There’s plenty of evidence to suggest the PR industry has started seeing bloggers as a crucial part of the communications map. A nice number from Australia this week suggests top bloggers get 100 emails a week from PRs. 

Exploring the relationship 

Back in the UK, Phil Szomszor, head of digital media at Citigate Dewe Rogerson, decided to explore this relationship via an industry survey. Szomszor, who also has his own portal redrocket, admits it is not indicative of the industry as a whole. But it does raise interesting points. He says:

“When it came to finding bloggers to reach out to, the manual methods are most popular, eg Twitter (92%) and search engines (87%). Databases like Social Media Library were hardly used at all (10%) and even Technorati is only used by 26% s. Blogrolls were more popular than expected (71%).” 

Main factors 

“The main factors to consider when weighing up outreach to a blogger are relevance (99%) followed by the number of recent posts (68%) and comments (48%). SEO-oriented metrics, like backlinks and Google Page Rank are less important to PRs, on 14% and 36% respectively.”

“53% of PRs send press releases to bloggers (really? I expected this to be higher, although most bloggers don’t like them).” 

“Only 28% of PRs engage with bloggers in respect to dealing with a negative blog post about their clients. Thinking about this, perhaps I’m not surprised. Twitter seems to rule in this department, because it’s easier to manage.”

Meeting bloggers 

“The social element is important, with 44% sometimes meeting up with bloggers. Sadly 15% admitted to never meeting up with them, with 7% that “sometimes” or “mostly” do. With so many events in London (it’d be good if there were more outside), there are opportunities to meet bloggers.” 

Mothers: key decision makers 

Going back to Australia for a moment, the man who came up with the 100 emails a week figure, David Krupp of Nuffnang, told a conference recently that there is currently a huge demand from advertisers to get to mummy bloggers. “The mummy blogosphere is a huge growth area,'' he said. ''There's a huge demand from advertisers to work with mothers because they know that mothers are key decision makers in the household.'' 

As for Phil Szomszor, he’s now running a similar survey aimed at bloggers, which he intends to share with both communities. If you’re interested in getting in touch with him then you can try phil@theredrocket.co.uk