yinkaolaito.com – the branding gavel, brand communication expert, nigeria brand consultant, social media expert

Many corporate communications and Public relations managers are used to Media relations, Investors relations and customer relations in the offline world. Today there is an increase in number of social media and networking sites. The implication of this is that the noise level is increasing. This also suggests an increase in social media tools. More also, conversation is going on simultaneously in many places.

Behind most effective communities, social networking sites and blogs are Community administrators and bloggers. These online influencers hold and wield a lot of influence on Millions of community members, readers that daily throng their sites.

My major concern here is that as this trend keep evolving many brand and corporate communicators have not developed effective means of relating with these influencers. Some still believe that bloggers are school kids who are just playing with the computers. When a blogger reaches out to some of these brands’ custodians most do not reply nor see any reason to respond fast if they do eventually respond at all. Yet the kind of myths, misconceptions that can spread due to this negligence can lead to unimaginable brand damage. I think many still need to learn from the most reputed ‘DELLHELL’ saga before.

For those who want to take meaningful steps in this direction, they must prepare to build relationship of value. I like what Lucretia Priutt says about the word ‘build’. She claims build is an action word (verb), it takes time and effort. It is like a garden; you cannot just sow seed and reap. You must nurture, weed and wait. I have also noticed that the few brands who have initiated this step only want to deal with A list bloggers. Even when the A list bloggers content direction has no bearing to their brand’s message, value and equity. To be successful in blogger’s relation, a corporate communicator, public relations or content manager for brands need to carefully observe the followings:

Plan and organize: nothing is successful until a plan of action of what to achieve, what to do, when to do it as well as how is put in place. Every relationship needs nurturing. It is better not to start a thing at all than to destroy the process when already implemented. As we know online relationships crises are more viral than the offline. So in planning, top management needs to endorse the process. Key officers who will handle the process need proper briefing with regards to what the responsibilities are. To this end, people with required training in human relationship building will do better than Engineers or information Technology experts. At least this is true in most cases.

Participate: After the above is taken care, brand must now release its implementation tactics. Brand through its representative must begin active participation in the selected bloggers’ communities. But please note that you are not participating to sell. That will be discovered early. I often consider as spam or delete comments that are out to sell instead of making quality contribution to the discourse. Also avoid been anonymous. Identify your brand through the use of avatar. It helps community members to appreciate you the more.

Pitch: now that your brand is known in the communities, the brand can now make an attempt to pitch the bloggers through their means of preferred communication line. It is expedient that you do not do that openly. Let it be a private communication between you and the community owner or the blogger in question. The community owner and the blogger will appreciate such respect and be willing to help. One thing to note though is that you need to let your pitch be relevant, respectful, precise, clear and value-adding to the community or blog’s direction.

Publish, circulate your brand’s content: based on the relationship and agreement you already have with the blogger, community owners or administrators, you can now start publishing your content as a guest blogger or content contributor. In most cases, it is ideal to let the blogger or community owners push your content for community perusal.

Do you have a good example of effective blogger’s relations? Please share with the community.