Steps to Get Your Products Featured in Blogs
Andreea Ayers
Lessons
Shift Your Thinking About Publicity
04:34 2What is Publicity & Do You Need It?
07:43 3Andreea's Journey with PR
12:39 4Using PR to Get Your Products in Stores
04:40 5A Word About Press Releases
25:53 6Define the Goals of Your PR Plan
08:14 7The Importance of Knowing Your Story
31:45 8Get Your Brand Media Ready
10:41PR Editorial Calendars & Lead Times
31:03 10Getting Your Products in Blogs
13:54 11Steps to Get Your Products Featured in Blogs
44:18 12The Perfect Pitch
16:56 13Helpful Tips for Working with Bloggers
07:30 14How to Get Your Products in Magazines
28:46 15Building Your Media List
09:04 16How to Craft an Email to Magazines
32:13 17How NOT to Pitch to Magazines
09:19 18Using Press Mentions to Get More Sales
03:28 19Create Your Own PR Plan
06:22Lesson Info
Steps to Get Your Products Featured in Blogs
But there are, I guess, a few things that you need to keep in mind as you are working with bloggers, because it's not as simple as I was saying before where I email them and I said, I think your readers would love this here's my t shirt, I think I just really got lucky because there there is sort of a process that goes into working with bloggers, and we're going to talk about the nine steps that you need to take and I know nine sounds like a lot, but I'm really breaking it down step by step. So you know exactly what you're getting yourself into as you are working with bloggers, so the first step is just like we talked about your pr plan is to determine your goals. So what are some of the things that you want to accomplish when you are working with the bloggers? This could be increasing your social media followers, your newsletter subscribers, it could be to get more traffic and sales, you will almost immediately cnn increase in traffic when you are having your products mentioned on a b...
lock or are you launching a new product? And you're thinking I really want to get some exposure and some awareness for this new product. And I want to work with the block and often times what I love about launching a new product with a blogger is that often times the blogger will actually get their own audience involved and they'll ask them things like oh what's your favorite products from their website why do you like this? Which collection do you like the most and their readers if you've chosen the right block it's a really involved audience they will leave comments and they'll say, oh, I really love this color I really loved that collection or I totally want this and that doesn't really appeal to me so if you read all of those comments it's such a great way to get feedback about what other people really love your product and there's things that I've done that I've actually tweaked because of feedback that I was seeing a these blocks and my customers don't always give me feedback right? They don't always right back and here's what I love most or here is what I think you should change but when you're working with the blogger and the blogger is asking their readers to leave feedback tio rate and to comment and to let them know which products of years they loved the most and why which oftentimes bloggers do you really get a lot of great feedback instantly pretty much on you don't need to hire a market research firm you can just go to a blogger asked, is, do some sort of a giveaway or view where they look at your product and everybody wins, and you get lots of traffic back to your website. So the second step is to decide on your format, because there's a couple of different ways that you can work with bloggers. The first one is through a product review, and this is basically where you send them a sample of your product, they test it out, and they write their honest review about what they think about your product and notice that I said the word honest, because they really are honest. I think their own audience looks to them for honest recommendations. Someone you are working with, a blogger just know that you might hear some negative stuff, but most of it will be positive. So this is basically sending me a product. They write the review post a review and that's pretty much it with link that with links back to your website. But you can also do a giveaway, and oftentimes the review and give away, sort of go hand in hand. So when you're doing the product review, the bloggers might also ask you, do you also want to do a give away, which means that maybe you choose two or three products or a certain amount for a gift card or something like that and at the end of the product review they'll say ok now it's your turn to win one of these products for their readers and to enter and when they go to their website, pick out your favorite products leave a common below subscribe to there's newsletter and so on so it's a little more involved it gets their audience a little more involved because they get a chance to wear not one of your product and this is another thing that you can decide to do with a blogger ahead of time if you work with them so you could choose the product review or you could choose to do the giveaway, the other thing that you can do which I highly recommend would be to offer a coupon or a special offer and often times the blogger that you're working with really knows what their audience loves and they might say, I know from my past experience that my audience would really love a twenty percent off coupon from you would you be willing to provide that to my audience so in that case they'll share coupon code and it gives people even more incentive to actually come to your web site and try out your products where if