Bloggers will probably be an important part of your publicity campaign, so it’s essential to know which ones are the most important to you. You’ll identify a lot of bloggers through the general media list process outlined in my previous post about the media list.
Here are some other tools that may be helpful.
Do a Google search on your keywords. Click the “more” link on the left side of the screen and then click the “blogs” link. The blogs listed here are more likely to be important in your industry.
Consult Alltop (www.alltop.com), which “collects the headlines of the latest stories from the best sites and blogs that cover a topic.” They group these collections into individual web pages and display the five most recent headlines of the information sources as well as their first paragraph. Alltop lists its topics alphabetically so you could see in a glance who is covering a topic and what they have said recently.
Another good tool is Technorati (www.technorati.com), which ranks the “authority” (standing and influence) of a site. The rankings cover a short period of time, so they can be volatile depending on what topics are “hot” in the blogosphere. As long as you understand that, Technorati can be helpful.
Social Mention (www.socialmention.com) allows you to search blogs or other outlets by your keywords. The site gives a summary of “sentiment” (positive, negative, neutral) and other information.
A relatively new service, Group High (www.grouphigh.com) includes the blog’s page rank, number of comments and most recent post date (along with other information). You can search by your keyword (“3D TV”) and then refine your search through filters like recent posts or page ranks.
PR Daily called this subscription-based service “the best blogger relations tool” (www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/7707.aspx). Unlike the other services mentioned, this service charges a fee. However, as of this writing, the service was providing free test drives.
Identifying the right people to follow and “talk” with is essential for an effective publicity campaign. Doing a little research up front can make a world of difference.
Do you have other tips on how to identify the “right” bloggers? I’d love to hear them.
