Lessons

Lesson Info

Getting Your Products in Blogs

So for anyone who's thinking about the magazines that you want to be in, I want to urge you to write those down and put them maybe your top ten somewhere near your computer, and look at those every single morning and find ways to make your pr mentions. And your dream magazines really happened. So we talked a lot about magazine lee times and all of that. But there's a part of p r that I feel is really critical, especially for crafters, and that is getting your products mentioned in influential block. So why blog's what's the big thing about block? So there is this interesting thing that happens when it comes to approaching your pr efforts from a bloggers perspective. So there's the consumer, which is the person that's actually reading the block, that person that is, hopefully going to be buying your products. There is the block and the blogger itself, and some of these he blocks have huge followings. You would be shocked. I looked at some of them. One of them has over thirteen million a...

nd our pinterest followers and a lot of traffic to go along with that. So you cannot discount logs as something that shouldn't be a part of your pr efforts and then there's the brands, which is all of you all of the crafters out there who you have a product, you have a brand, you want to get it out there featured in two brands and what's happening a lot is that a lot of these big brands, especially I'll give you some examples, but they are actually bypassing the whole thing. They're not investing in advertising anymore, they're going directly to blog's because bloggers have such a huge influence, especially if they have a really big following. So consumers really trust the advice, and the products are mentioned in different blocks, so sixty one percent of global internet users do their product research online. This is worldwide, people are going online to actually find products, and blog's is often times where they'll discover a lot of these products. I know for me personally, I have found out about so many products from bloggers that are writing about this product, they're reviewing them, they're doing contests and giveaways, and you want to be one of those brands that is in those blog's that consumers can then hopefully discover. And another study says that sixty one percent of consumers have made a purchase based on a block post that recommends a product I know I've done it, if any, some of you are nodding your heads. Yes, I think a lot of us have bought a product because it was mentioned on a block and a product that we weren't familiar with before, and I know this from a brand perspective because anytime I would get my products mentioned in a hugely influential block, I would get a lot of sales and often times. That was the first time that those blog's readers were actually reading and finding out about my product and one other statistic that I want to share with you. Seventy percent of online consumers will learn about companies through articles like block posts, not ads. This is huge, because if you're thinking of focusing your marketing efforts on advertising, I'd love for you to shift that thinking and put it into working with bloggers instead of looking at advertising. So many of these blocks have excuse me, a pretty big following, so fashionista magazine made a list of the twenty most influential personal personal styles or personal style bloggers right now, and I went through some of these huge social media following huge instagram followers, many pinterest followers the's bloggers have a huge influence, and this isn't just on lee in the fashion industry, this is in the beauty industry, and so many other industries out, there's, blog's and bloggers really do matter, so one thing that I want you to keep in mind, because not everyone is a good fit for working with bloggers but most bloggers are women so if you have a product that's geared to men don't worry there are plenty of men blog's out there as well but just know that a lot of bloggers are women and one in three of them are moms so if you want to target that market and if you have a product either for moms or for their children and I think a lot of us can fit our products into that category and just know that wanted three bloggers are moms and you could really start that connection with them and fifty two percent of bloggers are parents it's so there's mind that are blogging as well about half of them are actually parent so this is the reason I want to share this with you is because yes you might think well I have a product from then but there's plenty of men blocks out there too even though most are women but still times of influential dogs that are catering two months interest that feature men's products so don't this camp logs just because you don't have a product that specifically targeted for women or children or mom's yes robyn thinking because the statistics are really amazing one in three or mom and I always think of bloggers a big portion being kind of young and so maybe the average age of the bloggers actually older than I thought yeah, I think it depends what industry room because of fashion. Blog's is a lot of them are younger, but that's, not all of the blocks that are out there so that there really is a huge variety of ages and tons of moms. I think the whole pr thing and you probably have heard the term mommy blog's, but the whole pr with block things really started with mom bloggers, and they have a huge, crazy, huge influence out there. So a few more reasons why you want to consider blocks for your pr strategy is that blocks are so inexpensive considered compared to other marketing efforts. So if you look at advertising there's, nothing that come closer to the price of working with a blogger than us to take an ad out in a magazine, even a local magazine charges of at least a few hundred dollars to sometimes, you know, two to three thousand dollars just to advertise in one issue of their magazine and forget about the larger magazines out there. They charge, I think, at least fifty thousand dollars to have an ad think like one six page oven adding oprah magazine, so none of us have that kind of budget. I wouldn't recommend spending your money on ads and instead, if you do have a budgeting or marketing budget for advertising. Spend at all on p r and we're going to see that a lot of bloggers you don't have to pay