Interacting with Other Bloggers-Why It's a Good Thing

Responding to blog posts on topics relevant to your organization or company can be an effective way to engage customers, clients, co-workers, constituents in a discussion about issues or to get the word out about your work or product ot company. Interacting with bloggers, however, can be very time consuming. A little advanced thinking and strategizing can help you engage bloggers and their readers more efficiently to get the desired results. So why interact with other bloggers and web content creators? Why not just read and maintain your own? Lots of good reasons:

1.Interacting with other bloggers can create a portal to your website. Commenting, sharing and liking other blogs can intrigue other readers and followers. This can position you as a contributing authority and make readers curious about your company or brand; a kind of give-and-take in the blogging community.

2. From Writer’s Digest 10 Ways Writers Lose Blog Traffic, Number 7 reminds us all to read (and comment) on other people’s blogs. To read the whole piece, click on this link: http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/10-ways-writers-lose-blog-traffic-and-alienate-readers

3. Don't know where to start? Find some blogs you like that tend to post material of interest to your company, and follow them. You can use a free service—like Bloglines.com—to capture posts from all your favorite blogs so you can track and read them all in one location.

4. Find at least one or two blogs with a regular audience of significant size. These blogs will offer the best chances for discussion and a large enough audience to get wider distribution for information about your topic.

5. Bloggers love getting comments, so you can respond to blog posts whenever you read one that inspires additional thoughts or that you find useful. Include insights you’ve gained, while respecting the privacy you might reference. Compliments may be preferred, of course, but constructive criticism or corrections are also generally welcome. It is not in your interest, though, to chastise a blogger or question his or her expertise.

6. Contact the blogger after you have a good understanding of the blog’s focus, point of view, and style and feel it would be an appropriate venue for promoting your product or company. Suggest that the blogger write about your product, and give reasons: there is timely news about your product, it will be of interest to your readers, etc. It is best to contact bloggers by e-mail if you can find their address, but you may also do this through the comments button if necessary. Your message can be informal, but professional. You are more likely to get the blogger’s attention if you refer to specific posts he or she published or a recent news item that provides a timely peg for writing about your product.

7. Once you get a blogger’s attention it can often lead to additional coverage by other bloggers or news organizations. Getting coverage on a popular blog could also help you spread the word about the value of your products and promote a positive image about you to the general public.

Social Media Marketing

I search the web often for potential information to post to Twitter and then on this blog. Here's one I thought would be of benefit. Even though they are talking about Human Resources, there is plenty of great info to know.

Here's a quote from the HR Marketer site:

Social media marketing is all about combining the power of online marketing and social networking so that HR suppliers converse openly with their buying universe about their firm – good, bad and all in between. Social media marketing uses social networking services as a means of doing just that. This eBook outlines the importance of participating in social media marketing that will definitely come back to HR suppliers in the form of familiarity, trust, thought leadership and credibility with their customers, prospects and influencers. Another powerful way to generate publicity, traffic and leads.

http://tinyurl.com/yg2rtoq

Blogs

According to Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2009, there are over 112 million active blogs in the world. Many of them are maintained by professional bloggers and are integral parts of company marketing plans. Who would have thought that blogs would grow so big. As we learn to harness the power of the Internet, business blogs are using this sphere as a way to talk with customers and clients on all sorts of things, from new product and service offerings to simply inform investors of the state of their companies to wishing them Merry Christmas.