How to work with Mummy Bloggers!

 

I’ve come up with an idea for a book, its called Babyville’s guide to being a good Baby PR. The reason being is that so many agencies and public relations professionals fall at the very first hurdle of targeting public relations to family brands.

Here at Babyville, a lot of the people that our PR departments are dealing with are parents themselves, be that bloggers, panel testers, and journalists who write the family pages. This makes the job a bit different to other sectors, because as baby PRs we have to be aware that the subject is personal…..it is not a lipstick that they might not like the colour of, if that bloggers child screams whilst using a brand you are representing, the risk of crisis is huge. As is the network! Mummy bloggers in particular talk, all the time – event invitations are shared on secret groups (particularly if they are exclusive), PR’s are talked about personally, competitions are shared and loop-holes are maximised. Mummy bloggers need an entirely different approach and strategy for each brand.

As a specialist department we spend a lot of time reading parenting blogs, we know the bloggers, we know their children’s names and how bad their PND was, and we know which ones are best for which brands! We differentiate beauty baby bloggers and the travel baby bloggers and we know how to talk to them all. PR is in an exciting new era of content creation, social media and real time results…and baby PR is at the front of this.

 

Here is my, highly reduced, top tips for talking to Mummy Bloggers:

–          Do read their blogs, get to know them and what’s going on in their lives

–          Do always respond to them when they email you even if they are not right for your brand

–          Do send them individual emails

–          Do send them products as gifts if you want them to associate themselves with the brand – don’t chase for reviews for small things, especially if you have lots of baby brands – look on it as a press sample

–          Do look at their stats – twitter followers, facebook fans and interactions are a really easy way of seeing how popular the blog is and their tone of voice, dont ask for unique visitors per month, you will offend them and they will most likely just make up some numbers.

–          Do use the quality of the writing and the images on the site as your guide to how good the blog is, don’t just focus on the numbers

–          Do have select bloggers who you will always give priority to for new product launch events and reviews (and use for inside knowledge on secret group chats!)

–          Do remember that baby blogging is not like fashion blogging – there is a limited lifespan and you need to be constantly looking for the next big one

–          Do share their posts on your social networks, thank them and stay in touch on a personal level

 

And now the “do nots”….most of these come from bitter experience….

–          Do not pay bloggers – I can’t emphasise this enough. Blogging is a labour of love, and something that is done as a cathartic process for parents for themselves and of course to give advice to other parents. Reviews are done on this basis. Bloggers who want to be paid to endorse your brand are not worth working with.

–          Do not group message them. They don’t like it.

–          Do not include them on press release mail-outs. They don’t like it.

–          Do not send out “do you want to review X” on twitter…..email is not dead yet and it just looks like you are airing your laundry in public

–          Do not tell them off, if you don’t like the review – provided it is fair and not motive lead negative feedback is often more important than positive feedback.

Now, where to find a publisher….

@babyville