I saw an interesting post on Lifehack.org on how to get bloggers to promote your product, which I suspect will probably be of some interest to a few of you. A lot of this may sound familiar, as Dustin Wax reminds us that you can’t just pepper bloggers with press releases, and that you’ll need to create a long-term relationship build on an understanding of the relationship they have with their readers. “Approaching [bloggers] with respect for their position and their needs will gain you a lot of respect in return,” Wax counsels, “and you may well find that the blogs you maintain relationships with have become a central part of your marketing strategy—and a set of important relationships in and of themselves.”
As I say, if you’ve been doing the online marketing thing for any amount of time, you’ve probably learned much of this already. If you’re just starting to build a marketing campaign that involves introducing your books/writers to online communities and their flashpoints, though, Wax lays out the fundamentals in one simple document.