by Stoney deGeyter

One of the hardest thing for an SEO to manage is expectations. For many SEO consultants and firms, part of closing the deal is to get the client to believe that the work they provide is going to get them “results,” however that is defined. But in doing so, many of those charged with getting the client to sign on the dotted line can easily make things sound better than they really are. That’s a product of sales.

Just look at any commercial for a new health or diet product. At the bottom of the screen you read something like “these results are atypical, your results may vary.” That’s almost the exact disclaimer that could benefit many SEOs as they push through their sales cycles.

A good SEO can undersell and overperform. The problem is getting the sale . That’s not always an easy task when underselling, especially when you’re going after businesses with limited budgets but want sometimes unrealistic achievement for the money they are willing to pay.

Once signed, keeping the client’s expectations is no longer the job of the salesman but instead becomes the job of the project manager and/or SEO. And it has to be done throughout the life of the optimization campaign. No matter how many times an SEO tries to keep the client’s expectation in order there are always clients want and expect more than they are currently getting.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing from the client end, but the SEO needs to always guard against it or they’ll be finding themselves with disappointed clients. Or one less client today than yesterday.

<p style=”color:maroon;”What can the client expect from their SEO?

The first answer to that question really depends on what is written in the contract. The client must read the contract thoroughly in order to understand what the goals are that the SEO is trying to achieve. Is it rankings, ROI, conversions, traffic, or any combination of these?

In some cases the contract may not even specifically define the expected results and instead focus on the type of work being performed. This protects the SEO as they are performing a certain function rather than work based on certain results. Many creative ad campaigns work the same way. They don’t usually make promises as to the reception their ads will get. Similarly, SEOs cannot neccessarily control the result of their marketing campaigns, they just control the work that goes into it.

That’s not to give the SEO a pass. If the work that goes into the campaign isn’t performing then the client should move on and find an SEO that can produce the kind of results they are looking for (contract permitting, of course).

Let’s take a look at several of the typical expectations client’ have of their SEOs.

Rankings: This is often the measure of choice for many clients. When these clients hire an SEO, despite warnings that the SEO has no control over rankings, rankings are still what they expect. But what rankings in particular?

The client has every right to be disappointed if the SEO is “proving” their success with rankings for keywords that deliver very little traffic (unless client is in a very niche industry). Many SEOs that guarantee results to so based on their own manufactured keyword lists that provide little benefit to the client.

At the same time, the client shouldn’t expect instant top rankings for highly competitive phrases. Heck, even moderate competitive phrases can be a challenge for a new site. These things take time. What the client should see is progress. They won’t see instant rankings across the board but they should start seeing some of the longer-tail phrases start making an appearance in the search results. Over time that should expand to include moderately competitive then into the more highly competitive phrases.

What a client should NOT expect is for a specific keyword to always rank well. Rankings fluctuate, pure and simple. And sometimes they even drop unexpectedly into no-mans land. It’s the SEO’s job to investigate and figure out what may have caused the changes and then to make changes as necessary. But changes should be expected only if necessary.

Traffic: Increases in traffic should almost universally be expected once the SEO’s changes are made to the site. But there are several reasons when traffic isn’t really the core issue at all.

Traffic itself isn’t really what the client should be looking for. It’s easy to manipulate a site and drive a whole lot of new traffic to it. The question is whether that traffic is targeted or not. If traffic increases significantly, but there is not a proportional increase in conversions, then the client may not be getting what they had hoped.

Traffic increases can also be very insignificant when dealing with niche industries where keyword search volume is naturally low anyway. Though even in such niche industries it would be hard pressed to not see any improvement in traffic whatsoever. Just make sure that your expectations of traffic increases coincides with the search volume of your primary keywords.

Finally, traffic increases may not be a whole lot if the client is already getting tons of traffic. Again, traffic can and should continue to improve but what may be more important here is working to improve conversion rates. Changes in titles and description may actually decrease rankings or traffic but at the same time could bring a strong improvement in the number of conversions.

Conversions: The SEO should never be doing anything that reduces the raw number of conversions. And hopefully they aren’t doing anything that decreases the conversion rate. But it’s only partially the SEO’s job to actually help improve conversion rates.

The SEO can make the links in the SERPs more appealing and they can help you make improvements to the site that will both improve the effectiveness of the site with both engines and people. But ultimately, it’s the client that has to close the deal.

