Football Media

Football blogs and bloggers are still an afterthought to PR agencies. There are exceptions (the folks at M&C Saatchi are generally clued in) but by and large, they don’t understand how bloggers tick and they don’t understand how to use blogs to deliver the type of ROI that looks good for their bosses.

At the end of the day, PR agencies are as result-driven as any other business entity, and if they can’t figure out how to work with bloggers, they’re not going to bother unless they’re forced to do it. And this is a real shame, because bloggers have been telling PR agencies (for several years) how to pitch to them.

Which brings us to this point in time, one day before the World Cup kicks off. It’s 6:30 AM (UK time) and I’ve already received 5 pitches for various World Cup related services / products. The last week has seen hundreds of emails come through at Soccerlens and most of them have been ignored.

Football PR people, listen up. I know that the World Cup happens once every four years and everyone has to make the best of it, but that doesn’t give you license to spam bloggers.

In fact, nothing is going to guarantee an instant deletion of your emails more than shilling your product a couple of days from kickoff, when anyone who’s writing about football / would be writing about the World Cup is crazy busy.

Having said that, we don’t blindly delete emails (not really). It’s just that after having read several dozen pitches PER DAY in the last seven days, I can tell just by the email subject and first line (easy to see without opening the email if you’re using GMail / Google Apps / any decent webmail client) if it’s going to be worth my time. And unless I recognise your brand’s name, you’re just shortchanging yourself by approaching bloggers at a very busy time in their schedule.

So what can PR agencies do? Read on, and take notes.

10 Things Football PR Agencies Should Learn (Again)

Note: You’ll notice that a lot of the tips here ask you to spend time studying sites and being active followers / members, which isn’t always possible (lack of time / rapid change of projects, various other reasons). Although that’s understandable, that’s not always acceptable.

Luckily there’s a way around it. Like any good marketing agency, you must be keeping records, right? Keep adding site profiles to them so that the next person can benefit too.

1. Know who you’re talking to

Personalise, Personalise, Personalise.

At the very least, you should know who you’re emailing. Granted, not every blog has easily identifiable contact persons / information, but it’s very easy to find out on most blogs a) who owns it, b) who to contact for advertising / promotions, c) who’s the main writer / editor (and your best bet for getting a reply).

Even if you have to write to a generic email address / connect through the contact form, at least find out who’s behind the site / who’s the regular writer / blogger and then address them in your initial pitch. If it’s a nickname? Use it (and ask for the real name for future reference). If there’s no name? Ask for one.

The downside of getting this wrong? Even a brand like the BBC won’t get a reply if they can’t figure out who they’re emailing.

2. Profile the site audience

Your pitch will be 100% more effective if you can customise it to suit the needs of the site’s audience. Understand the type of fans / readers who visit the site and model your pitch in a way that would appeal to them.

Pitching WindMill International to a football blog isn’t going to work, even if the said blog is open to showing a little T&A.

Does the site cater to a UK-centric audience or is it more global? Are these fans who go to matches or watch them on the telly? What are the discussions like on the blog – do they discuss club products or is it more news focused?

The absence of specific interests doesn’t mean that pitching those angles won’t work, but it does mean that you have to be more gentle in terms of pushing the idea initially and give more help to the blogger when it comes to providing the initial content on the site.

3. Study style & nature of articles

What type of content do they do? Building on from the previous point, learn what the blog/blogger talks about and cater your pitch to that. Regular readers want more of the same – or at least more in the same tone / topic. It’s not too difficult to understand whether a site is open to more whimsical / funny viral content or more serious breaking news content.

It also pays to study if they’re open to guest bloggers or not, because that will instantly tell you that they’d be open to adding content written by external writers on the site (another way in for your brand, as long as you make the discussion about the fans and not yourself).

4. Find your best ROI opportunity and focus

What’s the best return they can deliver for your brand? Is it in terms of product sales, brand reinforcement to existing consumers, getting access to other bloggers, getting the word out to the maximum # of people, getting people to participate in surveys / polls, getting valuable link equity – each blog will be really good at one or two of these things and it’s up to you to figure out what their strong point is and focus your pitch on that.

If it’s just about getting the word out and meeting a random ‘numbers’ target in terms of how many football fans have potentially seen your ad or how many writeups you’ve acquired, you’re doing it wrong.

5. Offer something valuable first

What should be offered upfront? That’s the question you should know the answer to before you contact the blogger. Apart from the lack of personalisation, the biggest mistake PR companies make (something myself and Chris have spoken out against often) is to assume that they can get ‘publicity’ on blogs for free (because apparently blogs are free and mainstream media isn’t.