anything, although some bloggers do have what's known as a sponsored post and in which case you have to pay but it's such a small feet compared to fifty thousand dollars that it would cost you teo advertise in some of the major magazines out there. Being in blocks is also really great for us, you know we talked a little bit about using press releases for a ceo because you want to have links back to your website online, but getting your products mentioned in the block you always get a link back to your website, and often times you'll get more than one link. You'll get a link to your home page linked to your product pages and it's such a great way, especially if you are linked to a web site or a block that gets let's, say, five hundred thousand monthly unique visitors that's a huge weight when it comes to a ceo so it's a great way to get your links out there. Get traffic back to your what site and really lead the search on just know in a way that your site matters that your site is being seen and being bling teo and being mentioned in other blog's, and when that happens, then your company's going to come up at the top of search results more than another company who might be selling similar things, but they're actually don't have as many links back to your site as you do so. Another really great reason for working with blocks other than the actual pr and getting leads and sales is the great ceo that you can get back to your website. And the awesome thing I love this about working with blog's is that you get immediate results whether you get traffic to your web site right away, people signing up for your e newsletter people following you on social media or them actually buying something a lot of it is instant, you don't have to wait months like you might with a magazine with magazine mentions you, we talked about that lead time that's not really the case with blog's, and usually when the article goes live, you immediately start seeing things happened on your website. So this is an example that I wanted to give you. This is one of those bloggers that was mentioned and that top twenty bloggers list by fashionistas blogged and she has you will see here crazy three point six million instagram fans, so if you got on her block and I was looking through her instagram feed aa lot of the products that she munches on her block, she also has screenshots of and shares them on instagram so what an amazing way to get in front of three point six million people not even oprah magazine khun get you in front of three point six million people now I don't know specifically if she charges I'm but she does at this point she probably does charged for product reviews if she does them but a great just a great example of you cannot this cam blogger some of them have huge following followings more than we could ever imagine this is another blogger she does a lot of youtube videos for fashion so you'll see there she has over six hundred thousand subscribers to her you to check out youtube channel that's more then some magazines that are national and they get national circulation so again video we talked about video on how powerful it is if you can get your products in one of her videos imagine the exposure that you can actually get for your brand and one more this is I'm joy from oh joy and look at her pinterest following I think she's the number one pinterest user that has the most followers and she's been there pretty much in the beginning but she has thirteen million and I'm sure this was last week that I put it up there I'm sure if we were to check now bad number has increased substantially so if you've got a mention on her block and I know she does a lot of sponsored things and she works with target and some of the other brands so she's way up there and it might I'm not necessarily saying you can't get up there but you actually can she does talk a lot about brands that are smaller that are handmade products that she actually loves. So this is another example of the huge impact that working with a blogger can actually have on you and not every blogger has that I wish I had that that's sort of following it might take me forever to get there, but there are bloggers out there who do have that that you could tap into and get your products mentioned and sort of work with them to get your bread in front of their readers. So the other interesting that thing that's happening is that brands are going directly to blogger so this is from birchbox and what they're doing they have a call on their website for blogger so they're saying become a birch blogger and when you joined their blogger network you obviously have to have a block with some sort of a readership but when you join you get free products, you get stuff to review so this is another way another thing that brands are doing where they could have spent they have the money to spend on advertising right there a crazy huge company they could buy magazine ads and I think they still d'oh but they're going directly to bloggers because they know the huge impact that a blogger can have on their brand imagine that first blogger that we we put up there if she works of birchbox, all of those different followers of hers that are getting exposed to this company so it's huge and one of their example this is from crafty and they did a lot of blogger outreach they work with a lot of crafts teach some craft courses and they did a blogger outreach and their sales increase sixty percent that's pretty big it's not one or two percent sixty percent simply from working with bloggers and one other thing that I wanted to share with you. This is a kitchen where a company I think so I think that's what it's called so they sell kitchen tools so they have a program on their website where they are specifically targeting bloggers. I think a lot of them are bloggers that talk about home to core and mom bloggers that would use a lot of there kitchen utensils and tools and even they have a program where if you're a blogger with a good enough readership, you can get free products from them and get them to review them on your website so another company who can totally afford advertising and yet they're choosing to work with bloggers so I think I've convinced you that working with blog's definitely should be part of your pr strategy. And it really works. If this wasn't working, more companies wouldn't actually be jumping on that and working with bloggers as well.