5 Unwritten Rules In Selling Your Blog

It’s one thing for companies to write about their own products, and another to get other people to write about it for them. No, I don’t mean get other people to ghost write the content for them, but rather get other people to talk about their product on their own pages. Sort of like a user’s review or testimony of the product.

It’s not really new news to veteran bloggers. They probably get tons of these whenever a new product comes out. The burden of being asked to write about someone else’s product for the sake of marketing is something that well-known bloggers keep.

But with more and more companies releasing products left and right, blog pitches can be quite a hassle. This proves especially true if you’re dealing with people who are too eager to get you to write about them.

In my opinion, companies should observe a certain code of ethics when their pitching your product to blog writers. This will make going through the process of reaching out to the blogger a bit easier.

What code of ethics are we talking about, here are some examples:

Be selective. Choose only bloggers who write about things your clients are interested in. Also, make sure that you choose one that you personally subscribe to.

Be discerning. Take the time to check whether the blogger want to be approached with blog pitches or not.

Be honest. You have to be upfront about your identity and intentions for contacting the blogger. Transparency is a big thing for bloggers, so make sure that you observe it.

Be respectful. If a blogger indicates that he does not want to be contacted for any pitch, honor their request. if they specified that they should only be contacted in a certain way, do as they say. And also, if you don’t hear from your prospect blogger, a single follow-up email will suffice. If they still don’t reply, take the hint and look for another blogger.

Be there. There’s no point pitching if you won’t be there to accommodate them when they reply to your request. Make sure you’re able to respond immediately when they tell you that they’re willing to accept the pitch.

Be prepared. You can’t expect the blogger to be all praises about your product. You have to be prepared to hear about negative reviews as well.

Now, if and when a blogger accepts the pitch, make sure to encourage them to tell people that you contacted them to write a post about you. That way, transparency is maintained.

That pretty much sums it up for me. If you’ve got anything to add to the list, please feel free to share them at the comments section and we’ll discuss it further.