The SEO can help by making recommendations, suggesting specific improvements to the site’s architectural structure, etc, but when it comes down to it, they are not the ones running the business. They can help put everything into alignment, but the client is still responsible for their side of things. (This is why most SEOs don’t work on a percentage basis. The SEOs work can be completely invalidated by the client!)

ROI: Ultimately, this is what the client needs from their SEO campaign, a positive return on their marketing investment. It’s not just about whether your keywords are in position 4 or 6, or if you get 10,000 qualified visitors vs. 100,000 unqualified, or even if your conversion rate improves from 2.5% to 3% (though that ain’t somethign to complain about!) What the client really should be looking at is, are they getting a positive return from your financial investment, and is that return sufficient?

The better the ROI, the happier the client will be. But not all ROI is the same. It all depends on the industry and keywords and a whole lot of other things. Timing is also a critical issue in ROI. Instant return on investment is not likely–hence the word investment! The client must be willing to invest into the marketing campaign expecting the rewards to come later. The complicating factor, however, is how much later?

Again, this goes back to expectations. Many SEOs have contracts of a particular duration of time precisely for this reason. They don’t want the client having expectations of a positive return before the time invested in the campaign allows it to happen. This could be a few months to a year or more, again, depending on keywords, competition, industry, etc.

Conclusion

When hiring an SEO it’s important to have expectations. After all, it’s the client’s money at stake here. But the expectations of the client must line up with the expected results the SEO plans to deliver. And this should be done before the contract is even signed. But even if both client and SEO are on the same page at the beginning, it’s helpful to keep those expectations in line throughout the life of the campaign. Communication is key, but so is either side not having unreasonable expectations from the other.

One of the biggest drawbacks to improving a site, whether it’s for rankings, conversions, or anything else, is that the SEO makes requested changes which the client promptly ignores. If the SEO has provided recommendations and the client has not yet implemented them, this is first thing the client should look to before demanding that the SEO explain themselves for lack of “results”.

But none of this is to alleviate the SEO from responsibility. They certainly have some and they should not hide behind a cleverly crafted contract to avoid it. It’s the SEO’s job to make sure the client is happy. If the SEO properly manages expectations the client is far more likely to be happy with the course and direction of the campaign.

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What Should You Expect From Your SEO?

by Jennifer Laycock

One of the things you should be doing on a fairly regular basis for your web site is running a quick check on your keyword phrases so you can make tweaks to your copy. Just because a word or phrase was popular when you first optimized your site doesn’t mean it is now and regular keyword research can help you spot “holes” in the search results that you can fill by creating new content.

It’s important to run at least some basic keyword research updates every now and then so you can lay out plans for new content and make edits to old content. While you’re at it though, it’s also a good idea to review your content for your sales message.

Sometimes we get so comfortable with the way we do things, or the messages we send that we lose sight of how we’re coming across.

Drew points out what a subtle tweak can do to your message in a great post over at Small Business Branding.

He writes about how each and every time he stops by his dry cleaners, the ask him if he’s “just dropping off.” He isn’t, and always has to tell them he needs to pick items up as well. When he says this, the employees at the dry cleaners never fail to give off an air of frustration.

Drew says:

…the message they transmit is “it’s kind of a pain to have to get your stuff for you. I wish you were just dropping off.”

I never leave feeling as though they appreciate my business. I leave feeling bad that I inconvenienced them.

Imagine how different it would feel if they approached the counter with a “do you have an order to pick up too?”

Tiny tweak. Major difference.

So the next time you run a round of keyword research and head back to your web site to tweak some copy, why not take a few moments to read it for message too. As you coming across in the manner you’d like? Is your copy open and inviting?

Is your copy leaving visitors with the tone and information you both need and want them to have?

If not, it might be time to do a little rewriting.

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Tweaking Your Copy for SEO Purposes? Tweak it for Message too!

by Stoney deGeyter

I ran into a couple of unique situations a few months that really challenged me. Both had to do with unsatisfied customers demanding that we give them money back. Each situation was different and therefore handled differently with a different result. In one case, money was returned, in another it wasn’t.

