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Fashion PR Tips On Choosing Which Fashion Blogs to Pitch
For many public relations agencies and practitioners, effectively targeting the blogosphere can feel like a Sisyphus-esqe kind of hell. With hundreds of new blogs, new blog monitoring services, and new PR agencies claimng to rule the blogging world showing up weekly, the question, after learning how to pitch, quickly becomes – well, which blogs do you pitch and how do you find them?
PR Couture has actively monitored the relationship between Fashion PR and fashion bloggers since our start back in December, 2006, and have continued to ask practitioners and bloggers about their experiences and perspectives. However, we have yet to broach the idea of developing a fashion blogger pitching strategy. What follows is just a general game-plan, reader suggestions are welcome, either via comment or email.
Research
Much like the form, fit, and function fashion equation, finding the right fashion blogs for your client requires an approach that considers things like: 1) What are my client’s goals, is this a quantity over quality Old Navy kind of PR Campaign, or are we more concerned with exclusivity in a limited edition Diane von Furstenburg kind of way? 2) What kind of coverage are we looking for, strictly product review, product give-aways, or are we more concerned with the company or brand as a whole, and 3) Measurement – how are we going to measure our campaign – strictly by readership and site traffic, or are there other metrics – authority, authenticity, target customer, trackable give-aways, promotions, that we can use when evaluating our success?
Once you are clear on your blog strategy, locating blogs that fit into this strategy is the next step. Here are just a few places to start the search:
Glam is like the Mall of America for fashion, beauty, pop culture, and celebrity blogs. The pros: So many blogs! The cons: So many blogs!
Coutorture is the place to find notable and up and coming fashion bloggers. Check out their daily featured reads and reader submitted stories for recent updates and new blogs. The Pros: This is where your early adopters hang out. The Cons: Careful with your pitching, these bloggers, like many others, don’t appreciate a blanket pitch and you might end up getting coverage about your poorly crafted pitch, rather than your client!
IndieCollective.net is an independently-owned businesses showcases artists, artisans, designers & many other facets of the creative arts community where craft and DIY bloggers abound. The Pros: These bloggers are often more than happy to write about up and coming, independent designers, the handmade, and the retro/kitsch. The Cons: Many of these blogs have limited traffic, which might not make your client very happy. Be prepared with your target market comeback to assuage any confusion.
Tweak that which you already have. The next time you visit your own online haunts – social shopping sites, niche social networking sites, pay attention to more than the goods and look for bloggers by scoping out popular posters’ profiles.
In doing your initial research, it is worth taking a look at the blogs to see if there is a contact email – blogspot is notoriously bad at providing a contact email. In addition, take time to read the about section, as well as a few posts, to see if you can unearth any clues as to the types of products they tend to feature, their pitching policy, and recent traffic numbers. However, keep in mind that with fashion, traffic is not the end all be all – a smaller but loyal readership can add credibility to coverage.
Blog Metrics
Finding great fashion blogs is easy, the challenge come with that pesky consideration #3 – measurement. Clients are concerned with ROI, and although raising awareness is a laudable pursuit, you can achieve greater sucess with a basic understanding, and ability to communicate about traffic, authority/relevance, and other blog metrics.Technorati: A few quick searches on Technorati can unearth fashion blogs by community, sorted by authority. Technorati Authority is the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the blog has. It is important to note that authority is based on the number of blogs linking, rather than the number of individual links.
Buzzlogic: The new monitoring service Buzzlogic provides, for a yearly subscription fee, a means to calculate influence in social media by analyzing a similar relationship – who connects to whom, about what and when.
Alexa: Although Alexa isn’t blog specific – you can do a search of a specific blog and get instant traffic information.
Create a Master List
During your research, you might start to notice some themes/blogger specialities emerging. Your next step will probably be a a list of some kind. The nightmare that is the excel spreadsheet was made for this kind of data entry, and excel pages are a great way to develop targeted lists, for which your targeted email pitch will only need minor tweaking. Find 3 or 4 themes that work for your client, perhaps bridal, celebrity, runway, and moms, and develop blogger contact lists, making full use of an open notes section where you can note recent posts, personal information – anything that will help you develop a personalized pitch.
Target your pitch
Once you have a well researched blog list with contact information organized into themes (first names are great) and complete with important notes, read over these tips for crafting the perfect fashion pitch, and start developing a custom pitch targeted toward each themed fashion blog type. When it comes time to pitch, take a quick look over any recent posts and blog activity to further customize your pitch.
