How do we politely approach a Blog or Blogger and ask if they would be so kind as to review our e-commerce store....thus essentially promoting it?

February 27, 2009 4:00 PM

How do we politely approach a Blog or Blogger and ask if they would be so kind as to review our e-commerce store....thus essentially promoting it?

We own and operate an e-commerce store and we are trying very hard to achieve national visibility and accessibility by doing the right things with the hopes that it will help drive the right kind of consumer traffic to our site and therefore result in increased sales. We are in the midst of trying to identify Blogs which cater to the same customer base as us or at least similar ones. Once, we do that, how do we handle the next steps?
We are an authorized dealer for about a dozen major brands (several hundred products). Our e-commerce store specializes in stand-alone "air purification" units mostly for residential needs and to a lesser degree, commercial needs. High-end air purifiers are our primary business but we are in the middle of significantly expanding our offerings to also provide quality "water filtration" units and several eco-friendly "Green" product lines as well, which will compliment our existing products.

1. How do we find the best blogs which would specifically suit and compliment our needs?

2. How do we respectfully and successful approach them to ask if they would consider reviewing us in the form of an article or post on their Blog?

3. Lastly, if we decided to start our own Blog to help promote our company, should the Blog be designed to be within the website, or should it be independent of the site and simply have it help direct traffic to the site while spreading the word about our site?

posted by orehek to computers & internet (10 comments total)

1. What do you read to find out about your industry? If you don't read any blogs currently, then search for what you'd want to read yourself (and read the blog for a while before approaching them).

2. If they already review e-commerce stores then they'll probably have published guidelines on how to submit your store for review. If you can't find them, ask what the guidelines are. If they don't review e-commerce stores, then they'll think you're a spammer and just delete your email (if you're lucky).

3. I'm not sure it makes too much difference how this is arranged. There's the blog and there's the store and people will know about the other's existence from the menus etc. and whether it's the "same site" is not something the readers/customers are going to think much about. I'd worry more about making sure that the blog articles are really interesting/useful to your potential customers (rather than excuses to "drive traffic" to your store) -- that will serve you better in the long term.
posted by winston at 4:14 PM on February 27

BlogHer arranges for BlogHer bloggers (that is, bloggers who have BlogHer ads on their blogs) to do reviews of products. They try to match the items up with relevant blogs. You could contact them and find out how that's arranged.

blog blog blog blog blog
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:15 PM on February 27

As a blogger who reviews shoes, here's my take on question #2:

After you've identified the blog(s) you're interested in, email the blogger and offer to send them a sample of your product in exchange for a review and/or advertising space. I love it when retailers approach me this way. Basically just a "Hi, saw your blog, was wondering if you were interested in reviewing my product?" is sufficient. Do make sure that your product is relevant to their content, though.
posted by chez shoes at 5:16 PM on February 27

As a blog owner, I greatly appreciate it when people ask me directly about promoting their business. The sneaky way to do it- adding an unhelpful comment with a link to your site-is annoying and a good way to give your business a bad rep early on. The style in which you wrote your message is professional and polite and would be fine for approaching a blogger. Also, it is best to have the blogger test your product so that her/his review is on the up-and-up.

I would add that if you are asking a blogger to promote your site, you should be prepared to do something in return, such as promote their site, possibly by thanking them on your site for the kind review.
posted by Piscean at 5:31 PM on February 27

Ask politely, but only if the blog is truly a good fit for reviewing your store/products. Offering samples works. Do take no for an answer. And if they do say no, thank them politely anyway for at least considering it.
I would also suggest that if they do consent to writing something up, the blogger should be very up front about the fact that you approached them in order to do the review - don't try to be sneaky and pretend that it's just coincidental that they reviewed your store. Being up front about what you are asking, and being polite and respectful, will serve you much better for building a good reputation in the long run. The tone of your question here makes it seem likely you would go that route, which is great.
posted by gemmy at 5:49 PM on February 27

If you'd like to see examples of What Not to Do when soliciting bloggers, I have oh, 700 or so entirely shite emails I'd be happy to forward to you. This is a fine specimen.
posted by DarlingBri at 8:02 PM on February 27

Send them a free sample to review.

Everyone likes free stuff and if you've really identified your blogs, you'll know which product to send them that they'll appreciate most.

Or at least ask them if they'd like a free sample to review first.
posted by Ookseer at 10:48 PM on February 27

1. You need to read and follow links to build up some awareness of relevant sites online. Don't just grab a list from somewhere and start using it immediately.

2. Treat any contact as one person communicating with another. So make sure you understand who they are and what they write about, don't write in marketing-speak, and no bulk emailing. Make it clear you're not expecting or demanding anything from them, you're just offering the opportunity to find out more, try out products, whatever. If you can get a dialogue going you can then see if they'd like to maybe also offer discounts to their readers, a competition, etc.

3. Generally it should be within the site, but perhaps with a slightly more free, informal tone and named authors, as blogs are useful for getting a more human voice into sites. I'd only make it separate if you want to create some kind of spin-off information/campaign site.


Always stop and consider whether what you're doing is lazy, spammy pestering rather than a polite, relevant enquiry; a lot of marketing people either don't do that or are unable to tell the difference.
posted by malevolent at 2:55 AM on February 28

As a blogger who did a billion kajillion reviews last year (okay, it was a couple hundred, but still), ANY blogger who writes reviews should have a submissions policy link on the blog letting you know how to contact them. Clicking on it should provide info like: if they take compensation for their reviews (I don't), if they require a sample to provide a review (I do), and whether your sample will be returned to you (depends on the cost of the item and whether you'll pick up the postage). They will likely provide you with a permalink to your review.

If they don't have that link for "how to submit", I wouldn't use them--that's one standard way to know you are dealing with someone who will act in a professional manner.

Contacting the blogger and offering a sample or trial period is also standard in the business as part of the submission process. There are two ways to find the right blogs for you:

Search for blogs yourself using keywords (Google works fine for this) that apply to your business/product and write a query letter.

Please, if you go this route, do your potential reviewer(s) a favor and READ THE BLOG, at least a couple entries, so that you can reference that in your review request. That's what will fulfill the "asking politely" part of your question. I get literally hundreds of submission queries a month, and some are so clearly NOT a fit for the blog, and have so clearly not even read a word of my writing, that I trash them without a second thought. If, however, a query letter mentions a recent post of mine (even critically), at least I know they have taken some time to check me out. I'll respond in kind by giving serious thought to their query, going to their website and responding yes or no. If it's a yes, I'll also provide details about what I need from them, what my turnaround time is for reviews, and what they can expect as a result of my review, including the blog's traffic statistics and the like.

If that's too time-consuming or you want someone to take out the middle step for you, your best bet would be checking out a blog review network.

My personal favorite review network is MomCentral. I'd say, in your case, that Green Mommy Blogs and their reviewers would also be a good fit for your products. You could also try Blogher or Mom Blog Marketing. I belong to all of these, as well as a few others.

I'm not providing any links because I don't want to self-promote (I'm already feeling like I'm making this too much about me-- I just happen to have a lot of experience in this field).

Feel free to MeMail me if you need more help.
posted by misha at 9:01 AM on February 28 [1 favorite has favorites]

Thank you everyone for your advice. It was all very helpful!
posted by orehek at 6:56 PM on March 21