they didn't have that incentive, maybe they wouldn't have necessarily bought something they would have maybe just subscribe to your newsletter or I followed you on social media, but you're really giving them an incentive. This is not required, you don't have to do this, but if a particular blogger knows that their audience really responds to the sort of format they'll ask you to do, or to do a special offer, or a coupon code, or this count or something like that, and the other thing is that you can do a collaboration, so this is a little more advanced, but this is where you may be. You're creating a product line or something specifically for that blogger and their audience, and their name is attached to it, and they shared with their readers you shared with viewers, and, again, everybody wants often times to do this. You do have to pay sophie, and depending on the blogger you're working with, the fee can be pretty hefty, so this is not necessarily. I left it last year because it's, not necessarily the way that I would recommend you all start out with when it comes to working with bloggers, but it is something that you have audio disposal. If you have a budget for that, and if the bloggers you're working with are really interested and collaborating with you to create something just for the readers or for their audience, so after you figure out which for matt, you want to do with the blogger? Usually I'll start out with a product review and a giveaway that's my standard go to when I work with bloggers, but after you do that, you have to do your research. So think about what kind of blog's do you want to be featured in? And the thing to notice here is that not every single blogger does or accept products for review, so you have to make sure that the blogging working with what's called pr friendly if you see on any block, I'm sure some of you have seen this if it's a pr friendly, that means that they're willing to work with brands often for no fee, sometimes for a fee, but they are open and receptive to doing product reviews and giveaways and coupons and all those sorts of fun collaborations with other brands and find them that are in your niche. So if you're selling team jewelry, it doesn't make sense to really contact meant blog's, right? But if you are selling products for women there's so many different blog's, you can go to there's, blog's and literally every single category you can imagine there is a blogger or more or hundreds of banks in that category, so do you definitely will be finding ah blawg or at least a few blocks in your nature that you're trying to target the other way that you can research blog's if let's say you're just starting out and you're not sure and it's your first stand at pr, but you have some customers you could easily use social media sites like facebook or twitter instagram and ask your audience, what are their blocks do they read that are related to you? So let's say you have a jewellery blogged or a jewelry line? Maybe you want to survey your audience and say, hey, what are some of your favorite fashion blog's? Or if you are a maybe have products for babies, why not survey your audience and asked them what parenting blocks they read and that'll give you some really great ideas for the bloggers that you couldn't reach out? Teo, I actually do this with my own audience, and I was shocked to find that a lot of my audience was reading food and wine magazine and food and wine magazine it's not a magazine that I would have ever thought to pitch, but because a lot of my audience read it it's something that I actually reached out to for their holiday gift guide. Now I didn't get in, which is totally okay, but it open my mind and it got me to really understand that my audience is a lot more diverse in terms of their interests than I thought, because I was just assuming probably read your yoga journal and shape and fitness and all of those, but they're reading the food magazines as well. So a great way to give your social media following engaged, asking them questions we talked a lot about that yesterday, and getting them to give you feedback and making your post more engaging that's a great way to do that! And then lastly, you could use blogged directories to search for all of these great blog's there are so many block directories there, some that are for every single block out there. Others aren't specific categories. If you search mom blogged directories, you'll find tons of sight that ranked them by the following that they have, and so on the number of traffic that they get each month. So really, in any category, you confined blogged directories to find top blocks that you could reach out to. So if you are searching online for blocks, there's a couple of key words that you couldn't use to find specifically blog's that are doing product reviews. So you, khun search things like pr friendly blogged in your niche so let's say you have jewelry, you might say pr friendly fashion blogger or pr friendly fashion accessories blawg, you can also search for a product review blogged in your category and often times. Those blog's will come out because they have this key words on their own website or mommy blogger giveaway blawg and so on the one thing I would recommend act actually staying a little bit away from our bloggers who on lee have a block for giveaways and coupons? I think unless you are that sort of brand where you do you want to reach out to that market? If you have more of an upscale brand or something where you don't always wanted this count, I wouldn't necessarily recommend going dev out there are some blocks that all they do is discounts and