I am getting ready for my upcoming seminar at TechLoft in Tel Aviv on February 15.  You can register here if you would like to attend.

In advance of the event, I reached out to the first 50 people who registered and asked them what they would like to learn more about.

One common theme I am seeing is how to best reach out to, and pitch a blogger.

Bloggers Aren't Bloggers.  They Are Humans.

In all of my infinate (or so I hope) wisdom,  my advise is to stop broadly categorizing bloggers as bloggers.  

There are boy bloggers.  There are girl bloggers.  There bloggers from Texas. There are bloggers from London.  Some bloggers are into food.  Some are into technology.  Some are into health.  Some are into music.  Some suck.  Some are really good.  

So, How Do I Pitch Bloggers?

Don't.

In the beginning you are not here to pitch. Anything.

You're here to listen, engage and learn about what they write about, what interests them and where you can be helpful to them.

Then, you can ask or "pitch" with a quick email saying something like:  ".... hi Joe, I've been following your site for x months and would like to share some information about the upcoming launch of our company that should be of interest to your readers.  Our (product, platform, solution, community) enables your readers to _____.... would you be interested in learning more?"

A Seat At The Table

Remember, bloggers (like journalists and analysts) are just humans who are busy, backlogged and pitched a whole lot.

There's no standard rule for how to do this, but I often find that following and then asking is far more effective than just showing up at their front door and asking for a seat at the table.  

You gotta earn that seat first.

RFP's are understandable, but are often misguided and poorly executed attempts for a group of executives to justify (or guess) at who they think would be the best Public Relatons firm or advisor to represent their company.  If I am asked to fill out an RFP, I will take it on a case-by-case basis, depending on the situation and complexity of the document.  As a start,  I have the client-to-be fill out the following form.  

Prospective Client RFP

Part of building your startup's culture is having a tone that reflects your company's verbal persona.

I met Dwight Silverman 20 some odd years ago when he was with The San Antonio Light - which went away and was sort of bundled into the San Antonio Express-News.  His syndicated coverage of technology for the Houston Chronicle is some of the best.  He not only writes, but engages with readers, and posts cool and useful stuff such as: his list of journalists he is tracking for CES 2012.  

It would stand to reason that someone like Dwight would follow his peers who also cover not only consumer electronics, but all the gizmos, gadgets and apps that will be at the show.  (I'll be there too).

Sometimes you have to be a bit of slueth to figure out where your candidates might be for coverage.

This does not guarantee you success, but certinaly helps accelerate your research and discovery process.

Today in Tel Aviv, I gave a presentation to a group of friends and associates of Jeff Pulver's startup ecosystem in Israel.

The premise of this presentation is NOT to do PR, but how to prepare your company for PR, how to be found by the media and how to make PR and strategic communications part of the R&D process.

No surprise here.. although press releases are more frequently shared on Facebook, shares on Twitter drive significantly more traffic back to releases than shares on Facebook.  Read the details here from CrowdFactory....

Are you reaching out to media, bloggers and analysts to pitch your startup's story and vision to?

Here's a simple way to do this:  make 5 pitches per week.  Download this form and modify it as you see fit.  Ask yourself the questions listed below.  The more you do this, the luckier you get.

Who Did I Pitch Today?

I really love using Spotify the free service (with options to upgrade to a premium service) that lets you discover and share music.

Pay Attention to Discovering and Sharing as a PR Strategy

I am spending more and more time helping clients discovering new voice to reach out to, share their technology and insights with, and connect with new enterprise and consumer end users by relaying content through their networks.

Yes, I still do very traditional, old school PR, but if you take a moment and see what Spotify has done, and how it impact your own music selection and discovery behavior, maybe there is something you can learn in your media, analyst and blogger initiatives.

Make your content compelling so it can be discovered and of course, shared.

Before you pitch, it's generally best to ask... and get a reality check...

Reality Check Photo by me in the streets of Tel Aviv (c) 2011

1.  OK to send you a press release as an attached file, or embedded in the email?

2.  For outreach, do you prefer email (which address), Facebook mail, DM via Twitter, or your Gmail account via Google +

3.  Do you honor embargo'd requests?

4.  When pitching a news announcement, what are your deadines?

5.  What times of day / night do you prefered to be contacted (or not)

6.  What days of the week should I NOT reach out to you?

7.  Are you the right person to pitch my story to?

8.  What industry analysts do you rely on, or do you suggest we brief in advance of pitching you?

Most of the time, common sense rules.

Content development should involve your business development team.

As a technology company, you have technology partners that are part of your ecosystem.  Dance, collaborate, and swing.  Photo by me shot in front of the Apple store on 14th St in NYC.

Get your business development team on board to team up with your marketing team and your partner's marketing team as well.

If your partners are delivering new products or services for your platform in 2012, start now, not three weeks before you deploy.

When you beging to integrate your partner's messaging into yours, you suddently become a more valued partner.