Celebs on Twitter, PR and bloggers

Woweee - my Twitter is full of celebrity posts. Philip Schofield is live tweeting from the This Morning set, Dave Gorman almost got knocked off his bike....Ashton Kutcher REALLY loves his missus.

At this rate, my Twitter engagement is going to be less about engaging with likeminded techies, and become my daily dose of Heat magazine. Bit of a worry that.

While we're on work, then - after my pal Emily blogged about social media and PR, I've had about three pub-driven conversations arguing the toss about how to influence digital communities - and how companies can engage with bloggers specifically.

Of course, social media experts will tell you that PR companies regularly make idiots of themselves by sending a generic PR pitch to a big list of bloggers and expecting them to write about their client. Well, yes. But that's not exactly surprising is it?

Send a generic PR pitch to a big list of journalists and you'll get the same result. Whether you're doing traditional PR or engaging with bloggers, that's just lazy.

For me, if you're going to influence bloggers, you've got to get in the game. Write your own blog, engage with online communities - and do your research. Pick your blog targets carefully - make sure they're relevant to your client, and your client is relevant to the blogger.

And once you've identified your target blogs, you read them. You comment on other posts, you get interested in what the blogger is saying. You build a relationship with them. Then, IF they're interested in your company, they might write about it.

Right?

(And apologies to Emily for using her post to spur an additional rant/repurposing my original comments - more originality promised in the next post)