giveaways and those air great there was readers really loved them, but they've trained their readers to on lee come there to win something, so keep that in mind as I'm not saying you shouldn't do it because if it's really targeted to what you're trying to do, then you can, but I would recommend doing working with bloggers who don't on lee do discounts and coupons and giveaways and a lot of them that you find do a wide variety of different things. There are also blogger outreach sites, so if you go teo my own website get media happy, I actually reach out to blog's on a regular blade basis and I asked them what they're looking for and then they tell me what they're looking for and I pose that for our members but that's not the only option out there there's group high business to blogger there are many blogger outreach sites, so if you just googled blogger outreach sites, you'll find a ton of them I'm biased obviously I think mine is really awesome but you do have a lot at your disposal so after you've done your research and you have decided that okay, I think I have a couple of blocks that I want to work with. It's time to think about your budget. So how much money do you want to spend undoing a product review or give away with some of these bloggers so the only one to pay for samples and shipping and interestingly enough with bloggers, you will not get your samples back. You should not expect to get your samples back so that's one one huge difference between blog's and magazines is that with the magazine you could actually request to have your samples returned with a block it's not that easy because they look at keeping your samples as payment for the time it takes them to actually reveal your products. Upload all of the photos take photos and at first I didn't really understand that because I thought, well, why do you need to keep my t shirts right? I you could see a picture of what they look like, why do you need to try them on but then I would see that a lot of these bloggers that I was working with they would put on the t shirts, they will go out into town, they would take photos, they would wear my t shirts, they're yoga class and take photos so they really do take your product and test them out try them out because their audience is looking for a really thorough review off their experience with your product so they're only looking at a picture they can tell that my t shirts are really soft or that they fit so nicely right they would just know that that's what it looks like in a picture so that something you should keep in mind where a magazine editor is often not going to try on your clothes or anything like that unless they are doing the photo shoot and there may be putting your clothes on a model but often times bloggers that really are invested and providing really great quality content for their veeder so they will test your products if you want to work with bloggers it's a reality that they have to keep your product so if you have one thousand dollars pair of earrings maybe blogging my na makes sense for you unless it's one of those bloggers who has three point six million followers. So think about your own products your own budget at want make sense for you now some blog's will also charge for a review, so in addition to keeping your product and you paying for shipping of your product to them they also charge a fee it's also known as a sponsored posts so sometimes it's fifty dollars sometimes it's one hundred dollars sometimes it's five hundred dollars depending on how much audience and readership they have sometimes it's in the thousands of dollars now I've never personally paid to sponsor any post my I looked in my budget and I realized that for me I was happy with doing pr with magazines and working with bloggers that maybe they didn't necessarily have the millions of followers that we've seen before but they still had a pretty substantial following and I wanted to work as well to work with them as well. So for me, my rule was always that I would on ly d'oh or work with a blogger if I didn't have to pay to be featured, your rules can be totally different depending on your budget. I do know entrepreneurs who do pay for sponsored posts and they do get really great results. So if it's a block that gets maybe a million visitors a month and they're only charging one hundred fifty dollars for a sponsor post, you probably can pretty much guarantee that that would be a really great return on your investment especially if it's a really specific blogged that your audience has already told you that they re itself that's something to keep in mind as well. You could change your mind too, if you realize that I've been doing a lot of sponsored posts and I'm not really getting that my child of it, maybe going forward. You want on ly deunan sponsor post it's totally up to this is your pr plan it's your company to your brand. You don't have to do anything here just because someone says you should do it. Try and see what works for you a question that came in the chat from beth and best says that the blog's have contacted were more interested in the advertising on their blog's. So does that mean that I'm not finding the right blog's for my content? Yes, that's exactly what that means. So if you look at a block, you'll see that a lot of them have advertisement. Some of those advertisements are paid for others our affiliate ads so that's part of when you do your research, you couldn't really know whether or not a blogger will ask you to pay if they have advertising front and center of their whole sidebar isil of ads they probably will ask you to pay because it's in their best