I just wanted to take a moment and give you my opinion on Bloggers statistics. I’ve been very lucky in my 2+ years blogging life to have been the recipient of many great opportunities. And for those opportunities I have worked my huge butt off. However I see other bloggers who are strong, creative writers going day after day being passed over for opportunities. I’ve noticed that a majority of the time, the reason is traffic. They could have a really great reach to their target audience but at the end of the day their traffic doesn’t look impressive. But take a moment to let me explain.
I want to make clear to PR that traffic is all relative. Someone may tell you and even prove to you, that they get 40,000 unique visitors to their site a month. However, have you taken the chance to look at their blog. Are they a deal blogger posting upwards of 10 small posts a day that bring in a lot of eyes? Deal bloggers are the best and I can think of 2 off the top of my head that I love to check out such as DealectibleMom and CrazyCouponMommy. But their style of posting can skew the results for the rest of us. I post one and never more than two posts a day. If a PR rep is comparing me to a deal blog I’m going to come up short each and every time.
This is because traffic is relative. You may only post once every few days but you are so influential that this post, which is staying on your front page for a longer period of time, gets a great deal of traffic. You might have thousands of people who stop in to read what you had to say but at the end of the month the traffic just isn’t going to translate to humongous numbers.
Another thing to consider is the type of content written on that blog. You might want to work with a popular blogger who gets high traffic for your hot new product. However if you don’t slow down and do your research you might be overlooking a blog that specializes in exactly what you are trying to promote. If you are trying to promote a dog toy and you don’t realize that Joanie’sLifeWithMikey is actually about a dog and not a little boy and all the people crazy for their pet visit each day, you’ll be barking up the wrong tree. Especially if those 3,000 unique readers a month are the ones who are going to run out and buy that toy on Joanie’s advice!
I guess what I’m asking is for PR representatives to take a moment to see the whole picture. Don’t just send us an email asking for our monthly uniques. Because if we send you something back that says 5,000 and then another blogger with a completely different makeup than ours says 40,000 you might be the one missing out at the end of the day. Blogs are like the people who write them. All different shapes and sizes with all different content. Slow down, do your research and get familiar with your surroundings. There are a lot of great bloggers out there waiting for a chance and I know they deserve it. If you do this, you might just win in the end.
{ 30 comments… read them below or add one }
Very true Lee. I understand the need for numbers for PR agencies, but content and quality should matter as well.
Nice post
Great post Lee! Off to share…
I totally agree. However I’m still struggling to get to 5000 uniques.
I agree Lee! It sucks really but what can we do?!?
We can blog about it and get the word out!
Very well written post Lee.
I find myself in a ‘niched’ blog where my numbers don’t translate well on a PR chart, yet if you look at my posts, I get a lot of comments and interaction from my readers. I find I get little in the way of ‘love’ from the folks who represent the products I talk about and review, yet someone who’s demographic doesn’t really fit the product gets a copy to review and 6 to giveaway because they have ‘more’ traffic than I do.
I guess that’s the way of advertising though, they want to reach the masses, and with large uniques they can do that.
But Tammy this is what I’m saying, they want to reach the masses but in doing so they are missing out on influential bloggers who could have spoken directly to consumers in this demographic.
Very well written post – thank you for sharing your perspective!
Very well said, Lee! I think and hope that they will learn to look at the bigger picture more as we move into the future.
Great post Lee. You are right on target, as always.
Nicely put! Thanks for sticking up for us newbies!
What an amazing post Lee! I know I am a smaller blogger and could never ever compete with huge deal bloggers. I like to think that I have something significant to offer though. This was really well put!
Great post, Lee. I couldn’t agree more and definitely couldn’t have said it any better.
I am soo glad that you wrote this Post, Lee. It is soo true. I know MANY wonderful bloggers who write fantastic reviews, but don’t have nearly as much traffic as other BIG bloggers. But yet, they have dedicated viewers/readers. I really think PR need to through the page ranks and stats out the door and focus on the person behind the blog and their audience.
Thanks, Lee. I really appreciate the views you shared in this post. Great work!
Great post Lee! I agree 100%. I too have a niche blog so my numbers are nowhere near the bigwigs.
Great post Lee! I agree 100%.
Excellent post Lee! I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s wrong for PR to JUST look at the stats and nothing more. I wish more PR would spend some time getting to know a blog before dismissing them because they don’t pull in 50,000 uniques per month. Of those 50,000 uniques, how many of them are returning visitors? How often do readers and the blogger engage with one another?
Earlier today I was working on giveaway opportunity for my blog. I had an option of giving out four prizes. I could have had one winner get all four prizes, or four winners each getting a prize. I posed the question on my Facebook fan page to see what my readers would prefer. When I told the PR that I asked my readers what they were most interested in she was shocked. She said she never came across a blogger who would do something like that. That is because I care about what my readers have to say and value their input. Just because I don’t get 50,000 uniques a month does not make me a bad blogger. It just makes me a DIFFERENT kind of blogger. Like you said, we come in all different “shapes and sizes”.
Sorry to ramble.
GREAT POST!
