Lifestyle blogging is a growing profession for those people who get the marketing mix right. It takes a lot of social media skills, along with sound marketing principles, to build an audience sufficient in size to generate revenue.
Once they achieve a decent enough audience, more roads open. However, bloggers must understand the differences between paid advertising and PR because the two practices are very diverse.
The difference is simple enough to understand. Paid ads are not public relations. PR comes into play for companies or bloggers who are looking for earned media mentions. A PR company helps push their names into major publications where the coverage helps the blogger find new audience members.
Gain Earned Media Mentions With PR
Although they would pay for the PR service, the lifestyle blogger would not have to pay for the coverage. That has a massive chance to help a blogger grow for a reasonable flat fee.
PR is a way for a relatively unknown lifestyle blogger to become a global phenomenon based on leverage. PR leverages the broader audiences that already exist in MSM sources. Exposure in a widely-viewed online periodical or video can help any website or blogger get more visitors.
Create More Attention
PR is all about creating awareness, primarily when very little exists naturally. For lifestyle blogs, it’s essential to tie any news stories in with the core message. That’s the type of work PR professionals like Nancy Behrman Communications perform and why they’re worth investigating.
Any PR firm you hire will have plenty of ideas about the best ways to direct attention to your original brand. Many of them have close relationships with niche journalists and other outlets where it will be trivial for them to help you gain exposure. Depending on the business model at the core of the blog, hiring a service makes sense.
PR fits together well with lifestyle blogging because the goals are in sync. PR for corporate customers often involves dealing with misinformation or addressing public issues. The approach for getting press mentions works well for influencers, and it’s common to see many of them represented in significant publications.
PR Tactics Help Blogs Grow
Many lifestyle bloggers already rely on PR tactics to help grow their digital businesses.
Outreach is a classic example of getting more exposure. At its most basic level, reaching out is as simple as sending an email of introduction to an influencer. If a person’s interested, they may go ahead and interview you or develop some story ideas. It’s a straightforward enough idea, and that’s why people do it so often.
If you plan on using these basic type techniques, it pays to polish your presentation. Consider how many pitches people get in one day and then craft one that stands out. Most news periodicals and influencers are interested in trending topics. If they think they can get more views, they’ll run with your proposal.
Do Bloggers Need to Hire a PR Firm?
There’s no question that lifestyle bloggers can handle some of the chores of PR. However, if they don’t have any industry connection, it’s still tough to get traction. Small or new bloggers face the hardest challenges because they’re unknown.
In that case, it may save time having a professional firm handle the work. They specialize in doing PR and build up industry connections to facilitate their jobs. They should be able to get you coverage at a faster rate than you can do by yourself.
Companies like Nancy Behrman Communications will have no problem explaining how their services can benefit a blogging business. Together, it’s possible to come up with a sustainable strategy that takes a small blog and turns it into a household name. Social media and websites continue to dominate the new media landscape, creating lucrative revenue streams for bloggers.
The basics of the business won’t change that much in the next few years. Influencers earn when they have well-defined, sizeable audiences that are attractive for advertisers. That’s never the case when they first start, but with repeated PR efforts can become a reality. Determine a realistic budget to spend for PR, and you should have no problem adding this potent communications technique to your mix