interest, you so I would recommend that instead of paying for an ad if you do have a budget pay for a sponsor post because your stuff will give more notice than if it was an ad so great question thanks and you can always say no you there's been bloggers who have asked me to advertise and I said I'm so sorry I don't have a budget for that which I didn't because I had and set aside any money for advertising but I would be happy to do a product review or give away and some of them said ok some of them said I'm sorry we only do work with advertisers so again you can see what what they do but oftentimes you will start that conversation with them so you'll know exactly where you stand it's not like they'll say ok I'll do a product review and then they'll send you an invoice for one hundred fifty dollars you always know ahead of time if there is money to be involved in that product review so once you have your budget ready you still have to make sure that it's a good fit but how do you do that so there's a couple of things that you have to dio before you actually this is before you even reached out to the blogger so look on the block and look at how much content does it already have? Are there three hundred posts in there this blogger just start blogging yesterday or last week or last month how much content is already in there but you can look at and then go through that content and read it and make sure that it's a fit with your brand as well I know there was some block that really wanted to review my products especially my silks and they had a ton of other reviews from really major brands that were totally against when my brand was trying to dio so I knew for me because they were advertising products and soaps and cosmetics that we're not organic and all natural which was one my brand was about I knew that for me that was not a good fit because if she's telling her readers about these major brand it's probably that audience and those readers are not going to be interested in my all natural and organic soap line so look at the content see if it's a good fit and just look at some of their past product review some of their past content and there's sometimes it's really hard because let's say a blogger has a really great following but their block might be new because maybe they had really great following from the block that they ran before and now they have a new block that's up to to the side I'm not necessarily saying you shouldn't work with blog's that are just starting out that are just new because I have worked with some of them that were just the right fit, and I got really great results. But think about that, too, and who you want to work with, and do they have a lot of content? Are they just starting out? And that should all come into consideration when you're thinking about whether or not you should work with a blogger? The other thing you should look at is whether or not they have enough traffic. There are a time of blog's out there, and I really do mean a ton. Some of them have amazing traffic, some of them have very little traffic. I would recommend working with bloggers that have a good amount of traffic, so by good amount, what do I mean by that? I know that question is going to come up, and a lot of you are wondering about that. I always or my rule was that I would only work with a blogger who had at least ten thousand unique visitors per month. That's what from my experience testing and working with different blondes that's when I would see a return on my investment. So there were plenty of bloggers that I did giveaways and product reviews with that hat a few thousand followers, and oftentimes I didn't get many sales from it, so for me, I decided early on. That if a blogger had more than ten thousand unique visitors per month that's when I would work with them and do a product you theory for you that number could be fifty thousand it could be five thousand, but ten thousand is usually a guy little to go buy yes unique being on individual person or just what is that? Yeah so unique visitors great question because oftentimes bloggers will send the hominy hits they have per month how many page views they have, how many, whatever other criteria is out there, but you really want to be looking at unique monthly visitors because that's one person that is actually looking at that blawg hits really means nothing because if they have one hundred images on a block post that's one hundred hits for that particular page so and don't pay attention to hits often times that number is crazy huge for any web site that has a lot of graphics and a lot of things on the site by looking at unique monthly visitors not even page views unique monthly visitors is the number you should go by and often times you could ask the blogger and if they are pr friendly where they're doing this on a regular basis, they already have all of these statistics ready to give them to you for one you're ready and there are a couple of different sites where you can sort of check, although it's not one hundred percent accurate, but you can check on sites like compete, dot com or alexa dot com and again, these are not one hundred percent accurate, but you could get a ballpark idea of how much traffic a blogger has, but usually asking them. They'll be pretty honest about it, because they are in business to do product reviews and do all of these sorts of things, so oftentimes they'll publish it on their pr friendly part of their website oftentimes will just have to ask them, and they will give you that information. The other thing here, that is so, so important, I would say, even more so important than traffic