(This post was featured as a Coutorture Must Read for 6/21)
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Clearly you don’t understand the blogosphere. No where do you tell your poor readers that bloggers will slam you for clueless “pitching” based on client needs. Bloggers don’t care about your client, they care about the conversation, and unless you listen to the conversation, and participate in it, you’ll be left out.
Also, Alexa is only a way to see how many people are going to very big sites. It won’t tell you anything about measuring your results.
Good morning Katie,
Thank you for taking the time to comment. I believe we are in more agreement than not, it’s just a question of word choice. Specifically, I mention to be “careful with your pitching, these bloggers, like many others, don’t appreciate a blanket pitch, and you might end up getting coverage about your poorly crafted pitch, rather than your client,” as well as a link to a previous post where I talk in detail about crafting a targeted, personalized pitch – which I believe is similar to what you mean about participating in the conversation.
I have consistently encouraged my readers to research and read the blogs that they contact – often citing this particular post by Kathleen Fasanella over at Fashion Incubator – http://www.fashion-incubator.com/mt/archives/how_to_pitch_me.html.
This post was was written in response to questions I get weekly from practitioners, agency owners, and clients, all feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of blogs to choose from. Part of this choice definately has to do with measurement, something you are highly educated and passionate about, and I invite you to write a guest post for PR Couture helping to clarify the measurement question for those of us in Fashion PR.
With regard to Alexa, I did mention that it is only good for traffic numbers. I did a search on PR Couture, and was able to get limited bits of information – again, if you have any specific tips or suggestions I welcome them. Whether you call it participating in the conversation, or pitching, I believe it that the goal is to develop relationships with bloggers for mutual benefit. This includes participating in the conversation, but also requires landing some actual media hits, and then being able to quantify the value of those hits.
As a fashion blogger, my biggest peeve is for PR people to pitch me before they’ve established a relationship with me. They don’t have to send me flowers or anything (ha! ha!), they just need to leave a few comments now or then – in essence, join in the conversation. After that, then you can approach me with your proposal. Of course, there are some exceptions based upon the actual pitch…Did they use my name? Do they really read my blog? Does the company they represent have a compelling product or story to share?
Thanks Maria, that is very valuable feedback!
does anyone have suggestions for something other than alexa.com to figure traffic? our designer used alexa.com when working for a fashion website a few years ago, but we have yet to find something comparable specifically for Mac users. and getting the numbers from the bloggers & websites varies from extremely easy to no response at all.
thanks for your time-
Very interesting post! As a blogger, I like to see what the other side is thinking.
Re: measuring traffic – I don’t know if there is a really good way to get numbers short of asking the blogger (and some don’t like to give out traffic info). What about tweaking an SEO exercise and coming up with likely keywords that people would use to search for and find your clients’ products/services? You could then use google (the blogsearch option will come in handy here) and technorati to find relevant blogs.
Re: pitching bloggers – I personally love it when PR reps pitch me, because I find out about products/labels/etc. that I might not otherwise be aware of. Honestly, pitches that don’t quite work for my blog or even blanket pitches don’t really offend me, because I would rather be “on the list” than not get emails at all. And it only takes me a few seconds to scan an email and decide if it is something I’m interested in. I would suggest to PR reps/agencies looking to pitch bloggers to at least read the 4 or 5 most recent post and to check out the blogger’s about page or profile.
Good post!! I agree with you Crosby. If I get a poor pitch, I might laugh about it – but – I will still be happy that I was approached me anyway. As Maria commented – sometimes I may not necessarily write a review on the product, but it’s good to know that it’s out there. Great job with the info!! You are always so informative
Carlita
Pink Diamond
http://www.pinkdiamondpr.blogspot.com
Good post!! I agree with you Crosby. If I get a poor pitch, I might laugh about it – but – I will still be happy that I was approached. As Maria commented – sometimes I may not necessarily write a review on the product, but it’s good to know that it’s out there. Great job with the info!! You are always so informative
Carlita
Pink Diamond
http://www.pinkdiamondpr.blogspot.com
[...] The freedom of blogs can be a double-edged sword if the campaign isn’t a good one, as discovered in the Bitten scandal of this past spring. Early photos of the Sarah Jessica Parker-designed, Steve & Barry produced line leaked online via Fashionista. At the request of Steve & Barry’s attorneys, the photos were removed from that site but had, by then, spread on to others. The reviews of the products on the blogs were not positive. The next day a blogger at Fashionista received an anonymous tip from a Steve & Barry insider that the Bitten line was being retooled. The original photos began to vanish online as more legal letters were issued demanding their removal. By not handling the matter upfront, or encouraging interaction between the company and the blogs, the redesigns seemed like a lack of confidence in the product. [...]
To joni madere:
Have you tried http://www.quantcast.com?