Meryl's Notes Blog

Mashable looks at WeblogWire, a new PR service that targets bloggers rather than mass media. Redundant? Unlikely. PRWeb competition… maybe. Bloggers tell it like it is, an advantage over traditional media. If a product or service is blogged by the right blogger with a large (or right) audience, it could lead to buzzing in the blogosphere.

Took a quick glance at WeblogWire’s services and offerings. The pricing is higher than PRWeb’s. I know it’s a different kind of service and all, but what makes PRWeb attractive to a wide audience is its low-priced options for small businesses that can’t spare a lot of funds.

PRWeb’s press releases go out by email, web, feeds, and search engines (depending on the selected option). Bloggers could be part of that distribution. So I can’t see small businesses using WeblogWire when PRWeb does the job for less and probably reaches a few bloggers. I have an account set up so that I receive email notifications when PRWeb has results matching my requirements. I’m a blogger… and I’ve reported on some of these releases.

This isn’t an attempt to shoot down WeblogWire. Just not seeing how it can succeed when PRWeb has more options and lower prices. I agree that marketing efforts should involve blogs as word of mouth (mouse) can spread fast when the right blog mentions a product or service and the right people read the blog.

Marketers who do their homework to find the right blogs and send an email to the blogger without sounding like a promotion stand a chance of making something happen. Like traditional media, building a relationship with the blogger works.

One company kept sending me releases… sometimes two or three in one day! I wrote back and told the company that the product wasn’t right for my audience. Yet, the company continues bombarding me with releases. I’ve set up a filter so its emails go in the junk folder.

I’ve been on the other side where I was sending the press releases. When I write releases, I try to include story ideas where possible, avoid sounding like a PR machine, and make it interesting with the audience in mind — why would the recipient’s audience care about this story? Most important, I stay away from sending too many follow ups and wait between releases (depends on the resource as I distributed releases for different organizations).

If you’re interested in publicity, I recommend Publicity Hound — the best newsletter on the topic I’ve found so far. Here are the archives to get an idea of what it’s like.