is, does the blogging, working with, have really engaged audience and by engaged audience? I mean, do they get their readers to leave comments on their block post? And do they get their social media followers to like and share and comment and engage with them on social media? If a blogger has twenty thousand followers on facebook and she posts one of her block post and that block post gets zero shares, zero comments or very few, you know that that audience is really not that engaged, and the same goes for if they post a block post, and there are zero comments, and not only on just one post, but if you look at pages and pages of block post and most of them have zero comments or very few comments, you know that their audience isn't really engaged and you don't want to work with a blogger who doesn't have an engaged audience. The whole point of this thing is to work with bloggers whose audience listens to them whose audience takes action, whose audience gets involved with what it is that they're writing about and whose audience most importantly, comments and takes the time out of their date that's how you know when someone has a really loyal following yeah, is there such a thing as posting too often or too much? Um as a blogger, I don't think so I think it just I mean there's blog's that post for five articles a day depends something especially some of these larger fashion blog's and there are blocks that post once a week or even once a month I would only recommend working with bloggers that post at least once a week because that way you know they have a regular sort of schedule if someone's only posting once a month it's rare that you're going to get many results out of that, but if they pose daily that's awesome, that means they really have learned from their audience that their audience wants more content and that's usually a great sign yeah do you want to stick with bloggers that are just doing blog's and not also trying to sell something else on their own? Um oh do you mean like someone else who has a company selling products and they also have a block, right? But maybe they have a huge following on the blog's side and yeah, I mean, it really depends I would say stick mostly with blocks that are blog's and that they don't have a product to sell especially a competing product. However I have worked with blog's is where I didn't give away with them and we were actually collaborating and we're doing a valentine's they give away and they had chocolate and I had soaps, so we sort of bundled our stuff together and we both promoted on our block and it was sort of like when on awesome valentine's day gift of chocolate insult so that's one sort of thing where it was their block and it was my block and my so blocked I'm not I wasn't using that company as a blogger, but I used my block to promote their products and vice versa, so if you do something like that, you could do that as well, but I would say stick with the bloggers who are in the business of blogging rather than in the business of selling the product although if you collaborate, that could really be awesome tool as well, and I did get quite a lot of newsletter subscribers who wanted to win that really awesome valentine's day gift up, and we both did, so I'm great question, yeah, all right. So lastly, as you are working with bloggers and doing your research and seeing that they are a good fit, you should also be looking at whether or not the other products they reveal will fit with yours. And I mentioned that before about the non natural skincare line going along with my organic soaps, and there was just not a fit there. So no matter how much you would love to be featured on a specific blogged, if you see that the products that they reviewed previously or have done give aways with previously are not a match for what you're trying to sell there's going to be a huge disconnect there, and often times you'll see this with a lot of the bloggers that used giveaways where they'll give away any product our any company that approaches them. But you want to get really strategic here and make sure that the other products that they're representing and writing about and reviewing that they're a good fit with your product as well. So you do have to do a little bit of legwork before you actually reach out to a blogger because you don't want to waste their time, and you don't want to waste your time as well on lee to find out later that it just was not a good fit anymore. So if you do all of this stuff beforehand, you have much more success with your blogging experience, and the other thing you should be looking at is how often do their post go live? We talked about can you block too much? No, but you can block too little when it comes to pr and working with blog's that block very infrequently. So you want to make sure that they have posed going out at least once a week? Dailey would be even awesome, but once a week is usually the rule that I go by, you also want to look at pr friendly. We talked about that before, but does this block actually work with brands and do they make it easy for you to work with them? And if someone says they're pr friendly, they know how the game is played. They know that you have to send them samples, they know that they have to do a review, they know they have to give you a shock shout out on social media. They know all of the rules that they have to sort of follow self imposed rules that go along with working with a pr friendly block so look for that word if it's not there look and see how some of the other gives some of their other gives giveaways are structured to make sure that they are pr friendly and