It’s a damaging perception for bloggers and it couldn’t be more wrong. Bloggers are regular people too, and in many cases are running their blog as a second business. This is serious stuff for them, and the most effective way to succeed is to find out what they would value most and offer it to them.

Exclusives? Do it, but not just in name, real exclusives. Interviews / player access? Give it up (you’re already paying football players to shill your product, arranging for one-to-one access for bloggers shouldn’t be a big stretch). Free products – that’s standard fare; it’s the bare minimum, not the most you should be doing.

What else can you do? A crate of Carlsberg (to give away to readers, hah!) is not going to get me to shill your brand. Funny enough, if you put the time in to meet the blogger personally for a drink or two, that would give you a much better shot of getting promotion on their site.

One crate vs two pints – you can do the math yourself.

And this neatly ties in with my next point…

6. Build long-term relationships

Your first question shouldn’t be: “what can this blog do for me?” but “how do I engage this blog in a long-term, win-win relationship?”

Doing exclusive events for bloggers where you make initial contact and maybe explain your brand philosophy (along with one or two key news / product promotions) can be a good starting point. Meeting personally with top bloggers for drinks should be standard procedure (as is meeting for drinks with just about any other valuable point of contact).

Know who they are. Know what they want. Get them on your side. It’s sometimes as simple as valuing their efforts and sharing ideas and angles through which your brand and their blog can have synergy. Each blog is going to have multiple brands vying for their attention, but you can get a head start by getting in early, building trust and offering value.

The value of making contact early in your campaigns cannot be overstated. The earlier the bloggers are onboard, the more they’ll talk about your brand, the easier it is to convert them to fans and the more exposure you’ll get (a lot of it for free).

7. Get Referrals

Bloggers talk to other bloggers, and contacting a blogger through a referral (or mutual introduction) makes you more acceptable than a standard cold call / email.

Referrals are usually possible later on in the relationship once you’ve built up trust, but it’s a valuable tactic to use especially with well-established bloggers.

A related point is to target blogs that are popular amongst bloggers themselves – and give them special attention. That way you will be almost ‘recruiting’ bloggers to pitch your product not just to the general public but also to other bloggers. You can use events like the Soccerlens Awards to pick out the top blogs / podcasts / forums, or you can just study the industry and spend time getting to know who goes where and who likes what.

Hint: It all points to meeting with bloggers – whether in groups or individually.

8. Educate bloggers

Some bloggers might not know the best way to review a product / service on their site. Some bloggers might not know how to use viral videos (like the Nandos World Cup Ad (NSFW)) to their own benefit. Others may not know what works best in your specific niche (tickets, betting, tv subscriptions, gifts, etc).

It’s your job to help them / teach them the best practices that will get maximum results for you and for the blogger as well.

At Soccerlens (and through the Football Media ad network), we found that most betting partners either relied on sheer force of numbers or by continually working with sites / site owners who news what they were doing. They had little in the way of knowledge-sharing and quite often it worked the other way around when we would keep asking them for specific features / information to help drive more conversions.

In contrast, some of our smaller commercial partners have shown remarkable initiative in sharing what they’ve seen work best in their industry, which results in positive results (or a win-win) for all parties concerned.

More crucially, if the blog does well, it looks good for the PR guy, it’s good for the brand, AND there’s another reason to work with the blog in the future, which will only open up the blogger more to you.

9. Become social media kings

If you want social media exposure or better search rankings or viral promotion, you need to learn, in-house, how everything works. This applies more to the agency than individuals, but it’s strongly relevant.

You want your video to become viral on YouTube? Setup a YouTube video channel and start using to upload brand-specific videos. You want bloggers to talk about you on Twitter? Where’s your twitter account? What about Facebook fans? What about your own blog?

I’m not advising that you blindly put up a blog / twitter account / facebook page for every brand / product you work on, but that you USE these mediums yourself EXTENSIVELY for your projects and learn how they work best.

After all, you’re the PR experts, which is why you know what to say / ask for / do when you approach the print and online media for PR exposure. And if you wanted more social media exposure, wouldn’t it pay to become experts in that field as well, so you’d know what worked, what to ask for and how to drive and measure results?

10: Read the article below. No, print it out and learn it by heart

How To Pitch To Bloggers – 21 Tips.

It seems to me that Football PR is a few years behind PR agencies in other industries when it comes to bloggers – or it might just be a case of the UK community in general being a couple of years behind their US counterparts. Whatever the case, it’s high time they tailored their pitches to suit their targets better.

At the very least it’ll drive better results, and on average, you’ll be surprised at how much more valuable and in-depth bloggers can be compared to their mainstream media counterparts.

Posted by: Ahmed Bilal Posted under: Football Business, Promotion, Social Media