Reading an interesting post by Mike Arrington on Techcrunch today, basically, he is sick to death of other press, blogs and people breaking embargo’s. I can understand this, it takes time to construct a well thought out and well researched intellectual post, when given an embargo, the journalist or blogger is given a time to actually release the story. Of course, this story is not so hot if someone breaks the embargo to grab the “exclusive”.
I had an experience with PR Newswire a few weeks back, who advised me to distribute a press release on a Saturday – why I have no idea, it got a shocking response, maybe linked to by 50 splogs. Fact is, I am never using an online PR company to distribute my Press Releases again, have zero ROI on them and frankly, in the main the releases are presented on scraping sites and barely touch the journalists that would find the story newsworthy.
From now, I will post the releases on here, link them to Twitter, Friend Feed and Fuel all my friends this link on fuelmyblog and simply see what happens, I have enough Journalists and bloggers on those sites following me. As Robert Scoble commented on that Techcrunch post “If I were in PR I’d just Twitter the news, link to a blog explaining it..”.
So here is Fuelmyblog’s latest press release with a great reference from The King of Shaves boss, Will King.
FUELMYBLOG HELPS BRANDS ENGAGE WITH SOCIAL MEDIA COMMUNITY
Fuelmyblog.com, the global social network for bloggers, has launched a service aimed at bringing well-known brands closer to its customers and the blogging community.
Fuelmyblog allows bloggers to promote their own blogs for free by networking and recommending others on the site by rating them. It also hosts a community written blog, competitions, interviews and other benefits.
Now Fuelmyblog has launched a product review service linking well known brands with bloggers and a major social media platform.
Fuelmyblog Director Kevin Dixie said: “More and more people are turning to the Internet for product reviews with virtual trust taking over that of family and friends.”
Fuelmyblog believes that in the current economic climate, online is the most cost effective route to marketing a brand or product and practically eliminates the need for expensive campaigns.
Reaching out to bloggers is an ideal way to embrace social media, create online buzz and grow a brand online. By using Fuelmyblog, direct contact to the bloggers is available and provides a trusted source with a strong relationship.
Kevin Dixie said: “Companies working with Fuelmyblog simply select blogs to work with on a campaign, the bloggers have opted-in to receive and review products or test services.
“The products are then sent directly to the blogger with some company background to test and then write an honest review based upon their findings. The blogger is not paid for the review and simply keeps the goods. This ensures there are high levels of trust with the bloggers readers and web surfers as the reviews are based on true experience , we do not tell them to be positive.”
The King of Shaves* are running a blogger relations campaign asking Fuelmyblog’s top bloggers to test its new Azor razor.
King of Shaves CEO and founder Will King said: “As a company we are always looking at innovation in our products and how we engage with our customers. I have my own blog and immediately saw the potential of the Fuelmyblog campaign. The feedback we have had on the blogs involved has been terrific.”
*King of Shaves won the 2008 ‘Best Company’ award at the Real Business & CBI ‘Growing Business’ awards.
– Ends –
Feel free to pass this on, blog it, write about it. We think it is great news for any brand trying to launch a new product or even reignite old products. We are also offering restaurant and hotel reviews on blogs. Remember, as we already have the relationships with the bloggers, you won’t pay huge PR fees or have random people leaving messages on blog posts begging to promote your products..
Really good release, Kevin. These opportunities will also help establish participating bloggers as pundants that ‘real world hardcopy’ media have disavowed constantly.
It’s like the old marketing commercial:
“I told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on…”
Within literally hours and days, a new company marketing a unique product that has genuine value never seen before could become an overnight hit.
Marketed aggressively, having this community’s membership involved with third parties in this manner will push FMB in directions BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog could never touch.
And the heck of it is even if they did, it’d involve money. By dealing with blogger’s receiving just the product tested…
…you’re keepin’ it pure, and real.
Nice one Kevin, both on the new initiative and your decision to avoid PR wires which in the main are just a waste of time. When it comes to PR a combinations of experience, good contacts and social media like Twitter it enough to get the job done. Bon Noel and all that.