they do know what they're doing. The other thing you want to ask about is there a fee oftentimes they will post it on the website often times you have to ask them so before you commit to any sort of review or give away just asked them is there a fee to participate or do you charge for sponsor post and if there is and it's not in your budget just say I'm sorry we can't do it if there is a fee and it is in your budget and make sure everything else is a good fit as well before you actually commit and say yes now working with magazines is a little different than this so you don't have to do all of this with magazines but when you're reaching out to bloggers you do sort of have to follow these steps to ensure they have a really smooth experience with them the other lasting issue think about is would your customers actually read this particular block do you envision if you know your customers we talked a lot about knowing your customer knowing who she is, what she reads, what she likes, what she eats and all of those things that you know by your customer would she actually read this particular block of the answer is yes go for it if the answer is I'm not sure then you can look at some of the other things that go into doing your research and you can determine if it's the block for you if the answer is no then probably you should not be doing give away their product review with this particular blogger a question come up in the chat room about reaching out to people who maybe our competitors or who are in the same industry and the specific question says would you recommend me this viewer as a jewelry designer to reach out to another jewelry designer for a product review giveaway on her blogged I wouldn't necessarily recommend that unless the products were complementary to each other but if there were competing products I would not recommend that at all because it's just a really awkward thing they're probably going to say no you don't really want to be there because that's taking customers away from them so I wouldn't recommend that unless it's like a product like chocolate and soaps right? Those are not competing products that could be complementary products so or even let's say you design inspirational hearings and someone on ly designs inspirational bracelets then maybe you can partner too to sort of offer a set or something like that, or give away each other's products. But if your products are competing, I definitely would not recommend reaching out to those bloggers. Thanks. Okay, so have I been giving you enough to think about when it comes to bloggers? I have a few more steps that I want to share with you, and this is the six step, which is get to know the content, so we got to know sort of are they pr friendly? Do they charge a fee? Is their audience engaged? But do we really know what they're writing about? And I mentioned this a little bit before about if your product is not a good food with the products that they're promoting or sponsoring it's definitely not a good fit, so go through their latest post, read a few, maybe a last month's worth of content go back as far as you want, tio, and see if your products are a good fit with the other stuff that they're writing about and also go on their social media accounts and see what they're writing about. And if it makes sense for you, oftentimes those stuff that they post on social media can be smiley different from what they post on their blogged and does the stuff that they post on social media is that a good fit? For us all because they will be promoting you on social media, they're doing their job correctly and you should be promoting them as well, but we'll talk about that too, but look at their social media accounts to unsee what kind of conversations are they having with their audience? And do you want to be part of that conversation to? There are some bloggers that I love the content on their block, and I thought great fit, and then I went on social media and read some of those comments and interaction I thought there is no way this is going to be a good fit, so it's definitely look at both there and lastly, every there about paige, we talked about the importance of the about page on your own web site, but it's also so important to read the about paige off the blogger that you're working with, and the reason for that is because if you know a little bit about them, if they've done a great job sharing their story, you can bring that up when you reach out to them. So if they share on their block that they have three dogs and you have three dogs, you can talk about that in your email, you can say, I just wear that you have three dogs, I have three dogs, two on I love them how amazing are they basically, let's, start a conversation, right? So if you could read there about paige and know what they're about, see if, first of all, if it's a good fit with you, and secondly, if you can use some of that information when you're actually e mailing them and letting them know that you are familiar a little bit with who they are, what they do, why they started and why they doing where they're doing so once you know their content and once you know what they're all about it's time to start engaging, so by engaging, I mean a couple of things, as you can read their block and leave comments and act like one of their readers leave comments on their block. Let them know why this post was particularly appealing to you, but make sure that you actually engage with them because they really, really loved that after that followed them on social media, and I'm not saying you should follow them and pitch them on social media, but followed them