Working With Bloggers | A Cheeky Interview

1. What made you decide to use bloggers to develop brand awareness?

Couple of reasons:

–        Anyone can trumpet about how great their product is, but people are more interested in what the product is like to live with and what other customers (or people similar to them) think to it. By working with bloggers your products not only can become part of the story of someone’s life, but that person will also go and write about it and tell their friends and readers. And that’s so much more effective than straightforward advertising.

–          It’s great fun meeting new people

      2.    How do you know who is a “blagger” and who is a “blogger”?

By one look at their blog… too many reviews and poor quality writing are the biggest giveaways.

3. What has been the most successful blogging campaign?

Gosh, can’t pin one down. We run competitions to find out people’s thoughts and preferences. For example, we ran this comp with Purple Mum, which convinced us to finally move our production to UK. This comp with FamilyFourFun helped us decide which colours and patterns to produce for our shoes and this comp helped us determine the style for our upcoming collection. Working with bloggers is an amazing way to stay in close touch with your customers.

Each and every campaign has been really worthwhile for different reasons.

4. Have you had any bad experiences with bloggers?

Nope, not really. Sometimes people say they’ll post a review and then need a little prompt a few weeks later, but then you’ve also got to respect blogging for most people isn’t a job and they need to fit it around their day-to-day activities. Once you accept this and choose who you work with carefully, it’s difficult to be disappointed.

5. What would be your top tip for a small business thinking about working with bloggers?

Don’t assume bloggers or their readers are a) interested in your company b) dying to read a review about a product you sell. No one really cares that much. Find a way to be helpful/valuable to them in your pitch.

And I can’t emphasise the importance of doing your research. I know bloggers get so many generic pitches, it makes a difference if one is relevant to them.

6. Mums The Business “I’d like to know what costs are involved (a general idea)”

Time is the real cost here. It takes time to build quality connections and you must always respect a bloggers’ schedule and not hurry them. It’s not something you can just ‘switch on’ like advertising.

7. How useful is your Bloggers information page 

It is quite useful when approaching bloggers who might not have heard of you or are sceptical to working with brands. It just outlines how we work and hopefully clarifies from the outset what our expectations are and what you can expect from us.

8. Do you turn bloggers away?

Yes, sometimes a blog isn’t particularly relevant to us or our products. Also, see point 2 😉

       9.  Anything to add to the piece I wrote about working with bloggers?

Great article! I know I’ve made some of those mistakes. I’d maybe also mention about setting expectations from the outset. I think it’s important both sides know what they should be doing and when.

If you’d like to ask the guys anymore questions please do leave a comment below.  I’d love to hear from you if you take onboard their advice or if you have had successful campaigns with bloggers.