Words From A Blogger & PR: Etiquette Advice from a PR

This is fourth part of my Words From A Blogger & PR series; make sure to visit the hub page for all the current posts in the series.

Yesterday the first part of this post, Words From A Blogger & PR: Etiquette Advice from a Blogger, went live on the Bronco blog. Today I’m doing the second part with advice on the best ways for bloggers to get on with PRs, and to be honest, it’s mostly the same sort of stuff, just from the other end!

Today we’re talking Blogging Etiquette from the point of view of a PR. On a daily basis, we work with many bloggers from several different sectors, but that’s not to say that we don’t make the effort to build up real and long lasting relationships with bloggers that go beyond requests for projects – and I hope all the bloggers we’ve worked with in the past can back me up on that one! I’m in the lucky position of knowing how these email exchanges go from both sides, so I’m here today to give a few bits of inside info to PRs on how you can work best with bloggers and the general etiquette behind contacting them. Many of the tips here are common sense, but it always helps to have a bit of a guideline as some of us might not know what’s normal etiquette for talking to PRs.

1. Be friendly and polite

As I said, the PR at the end of your email is still a human and probably just wants to talk normally to you too. Being rude isn’t going to get you anywhere with anyone. I’ve personally had some rude responses to my outreach emails – I understand if you’re in a rush but when I’ve pitched a personalised idea to you, a 2 word response of “How much?” with no greeting, no thank you or anything isn’t going to be well accepted. I often find that hiding behind a screen means people will act differently than they would face to face. Please also read the email you’ve received – sometimes I’ll be doing some research for a project and would like to know something in particular about you so I can personalise it, but I still just get the generic “Here’s my media kit”, which isn’t particularly helpful! A thank you at the end of a project goes a long way 🙂

2. Be clear about your blog terms and conditions

Sometimes as a PR, we will have a client who has very specific wants or needs for a post. They might want a particular link including, they might only have given us a tiny budget etc. We can only work with what we have, so will try to be clear about that, so will really appreciate if you can do the same. If you’d prefer not to accept a certain condition on your blog, we completely understand that and will do our best to accommodate you – it’s best if you’re upfront about these though so we don’t get to the stage where we’ve allocated some budget or product to you only to find out we can’t go ahead with it at last minute.

3. Let us know if you change your terms

Similar to above, if you happen to change the terms of your blog, such as accepting different links or change your conditions on disclosure, please let us know, especially if we’ve worked with you to your previous conditions in the past. It can be really difficult if you change something in the post then ask for more money to change it to your original conditions – we’ve always been allocated a specific budget and we can try to work to accommodate any changes if you’re upfront about them; keeping them until afterwards though can be very difficult.

4. Remember that we’re sometimes just the middle man

We sometimes don’t have an opportunity to increase our budget or to provide you with a specific product – we’ve only got what we’ve got and will do our best for you, but being the middle man, there’s often not much wriggle room as the terms of our project have already been set. That doesn’t mean though that we’re not open to hearing ideas and pitches from you – in fact, we’d very much welcome them!

5. Get in touch

The best way for us to work with you is for you to get in touch and introduce yourself. There’s a bit of a debate about whether this is a done thing or not in the blogging world, but there’s absolutely no harm in dropping us a tweet or emailing us with a pitch for something you’d like to work with us on. Laura has recently written a post on the Talented Talkers blog about How to Cold Pitch a PR Using Social Media, so make sure to give that a read.
The only thing I would say though is please don’t bombard us with tweets and emails! I don’t mind a reminder email every couple of months about your blog, just in case it’s slipped through the net on any projects, but a daily or weekly email from you can be quite frustrating when I have a hundred other emails to work through, and unfortunately will mostly just be ignored (we’re sorry!). We also send out requests on @Bronco_Media for bloggers, so my only other request is to make sure the request you’re replying to is relevant to you; it can be a hassle delving through hordes of parenting blogs when I was looking for tech blogs! And please make sure you haven’t already replied to that tweet before – we may not be in touch immediately as we’re just building lists, but having you on there 3 or 4 times isn’t helpful. But a friendly tweet or email every so often will work wonders 🙂
And like I said in the “How to work with companies” post – please make it easy to stay in touch! I’ve found bloggers just drop off the face of the earth after they’ve agreed to post (which can be really hard on me when I’ve got a deadline to meet that you’ve agreed to!), but I still get their weekly “Do you have any projects?” emails, but no responses on the previous project they’ve left unfinished. We completely understand if life gets in the way sometimes (it does for us too!), but let us know as we can usually work around it, we’ll just need to let other people involved know too.

I also spoke to a few people who are in a similar position to me, as both a blogger and PR to get their thoughts on the topic of working together too.
Lisa at Lisahh Jayne has written a post on How Not To Work With PRS (which is really useful, and quite similar to the points I’ve made!) and said:

I love working on blogger outreach, especially as I’ve come from a blogging background and it’s great to see the other side of it. Sometimes it can be difficult if you can’t give the bloggers what their expecting or want, and sometimes your opportunities might not appeal to everyone. But generally I’ve worked with some lovely bloggers and even discovered some great new blogs to read as a result of outreach!

Sally at The Cafe Cat wrote an article a couple of years ago on How To Win Bloggers and Influence People and also gave a couple of personal tips:

–  Remember that the PR is a middleman or woman and is often not responsible for the reliability of a brand.

– Be friendly with your PR. They might not always have the job for you now but it’s likely they will do later and if you’re a pleasure to work with, you’ll be the first door they knock upon.

– And, finally, if you’re not sure what the PR wants, brainstorm with them – it makes our job fun!

Do you have any advice on how to work well with PRs and companies?