on social media and share their content with your readers. This is ah, great way for for you to show their support and it's also a great way for you to kind of show up on their radar there's been plenty of times where I was working with the brand. And first I found out about them because they followed me on social media. They re tweeted a couple of my things than they left a comment on my block and again I'm so sort of seeing them here more than seven times right over the course of a few weeks or a month they're constantly interacting with me and they're getting on my radar and I'm like, oh yes, I remember you left the comment I remember you shared one of my things on facebook you liked one of my things on twitter or whatever, so this is a great way to get on someone's radar it's not guarantee tv because I know some bloggers if they have a huge audience, they're not going to read everything they're not familiar with every single person they don't remember everyone who retweeted and shared and commented but it really is a great way to sort of stand out and get them to kind of know your name before you actually reach out and before you pitch them and also share their content if it's relevant to your own audience and your own social media following shared that with your audience as well and it shows that you really do support them and again it just starts to build that relationship of I'm here to support you you're here to support me within both benefit from each other and provide value for each other so after you follow them on social media, you still have two more steps we're not ready yet to actually pitch your products so you also have tio no, they're requirements so we talked about do they charge a fee or not? Is a product sample required? Oftentimes it will be but not always sometimes I've had people just asked me for photos and they were doing more of a not necessarily a product review but a product mention or they just wanted photos and then lastly is your product sample returnable and often times when you're working with a blogger it's not going to be returnable, so keep that in mind and then house and there's a review go live, so if you've sent your products, do you have to wait three months before you actually see the review or is it going to go up in a month from now or a week from now? So I know all of that ahead of time oftentimes I want to start pitching and you start that conversation they'll tell you, okay, we've just got your samples. Your review will go live next week or it'll go live in two weeks and so on but know ahead of time how long it takes because I'd say if your goal is to launch her new line, you want reviews that go live right of what you don't want to review that's going to take three months to go up, because by then it's way too late. If you're not launching and let's say you just want to grow your newsletter subscribers, maybe you can wait three months that's totally up to you, but knowing your goals really helps with knowing how long you can actually wait for the review to go live. So is that making sense? Yes. All right, so now that we've done all of that leg work, it's time to actually pitch our product. So how do you actually do that? So you have to reach out via email, but on ly after you've connected on social media and they might again, they might still not know of you from social media because maybe they don't remember or maybe they I didn't pay attention or they have too much social media interaction, but you have to reach out via email and keep your email short and really to the point. I'm going to give you an example in a second, but ask for what you want. Do you want them? Tio do a product review? Do you want them to do a giveaway? Do you want them to do on offer? Do you want to do a collaboration? Just during the break, I was shaking my email. And I got lots of pitches one of them was just a press release, which we talked about earlier what did I do? I deleted it right away I didn't even read it the subject line was intriguing enough to get me to open it, but I opened it I just all press release that said for immediate release press the lead right away I got another pitch also with a press release but it said hi andrea, we know you write about entrepreneurs and mother's day is coming and we have some awesome entrepreneurs that work with women in ghana to design necklaces would you be interested in featuring them? Here's our press release so they were so specific they know what I'm writing about they still send me a press release, but it wasn't just the press release they told me what it is that they wanted me to do, they ask for what they wanted, so ask for what do you want in your email and ask for vita way don't send an email and at the bottom it says something like by the way, would you be interested in revealing our product? That has to be the first thing you start with or one of the first things that you start with so let's talk about the perfect pitch how do you write that? How do you make sure your email gets open so no, yes, perfect pitch. I had a question here that came up in the chat room that kind of touches on your step by step process here. So you just went through sort of the best way to lead up to crafting that pitch, but we have a question here from a p r in the chat room who says, hey, andrea, thanks for all the tips I'm in a situation where I had developed a really sweet relationship with a very influential fashion editor, but it got messed up because of a couple of stupid mistakes made by me and my team members. At one point, we even confused the publication names in the content that we were creating. How