How to get good PR for yourself in the blogosphere

Getting bloggers to cover you, your law firm, or company is an art. It’s not done by sending press releases and cold emails to bloggers.

I probably get 30 press releases or announcements a day from organizations looking for me to blog about them. Can’t remember the last time such an an email from someone I didn’t know caused me to blog about what they sent me.

Uber blogger Robert Scoble, recently of Fast Company, offers some sound advice on how to get good PR for yourself in the blogosphere.

Read Robert’s whole post but here’s the highlights.

• Go where the bloggers are. Create a list of few dozen bloggers and get to know them. If possible, go to events such bloggers are attending. Looking at Upcoming.org’s event calendars frequently, you can figure out which events a preponderance of bloggers say they’re attending and keep track of them.
• Read the blogs of the people you want to cover you. Send them a note within minutes of their posting, blog about their posts, link to their blogs from your own blog, and add public comments to posts. Not only does each blogger get to know you, but their readers do too.
• Send bloggers interesting stories — especially about other people — that you think they would be interested in. When you have something about your own business to announce, those bloggers will be more receptive to you than to some PR firm that only flacks for its clients.
• Start blogging. When a blogger hears an interesting story, they go to Google and start searching other blogs so they can read more about it. Tell your story on your own blog.
• Don’t send press releases. The blog world is built on relationships.

Bloggers matter when it comes to PR. LexBlog’s grown from the garage to a company with 14 people serving law firms across the country and internationally largely by my networking with other bloggers. Not once did I send out a press release.