Here is a nice set of advice as Mashable interviewed Timothy Ferriss whose relationships with bloggers helped him reach the New York Times bestseller list with his book, The Four Hour Work Week. Tim offered the following:
Start your blogger relationships before you need something. This approach allowed him to never start a relationship with a blogger by asking for a favor.
Meet bloggers in person this is much better than email where top bloggers get bombarded with requests.
Avoid being a self-promoter. Do not try to push your message until you establish yourself as someone worth listening to.
Instead of directly pitching your book or product, talk to bloggers about trends related to what you are promoting or other issues of broader interest. If your ideas are attractive, bloggers will still likely link to your site when they reference your contribution to the discussion just as I linked to his book above. This is all good advice and he just practiced his method with the Mashable interview which will likely get picked up by other bloggers besides me.
Here is an interesting counter argument from Deborah and John Micek, When Blogging Advice is Bad for Business Owners (Part 4: Clearing The New Media Smoke). They refer to advice such as found above as "dangerous peddlers of online profit-killing elixirs." These bloggers take a strong stance and say "don’t be bashful about your business. Be proud of your passion for your products and services, and of the value they bring..." But they do say "your business blog is not the place for a hard-core or “in-your-face” sales approach" because this is counter to contemporary marketing techniques that call for more subtle messages. What do you think?
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