, your product sucks so much that you have to take the blogger to a hockey game.

Sucking up takes a great deal of skill. It's going to take even more skill now that I've "outed" it as a marketing tool. :-)

Guy

[Javier Cabrera (Emaginacion)]

Great post guy, I just added a blog entry about it; but there is something that still makes me a little bit uncomfortable: Stroke them. Where are the limits? Ratter that "detecting" where you get too far, it's best if you can write how to apologize when you already crossed the line.

Excellent post. Look, tears; you made me cry.
Javier Cabrera

[Ric]

"Tickets to Stanley Cup finals" - is that a hint, you hockey tragic?

[m]

your mom sounds like a very progressive lady.

[r]

the idea of "making a great product" is now permanently imbedded in my mind. in fact it's not even about "products" anymore; as i write this i'm trying to make some great tea. i'm hoping the message sinks in with everyone reading because focusing on quality can invariably lead to us to a better (better).

[Hydrogen Whiskey]

I loved you blog post titled 'Irony'. I'm a regular reader of your blog. I expecially like the smooth interface you have customized for your blog site.

[alek]

#1 could argueably be summarized as the 'ol "Content is King"

I did get a chuckle out of this comment from 'ya - "Personally, I've never met a person who linked to my blog that I didn't like" - great link bait (the "in-word" these days it seems).

alek

P.S. And per #3 (stroking) and #9 (sourcing), Google is finally doing the long-awaited (!?!) PageRank Update and it looks like you main page is moving up from PR6 to PR7 - you can check the various datacenters here - http://www.seologs.com/pagerank/current-pagerank/currentpr-dc.html

So you have Google's "vote" that you are doing some good/popular.