Influencers have changed the way in which advertising works, opening doors for everyday folk to become faces of campaigns and receive deserved rewards for sharing products with their audiences. Bagging a deal with a PR, or even planning collaboration, can be a tough world to compete in, with the ever expanding blogosphere, so we chatted to a Manchester PR (who requested to remain anonymous) to see what they look for in bloggers to advise you on how to gain edge over your competition.
The below has been written by our PR contact.
Contact Info
You would be amazed at how many bloggers fall short on providing basic contact information on their websites. No PR wants to waste time trawling through pages to find an email and if it takes too long they may lose interest and leave you off their list.
All basic social media account info and email contacts should be visible on a simple ‘About’ page or listed somewhere on the homepage.
Further to this location should always be disclosed, we’re not asking for your house number and street name, simply the region or city you’re based in so we can consider you for events and local brand opportunities.
Engagement and Audience
Contrary to popular belief we don’t want numbers over engagement, any decent PR these days has tools they can use to measure engagement versus follower numbers, so we always know when you have cheated and bought followers or bots.
Genuine reactions to your posts (besides emojis and “great post” comments) will go far to proving to us your audience listens to your voice and therefore recommendations made will have more brand awareness impact for advertising.
Frequency of posts are also important, we want to know you’re a serious blogger who posts at least once a week so we know we won’t be waiting months for a post to go live.
Human Voice
As well as having a genuine audience we want to know you are also being genuine on your account.
Scheduled posts are fine, we understand you can always be glued to social media, but Influencers who post real time some of the time are deemed to be more authentic as they take time to connect with their followers and remain engaged with their audiences.
Transparency is also a plus. Only dodgy PRs will ask you to conceal a sponsored post or lie about a collab so steer clear of those brands (we’re not all that bad promise). If you are upfront about ads and how you’ve obtained promoted products we know other brands have successfully worked with you too so this reinforces trust in your brand so it pays to be honest. Your followers will also eventually clock on to any ingenuine ads over time.
Keep Connected
If we email and agree on a collaboration, we expect to be kept updated semi-regularly. It’s completely understandable if things happen which may change a deadline on a sponsored collaboration, these things happen, but do let us know as we have managers and clients to answer to.
No PR enjoys hounding someone for updates, it’s part of the job, so make our lives easier and send a quick email to let us know what’s happening.
If we outreach to you to collaborate, we also expect a response within a maximum of a few weeks. If you come back a month later we can pretty much guarantee the opportunity won’t be there anymore as the client has had internal deadlines to meet.
The Little Details Matter
You might have amazing photography and really spend your time perfecting your copy, these things won’t go amiss. Any PR worth their salt will want to put the best coverage forward to the client so if your photography and design is top notch, we will consider this when looking to work with you.
We see your blog as a brand, if that brand has mixed messaging and you seem to be throwing out low quality posts on any old topic this will carry less authority from a digital and user experience perspective, meaning we will think twice about the potential return the opportunity could bring.
You don’t have to be Rankin, just focus on the quality over quantity, one great post a month is worth more than seven poor ones.
Know Your Worth
There will be lots of PR’s hired to get as much free exposure as they can and many naive bloggers will fall into the trap of working for free when they could have been paid. Do some research into your SEO digital value, use Moz to get your Domain Authority score (anything over 20 is usually considered to be fair for a blog). Look at your competitors of similar size and how they position collabs, do they charge, if so how much? If you can justify your price we’ll be more inclined to listen and consider it.
Likewise, if you have a small blog you can’t expect to be earning big bucks when there are so many bigger bloggers charging less, this is why research is important to know your value and be reasonable about what your offer. PR’s will already have a budget in mind, so negotiate wisely and don’t talk yourself out of more money (you’d be amazed how many bloggers accept less than their worth).
