7 Tips to Working with a Blogger For Your Small Business.

Working with a Blogger can be a huge benefit to your business, especially when combined with the relationship of a Social Media professional. Larger brands like to collaborate with Blogger’s who have an understanding of their industry and have what I like to call “the power of people” behind them.

A well-connected Blogger can generate exposure for brands and Social Media professional’s will connect with and follow industry Bloggers to stay informed and help to promote the brands they manage. In return, Blogger’s connect and follow Social Media professionals because their blogs are promoted via top social networking sites.

Small businesses should take advantage of popular blogs. When the blog world connects with the social networking world, the combination is a win-win opportunity all around for increased website traffic, analytics and site visits. You can make sure the collaboration is working by having a website traffic estimation and analysis. There are several websites and tools that perform these tasks efficiently.

Here are some suggestions to finding and working with a professional Blogger.

1. Look for a Blogger who has similar core values both professionally and personally to the brand. How the Blogger leads their life offline is just as important as online. Research a blogger on their personal Facebook pages, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. Look at the links on their websites and blogs to see who they connect with and how they share personal interest.

2. Look for a Blogger with the ability to influence the reader to take an action on behalf of a brand. They can blog all they want to about a specific industry, but can they influence the reader and a specific brand?

3. Look for a Blogger with influence in a specific geographic area and “reach”. This can be a big benefit for a brand who has multiple store locations. Reaching customers in different geographic areas can be a challenge and can determine the types of products sold at those locations. This is also important for smaller brands in niche markets. A brand with a single location needs the benefits of social media and the relationship of online bloggers. Take a look at Hashtracking for Tweets, reach, and impressions. We like Aspen Real Life as a blog with a local focus and with the ability to be true to oneself.

4. Number of followers should be significant. A blogger’s unique site visits should be high. Some larger brands will only work with a blogger who has upwards of 100,000 unique site visits per month. You should determine what is important to your brand. If your business is in a niche market the numbers can be lower without compromise. For Twitter look at Twello to find some great blogs on various topics and get analytics from Quantcast to measure site information.

5. Blog should be well written, unique and have the ability to introduce small markets and businesses. The blog should provide a snippet into the brand without being too short and just providing a picture. They should tell enough of a story to get the reader hooked. They should also be confident with other media as well such as images and videos, knowing how to edit them. If you want to learn how to edit videos as well, then check this out.

6. The blog is not about gimmicks. Blogger’s will occasionally promote a giveaway, but they should not over sell.

7. The blog should give credit where credit is due.

Green Girl Media, LLC often looks for bloggers with all of the above and who can help promote the businesses we work with. As social media professionals promoting business in eco living / environmental / healthy lifestyles industries, the blogs we like are fresh, inspiring, and on the edge of new trends. We work in a niche market and rely on bloggers to help with our marketing efforts. A good relationship can go a long way and social media professionals are more likely to know which blogs to follow.

Since 2008, Nancy Kenney has worked as a social media manager promoting businesses in the eco living / environmental / healthy lifestyles industries. She can be reached at [email protected]. Twitter: @greengirlmedia @futuresfurnitur