Yesterday Kim Moldofsky penned a brilliant post about how a company tried to turn her into an unpaid saleswoman after a brand event. Go read Marketing to Bloggers: When brand advocates become unpaid saleswomen and then call it quits.
I completely agreed with everything Kim had to say and left a comment about how PR professionals really have no need to ask bloggers for their stats because online tools can tell them everything they need to know about a blogger.
While online tools are never 100% accurate you can glean traffic trends and a blogger’s influence very easily.
For example, online tools can tell you:
— a blogger’s stats/traffic
— how old a blog is
— how a product placement will fare in the search engines on a blog
— how often a blogger comments on other blogs and what she’s said
— the sentiment of a blogger’s tweets
— a blogger’s influence on Twitter and who she influences
— how influential a blogger is with their readers
— how many RSS readers/ FB fans / Twitter followers she has
— the tone of a blogger on her blog and in her social media stream
This is certainly not to say media kits are obsolete. They are still vitally important particularly for bloggers to state their ad rates or to convince a marketer why they are worth paying attention to.
But, what is most important to know is that the sticky part of getting a blogger’s stats can be bypassed by simply using online tools to determine her influence instead of awkwardly asking in a survey because that’s tacky and breaks the fluidity of relationship building.
Finally, the best way to determine influential mom bloggers is to simply observe our community and interact with us. You’ll find all the influencers all at once and you never have to worry about numbers.
P.S. I will write a post tomorrow about tools to use. Stay tuned! *That post was written. Check out: PR Professionals: How to Determine a Mom Blogger’s Influence Without Asking Her.
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