How can bloggers help your business?

Offline press releases are used to get journalists to put your company in the news. Online it works much the same way but the journalists are replaced with bloggers and webmasters.  Just like journalists, bloggers are crying out for content. So you
should view bloggers as a good source of online PR. 

However not every blogger is as good as another.  

Some blogs have thousands of readers, a keen community and see the author as an expert.   Getting your company on these blogs will result in a lot of traffic to your website.

You need to find what blogs are written in your industry or niche and then find the most popular.  

How you can find the top blogs,

Google.com

Search for your subject in Google and add the word 'blog' to the.  Try search with and without quotes to see the difference in the results.  You can also try different variations on your search such as,
a.    reflexology blog
b.    foot massage blog
c.    foot rub blog

Be creative and you should end up with a good list of potential blogs.  What you are looking for is bloggers who have been writing content for over a year posting articles at a steady rate such as once a week.  Also a good blog should have a healthy list of comments from the readers and good debates going on about the posts. If you find a good blog go into the ‘about’ section of the blogs and look for the author’s contact details.

Technorati

Technorati (www.technorati.com) is a good resource for finding high traffic blogs related to your topic.  Technorati visits millions of blogs each day and checks for updates to add to its index.  You can search Technorati and you will be given a
list of the most recent blog entries related to your subject.  To find the most popular blogs, hover your mouse over the little icon under the post title (it looks like a little speech bubble). It is the second from the left.  

A little pop up will appear and tell you how many other blogs it has tracked linking to this one.  The more links it find the more popular the blog.

Blogsearch.google.com

Another good tool to find blogs about your topic is to use Google’s blog search tool.  You can sort the results by relevance or date.  Above the blog search results it will give you a list of blogs it thinks are most relevant.  If Google thinks that the blog is
relevant then it usually is popular and will have a good amount of readers.

Once you have found a list of top blogs in your industry then you can send them your press release.  I would recommend creating a cover note in an email and taking some time to personalise your approach.  You could even add a further incentive tell them you will give them an exclusive up until a certain date.  Your story should be one that helps, entertains or informs the blog's readers.  If you cannot think of a good story to send in then start commenting on the posts on the blog and if relevant add a link to your press release.