Better than the A-List: Get National Attention from Blogging

Monday, March 26th, 2007 by Jordan McCollum

Better than the A-List: Get National Attention from Blogging

After last week’s insular* debate on the A-list, it’s good to be reminded that blogging offers more advantages than just getting mentioned by Robert Scoble or Michael Arrington. Even the mainstream media is starting to pick up stories on the advantages of blogging. Earlier this month, MSNBC published an Entrepreneur.com article called “Make Blogs Your Best Marketing Tool.”

The article details a few stories of real-world, offline success achieved because of online publicity via blogs. Some products even went from local/regional sales (one coffee, for example, was sold only in CA and AZ) to nationwide sales through some of the largest chains in the US.

How can you obtain national attention and sales through blogging publicity? The MSNBC/Entrepreneur article offers a few tips:

Pitch to bloggers, either through a blog of your own or by approaching bloggers.
Use content syndicators to get your news spread far and wide.
Optimize press releases.
Get in on the online broadcast game with podcasts and vidcasts.
In your pitches, remember:
- Accentuate the positive.
- Shorter is better.
- Informal is ok.
- Being there is half the battle.

The article is a good, if general, read. However, take warning and learn from Microsoft’s & Edelman’s mistakes last year in pitching to bloggers.

*Just so I don’t have to clarify later: I say ‘insular’ because really, breaking into the A-list of blogging, unless you’re trying to make it as a professional blogger, is far removed from “success” in the real world.

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4 comments on “Better than the A-List: Get National Attention from Blogging”

Moshe Says:

March 27th, 2007 at 6:55 am

I like this post in that it shows one way of capitalizing on blogs. However, at the same time a different thought went through my head, namely that not everyone needs to be on an a-list or nationally recognized to succeed at blogging. There is also something which I’ll call grass-roots blogging, whereby you slowly, but surely build up a loyal group of readers.

If, for instance, one makes and sells informational products, a loyal readership of 10,000 people a month (about 330 people a day) can be quite profitable if those readers start to become customers of your products.

The only point I’m trying to make is that there are different ways to create a successful blog and it’s worthwhile being aware of that.

Thanks for the nice post.

All the best,

Moshe
Michael Goldberg Says:

March 27th, 2007 at 7:05 am

Great post, I can not agree more.
Pitch to bloggers -I have only just started to play with SMO/SMM (couple months now) and have been learning a lot from it. Example: On a biz blog I maintain and promote (not the one in my sig) I actually met someone that may do a “local print” news article about what I am promoting. I would have never expected that to happen, but it is happenig, so yes, pitching to other bloggers is a great thing to do because you never know what can happen. I am sure that if it did get in the news paper, it could also be syndicated by that news papers parent company, not to mention almost every news “print news service” shows up in Google news these days .
links for 2007-03-27 | The Marketing Technology Blog Says:

March 27th, 2007 at 1:23 pm

[...] Better than the A-List: Get National Attention from Blogging | Marketing Pilgrim Even the mainstream media is starting to pick up stories on the advantages of blogging. Earlier this month, MSNBC published an Entrepreneur.com article called â€œMake Blogs Your Best Marketing Tool.â€ (tags: blogging marketing internet) [...]
Does Link Baiting Still Work? 3 Ways To Make It Last » derrich.com - crude, yet refined Says:

April 5th, 2007 at 3:36 am

[...] 3. Advertise Your [Quality] Link Bait Social bookmarking sites, buying link ads, and organic SEO tactics are three ways to get the word out — do you want it fast or slow? But, another method that was brought to my attention by a repected A-lister (who for whatever reason wishes to remain anonymous, but I can respect that) was to send the idea to big news sites (link not related to aforementioned anonyblogger), particularly sports-related sites like ESPN, CBS Sportsline, Yahoo! Sports, etc. Why I didn’t think of this before publishing the Bloggers Tournament is anybody’s guess. But in my defense, the Bloggers Tournament was somewhat of an impulse. The idea is not only to hope they help you spread the word, but to take the notoriety out of your project and give it some acclaim. [...]

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