BRAVO!! I’m glad you said this. That’s what happens to me. I work my butt off but I only post once or twice a day and sometimes not everyday, and lately I missed a lot because of health issues so my numbers aren’t that good right now and I have missed out on a few good opportunities. It’s just nice to see fellow bloggers feel the same way, so thanks!
I see where you are coming from Lee as well as Tammy. For a current campaign I am working on traffic does matter… but the interaction part matters just as equal. I think if you are trying to sell yourself, your blog, etc and maybe your traffic totals aren’t the best at the end of the day, HIGHLIGHT WHATS GOOD.
As an advertiser I would see your say… 5,000 pgviews a month, but if you also included you average about 10-20 comments per post that is something to consider!
@Kimberly that is awesome. I am like that on my side as well I almost never agree to the giveaway option for what they offer. If they are offering 1 product I am generally going to ask for more unless it’s a high value item. It’s all about the readers
Well said, Lee!
Well said Lee!!! Thank you for that great post!!!
Brilliant post, Lee.
great post, I am new to blogging and this great info to know!
Thank you for this, Lee. I’ve been blogging for quite a while and no one ever visited. Of course, I wasn’t out promoting my blog. It was more of a daily diary for me, and I hoped someone would notice it. For the last three years or so, I’ve been visiting a lot of blogs to enter giveaways, and I started reading some of the blogs, like yours, more regularly, because they speak to me, I feel like I have something on common with the person or people behind them.
It didn’t take long for me to start becoming a little envious of the opportunities that some of the bloggers are getting. I haven’t kept up my “post to my blogs every day” resolution, but I have posted at least once a week on each, which is an improvement. I started hosting a few giveaways as well, to build my traffic count. I mean, a niche audience is one thing, but no audience isn’t going to do anything for someone trying to sell a product.
I can see where the PR people are coming from. I mean, I work in public relations myself, at a local non-profit theatre. I belong to an organization of PR professionals, and I read some marketing trade publications, and one of the things we all think about and talk about is how to qualify what we’re doing. ROI (return on investment) is all important. Social media may be “free” but it costs time. Someone has to recruit the bloggers, create the electronic press kits delivered to them, pack and ship the review samples, pack and ship the prizes for the giveaways, deal with the missing package or item that got broken on the way. The sponsor has a budget for each promotion, which may involve using staff or outsourcing to an agency that specializes in using social media. So let’s say they’re giving away a $100 prize and it costs $10 in postage, boxes, labels; it takes 10 minutes to pack the box, toss in the “congrats” letter, print an invoice, and slap on the label. At $12 an hour, that’s $2 in cost. Assuming the $100 retail is double what it cost the company to produce, you’re already up to $62 for each prize winner. And that’s not counting the cost of making arrangements with the two-dozen bloggers who are going to post the reviews, following up on their posts to get copies of everything for the file. The CEO or the CFO for that sponsor wants to know that the $2500 they spent on that promotion is going to bring them actually cash money customers. A sudden spike in orders may be an indicator, but what if I don’t buy it for three months until I have some extra money? What if I use a coupon – how does the marketing person prove that the blogging promotion worked and it wasn’t just the coupon that did it?
They produce numbers. 25 blogs hosted giveaways. The total readership of these blogs during the period of the promotion is x-thousand people, therefore those x-thousand people were exposed to the production. Y-hundred people commented, therefore they have decided that they want the product, and if they didn’t win, they might buy it.
If you tell the CEO that the social media promotion reached a potential 250 new customers, he’s not going to be as impressed as if he reached 25,000, even if his niche product is perfect for the 250, and the 25,000 figure if they win, they can sell it on eBay.
Remember, a lot of these people are used to running ads on television or in newspapers, where millions of people might see it. We know that newspapers are folding, readership is down, people are watching TV by Tivo or Netflex or Hulu, so they’re not seeing as many commercials. They used to mass messaging not personal messaging.
I think we’re going to see this turn around, but it’s going to take a major shift in mindset, because it is time intensive, and time is money. So the front line PR people have to do as much as they can with the small amounts they’re allotted, then they have to give the big guys the kind of results they can appreciate, so they can get more money to do the job right.
That’s my two-cents, for what it’s worth.
Very well writen, Lee. I can see where Auriette is coming from too. Public Relations and Advertising are completely different animals. Advertising is more about the masses and therefore the kinds of blogs they are looking for are the one’s that have the most traffic. However, that being said, if a Rep is looking to get their name out there and inform people about the products and how much the average person likes them they would be silly to look at anything except content and that is where you come in.
No one expects the Jolly Green Giant to guest star on Leno.
Love this post Lee – you make some excellent points. I do wish they would see what we are all about – we just might be able to reach a wider (and “right”) audience, if they’d take a closer look.
Well said! ~high five~
Great post Lee ! and very well said. At the end of the day it is up to PR who they agree to work with and offer the BIG opps too. If seeking large numbers is their thing, I say fine, but don’t automatically rule out the smaller blogs with less traffic without taking a closer look and seeing what they are about first. My thing is, that smaller blog may just be the one who brings in the sales.
Great post lee. Makes me feel better well only if PR would take the time to visit the blog have a look around at previous posts and see what type of posts bloggers do maybe we all would have the opportunity.
{ 2 trackbacks }