do I fix this relationship that has kind of gone arrive from some mistakes that they made? I've done that before tio so you're not alone out there. I have done it too, and sometimes you have to think, ok, is it might stop on lee from your perspective, do you just think it's messed up, or did they tell you that that relationship is messed up? Too often? Times you might think it's really must stop because you wrote their names wrong, but on there and it's not messed up at all, so you have to really know is it really messed up or do you just think it's messed up and if you just think it's my stuff I really would just recommend writing back and saying, hey, I'm so sorry I called you the wrong name or I had the wrong block it's been a crazy day but I still would really love to work with q so apologize people understand people spell my name wrong all the time, right? And my email address is joy at launch grow joy dot com so I have people tell me hi joy you know, I would love to do this with you or I wantto do a product review or will you be on summit? And oftentimes I overlooked that it's totally fine if they're giving me something of value something that benefits my readers it's fine that they call me joy bill by you know, when I write back and I signed my name and I say you know, talk to you soon, andrea, then don't write back and say, oh my god, I'm so sorry I spelled your name wrong or I had the wrong name it doesn't matter I get over it, they get over it, but if they're embarrassed to even write back to me because they spelled my name wrong, I could possibly not even care that they spelled my name wrong and we could still have that great relationship so if you still have done that and apologized and nothing really worked and you never have heard from them again and it's been six months or something like that, then you could just sort of learn from that mistake and no not to do it again and be really careful to proof read there were times when I've sent out email pitches and I forgot to change the first name field so I would say, you know, dear first name on I've done that few times or now I know that I'm never doing that again so every single thing I write I double check and triple check to make sure it's the right thing but we all make mistakes and oftentimes the way we view them are so much worse than the way the other person on the other line views your mistakes so sort of try tio get past that apologize and see if you can move on yeah would you recommend to try again like would you wait and then and then try toe send the perfectly proofread yeah, I would write as soon as I realized that I made a mistake or maybe spelled their name wrong or got their block named wrong I would write back as soon as I realized that and I would say I'm so sorry I just noticed that I spelled your name wrong I apologize I still would love to work with you please let me know what you think so as soon as you realize it I wouldn't wait to send the same pitch and pretend that that first email didn't exist I would acknowledge that you did it but also don't be too apologetic I've had people who email me and they're like I am so sorry and they sort of feel bad like really really bad where I'm starting to feel bad for them and that's never what you want to portray right? You can sort of imagine that that's not where you you don't want to feel sorry for yourself we all make mistakes it was an honest mistake we're all grownups here they'll get past it hopefully hopefully they'll get past it but often times it just takes a small apology on your end to sort of just move forward and have that relationship going yeah, yeah it happens to everyone I still get pitched all the time with the wrong name, the wrong company name on all of the so many stories but it happens to all of us get past and move on and if you still if you've messed up that relationship, you learn something from that and you're probably not going to do that again sometimes we need to make this huge mistakes in order to really learn something so often times that at the expense of a relationship unfortunately but just move on great questions all right, so you've seen this light before this morning, but I want to put it up here again, as you are thinking about working with bloggers. Because, just like with magazines, your job, when you're working with a blogger, it's, to help them discover products that are relevant to their readers that are providing value and then make their job easier. This is how I should approach. Any time we send out an email. You are providing value, helping someone and sharing valuable information. So everything, whether it's retailers, you're helping them to sell more products. Media. You're helping them to discover products, and so on.
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This class was so jam packed with useful and current information. It deals with issues that did not even exist as recent as last year. I made drastic changes to my social media outlets and forums, that have greatly improved my fan base. Andreea is an amazing roll model, teacher, and example of success.
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I watched all three days of this course, and it has helped my mom and I in so many ways. We started a soap business in late 2014, and nothing we did worked. So we are currently regrouping, and with all the information we learned from Andreea we feel so much more confident this time around. Anyone looking to do great things with their company needs to see these 3 courses. Creative Live great decision on having Andreea on here.
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