PR Chat: The Idaho PR Chick
July 10th, 2009 | by pam | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bloggers, marketing, PR, travel |If you look just over there, on the sidebar, you’ll see that we’ve got a few sponsors for the TBEX Road Trip. This is the time where I tell you that yes, we’re taking some comps during our adventure and we hope you’ll trust that we’ll review the products and services honestly.
We’re also taking advantage of access to the PR folks to unravel the sticky relationships between bloggers and PR. We’ve got a series of questions for them — they’ll all get the same ones — and we’ll post their answers here.
First up, Lisa Gerber from Idaho. Lisa has set up our first night on the road — we’re staying at Sleeps Cabins and having dinner at 41 South. She also helped us find our second night stay at Big Sky Resort.
First, an introduction to Lisa Gerber:
“I’m the IdahoPRchick, but follow me @lisagerber. I work with Coeur d’Alene and Sandpoint Visitor Bureaus (or is that Bureaux?), a winery, a ski resort, and a theme park to name a few. Northern Idaho is the vacation that combines the things kids love (roller coasters, terrain parks and water parks) with the things parents love (serene beauty and mountain or lakeside resorts). Press trips are available. Huckleberries are coming into season now, with Huckleberry Festival Aug 2nd. (eat everything huckleberry from breakfast to dessert), wine and brewery tours, fall weekend getaways - are a few ideas. Check out Big Leap Creative for more.“
Now, our questions:
What does a “good” blogger look like to you?
Are there any consistent characteristics in the bloggers you choose to work with?
Blog aesthetics!! Clean, professionally built, easy to read, nice photography, great personality or voice.
What makes you decide to give resources to a blogger?
I look at voice, quality of writing, types of travel stories and do they fit with my clients’ target audience.
How do you vet a blogger? Do you look at their traffic, their Technorati ranking, or other statistics?
There is no scientific formula. It’s typically rather instinctual although I do look it up on quantcast.com or technorati, and alexa.com. I look at follower numbers on twitter but I don’t weigh that number too heavily. More importantly, I like to see how active their community is: are they getting a lot of @’s and RT’s on twitter and comments on their blog?
What about communication?
How should a new blogger approach you?
Twitter or email.
What’s do you want to know from someone who’s starting out and would like to build a relationship with you?
Link to your blog, any statistics you can provide, types of stories you are looking for. who is your audience? How you found me, why my client interests you and fits with your audience.
What should bloggers ask you for? What should they NOT ask you for?
Specifics are good. Tell me exactly what you are hoping to get, and I will do what I can within reason. Tell me “2 nights lodging, 1 dinner,” etc, etc. I’ll make suggestions in addition based on your needs. Transportation costs are tough. they might be available for especially influential bloggers, but our cash budget is usually pretty limited. The rest is in-kind (lodging, activities, meals).
What’s the best way for a blogger to catch your interest when they’re contacting you directly?
Its as simple as a well-written email, with all your details. I get a little freaked out when their are grammatical errors, or total lack of capitalization. I tend to think you’re not legitimate.
Do you receive a lot of sponsorship requests and what percentage of those do you say yes to?
No, I do not.
And what about end results?
What do you expect from a blogger in exchange for your product or service?
The more tweets better, and links to your blog post about my destination, photos. I love to see it get RT’d of course.
What do you do if a blogger negatively reviews the product or service you represent?
I assume that if a blogger is getting comped, they won’t say anything negative, they just won’t say anything at all. If they are coming on their own, I know it sounds like a double standard, but it’s their prerogative to speak candidly. I would try to resolve the issue, either by apologizing for the negative experience, or inviting them to return. Depends on the situation.
What do you have to show your boss as results for supporting a blogger? What counts as success?
Working with bloggers is still very new. I’m working on how best to present this, and any help from you guys makes my life easier. I do a screen shot of the blog post, and any comments. I do a search on twitter for any references to the trip and links to the blog post and take a screen shot of that.
Great insights! Keep ‘em coming! Good luck on your trip.
Thanks Pam,
I would welcome feedback from bloggers on my comments about the negative feedback. Agree? Disagree? It’s a sticky situation I’m sure.
Also, how do you measure your influence? And how can we best demonstrate that to your sponsors and my clients?
Lisa, thanks for your candor (and TBEX road-trippers, what an AWESOME resource you are providing for other bloggers).
I’ll be honest, if I am comped or given a discounted room, it’s rare for me to write something wholly negative (if there is just one negative among all the positives, I’ll mention it). So, my thinking is aligned w/ yours Lisa. I will likely talk w/ PR person and explain my experience and explain that I can write neg. review or not write about the experience at all.
I *try* not to let the “extras” (strawberries in room, comped meal at resort, free wine, etc.) cloud judgment. I like to try to behave and take in a resort just as I would as a paying client. And that’s why I try to travel with my family or husband or girlfriends as often as possible - on a press trip, I feel visits are “forced.” I’d rather arrange individual visits.
I think some of my most honest reviews come from those spots where I pay on my own — family vacations where I choose not to try to get discounted anything w/ my travel-writer status. This is where I actually am “on vacation” and I write about the place(and I usually do - all trips are fodder for Traveling Mamas and my other blogs) because a) I had a crummy experience and I want my readers to avoid the place or b) I absolutely loved the place and wanted to encourage readers to visit.
Re: influence, if you are choosing bloggers for trips, you might look at compete.com to compare to competition. These stats are FAR from accurate, but they are good for measuring blogs against blogs, IMO (ours are way off compared to Google Analytics, but so are others’ blogs). Others may disagree, but I think page views count — as does whether bloggers write not only for engaging content, but also for SEO (they know how to get their posts - your destination - ranked high in Google searches).
Thanks for listening!
As a fairly new blogger, I was so excited to see this! What an awesome resource and it provided a lot of answers to questions I have been afraid to ask the more seasoned pros. I can’t wait to read more!
[...] path to Sandpoint, Idaho. This way we have more time to hang out and enjoy the hospitality of Lisa Gerber has lined up for us. After about, oh, let’s say 9am tomorrow, check out the Wonder Map [...]
Thanks for the informative interview with Lisa. When I write blog posts from a comped trip, I send a link to the provider once the post is up. I’m also willing to provide statistics plus how I’ve marketed the piece via social networking when it’s time for that monthly or quarterly report to the boss. Many times bloggers have interwoven connections, meaning their piece might be originally posted on their site, then repeated or referred to on more sites. The process is so dynamic. Blog posts have a much longer shelf life and reach than a printed article.
[...] — our destination in Chicago. Angela tackled the same questions Lisa answered in the last PR Chat post. The road trip crew is really grateful for the insight these PR people are giving us in to the [...]
[...] taking up the driving, we headed out East from Sandpoint on Hwy 200 on the suggestion from Lisa Gerber. Hwy 200 is a great trip around the North and East sides of Pend O’Reille (pronounced [...]
this is so interesting, and good to know. we’ve had great luck with some PR places (minnesota, for one - AMAZING!!) and no luck with others despite repeated requests.
if i have a comp and have a problem, i have brought it up to the hotel or the PR person (lack of disability access, etc.). i don’t write about it unless it will negatively affect someone’s experience and the mgmt is unwilling to fix it.
thanks for the helpful hints!