By Chris Lee

While blogs have proliferated around the Web and vary in influence from the reach of millions - such as the Huffington Post, to an audience of one in a suburban attic – “blogger relations” has worked its way onto the agendas of public relations agencies in the last few years. But not as much as you would perhaps think, according to a recent poll of peers by PR blogger Phil Szomszor.

Szomszor’s poll of UK PR professionals found that less than three per cent of bloggers “always” contact relevant bloggers as part of their campaigns, while the majority (45 per cent) “sometimes” reach out to bloggers. A third (33 per cent) said they “rarely” contact bloggers and 15 per cent said they are “never” in touch with the blogging community.

“I’m interested in the dynamic between PRs and bloggers, because in many respects I can see it going the same way as PRs and journalists: in other words, a necessary relationship, but one that could work a lot better,” Szomszor said.

Manual labour

Szomszor found that manual methods of identifying bloggers proved to be the most popular, particularly Twitter (92 per cent) and search engines (87 per cent). Existing databases created by new media suppliers were hardly used at all.

Szomszor said that the main factors to consider when weighing up outreach to a blogger were relevance (99 per cent), followed by the number of recent posts (68 per cent) and comments (48 per cent).

Interestingly – and despite bloggers not being receptive to them – more than half (53 per cent) of PRs that engage with bloggers send them press releases.

Building long-term relationships

Mark Pinsent, director of Shine Communications, told NMK that building and maintaining relationships with bloggers is as important today as “traditional” media relations ever was.

“The challenge of course is identifying those who are truly influential amongst the myriad bloggers out there and there's no real shortcut to do this, no matter which online tool you might use,” he said. “The best bet is to research and do a lot of reading - you'll start to get a feel for those bloggers often cited and referenced by others and the type and tone of their content, which is essential in effectively targeting them. A good basic rule is that your first contact with any blogger shouldn't be a pitch. It might be a comment on a blog post or an email enquiring about whether they're happy to receive information and, if so, what type and how. From that point you can begin to build a mutually beneficial relationship.”

Claire Williamson, one of the large and collectively influential “mummy blogger” set with her PR Mummy blog, believes that engaged bloggers can make a real impact on issue awareness, for example.

“The keynote speaker [at Cybermummy 2011], Sarah Brown, said that she felt the social media can bring about important change and I do think that no matter how small a contribution a blog makes, being involved gives the blogger a voice they might not have had and the opportunity to influence,” she said. “Every one of the mummy bloggers will have a loyal following of friends and family so reaching them, in addition to the established blogging community, can really help a cause.”