We’re in the Wall Street Journal Today
March 17th, 2008, 7 Comments »
Last month I was contacted by the awesomely-named Shelly Banjo, a reporter at the Wall Street Journal. She wanted to talk about our ebook (more news about that in the coming weeks, incidentally) and some of the other blogger relations work that Capulet has done. We had a couple of chats, and today we were included in an article about social media marketing for small businesses.
You can only see a preview without a WSJ subscription. I picked up a copy of the dead-tree edition. I’d take a photo, but I’m currently living a camera-free existence. Here’s the section that concerns us:
Others say personalizing a pitch can sometimes win a mention without participation in blog discussions. Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo recently co-authored an online book called “Getting to First Base: A Social Media Marketing Playbook”. To promote the book, they played to the romantic angle of the title by sending personal, hand-written letters asking 10 influential bloggers to review the book.
They enclosed each letter in a sticker-studded, perfume-scented pink envelope. In each letter, they included the address of a Web site set up just for the recipient, where the blogger would find a two-minute video message welcoming him or her to read the book. The idea was a hit: Almost every blogger wrote about the experience.
Mr. Barefoot and Ms. Szabo took another creative approach to promote a new line of printers for Brothre International Corp. (Canada) Ltd., one of their clients. To ask bloggers to review the printers, they created pitches in the form of comic strips customized for each blogger. The duo found pictures of the bloggers online and pasted the images into the strip.
“You want to be creative, but play to your strengths,” says Mr. Barefoot. “If you are a T-shirt vendor, for example, creative personalized T-shirts for each blogger.”
The article also features a slightly-tweaked version of the comic we sent to John and Rebecca. Thanks to Kris, Rebecca and Derek for their permission to use their photos (they’re credited in the article).