Each situation caused me to look deeply at what was right and wrong, what was deserved and what wasn’t, and what were we contractually obligated to provide vs. what was smart business. The lessons I learned from both of these situations can provide valuable lessons to both SEOs and small business owners looking to hire an SEO for their website.

Case Study #1: Plug the hole the leaks, not the hole that’s filling the bucket!

We had been running a PPC campaign for an auto parts company which, by all measures, was one of our most successful campaigns. Everything in terms of click through rates, cost per click and–the number we love the most–cost per conversion were nothing less than spectacular.

We initially signed a six-month contract with this client and over the months they increased their budget based on the results we were providing for them. After a few months the economy started to slow down and this company got hit pretty hard. According to them they saw a rise in costs and a decline in overall sales. Somewhere in the bowels of the organization someone started looking at the company finances and decided to start making cuts.

This put a big bullseye on the PPC campaign. What they saw was nothing more than a large monthly expense. The PPC campaign, we knew, was delivering strong profits on a month to month basis, but they just looked for where money was going out the door and paid no attention to where it was coming in from. They decided to cut this expense not realizing they were cutting actual profit at the same time.

A lawyer? really?

But I didn’t know the company was in financial peril yet, we were just plugging away delivering solid profit through PPC. Then one day, without any call or email from the client, I get a call from their lawyer. Now if that sounds odd to you, I’d agree.

We maintain a very open relationship with our clients and honestly, had the client himself called the situation would have turned out entirely different. I’ve always been willing to work with clients and help them out in their times of need. To me the business relationship is more important than profit. I’ve had clients leave for one reason or another and then years later come back. That’s pretty satisfying.

But this client, who we were in regular communication with regarding their campaign, suddenly had his lawyer call me to demand that we let them out of their contract. Here we were four and a half months into a six month contract, with budget increases happening due to the success of the campaign, and suddenly Mr. Lawyer is demanding we void the contract.

After a brief discussion I informed the lawyer that I would be happy to talk with the client about their campaign and left it at that. The next day I received an email of “cancellation” from the client. The client agreed that they would pay for the fifth month (we were halfway through it) but not the sixth month, despite their contractual obligation.

Get the facts, make the case. People are reasonable, right?

Before responding I spent several hours researching the campaign and putting together the stats which showed strong rates of profit on all their ad groups. Armed with that information, I sent the client a polite email outlining the case in detail that the campaign was working and working well. Then I told him I would be happy to discuss at his convenience.

The next day I got a call from the client, demanding that they be released from the contract with no further payments. They simply didn’t care how successful the campaign was, only that we stop performing services. They had no concern over the contract and felt simply that if they want out that we let them out, end of discussion.

Of course I refused. Had the client asked, had they come to me to tell me about their business woes, had they listened to the evidence I presented but returned saying that they simply couldn’t afford the campaign and really had to get their finances in order, had they done anything other than make a demand, I would have listened, understood and likely granted their request. I know this because I’ve done this for other clients that have approached me the right way.

Now before we finish this story, let’s look at the next case.

Case Study #2: Everybody needs to know what They’re getting into!

This is another situation where we were managing a brand new PPC campaign. This one never felt quite right, even before contracts were signed, but we decided to take it on anyway. The prospect came to us from a referral and they were looking for 50,000 hits to their site for $2,500. In our initial communications we tried to brush this off because we don’t run campaigns based on click through rates. Instead we manage costs, conversions and profitability.

We never shut the door entirely, just trying to guide the discussion back to territory we are comfortable with. The client expressed they simply wanted a short run trial and with that, it remained somewhat appealing to us. That, and the possibility if being awarded a much bigger contract should we succeed.

We decided to take it on knowing that, as a trial, it would only take up a couple weeks of our time. We figured we could keep start up costs low (I mean really, really low) but just barrage the engines with relevant keywords until the requested amount of traffic was delivered. Again, much to our chagrin, the client wasn’t even concerned about conversion rates, only traffic delivery. Despite this we could not help but to keep keywords as relevant as possible.

Ads? They’re not showing any stinking ads!

We immediately had problems with the campaign. Google, for whatever reason, would not display the ads. This was their snafu, not ours. A few days after we contacted Google about this the ads started appearing.

We immediately noticed that many of the keywords didn’t meet the minimum required bid rate to get the ads to display. We fiddled with the campaign and keywords to get more keywords to appear, but ultimately realized that if we were going to deliver a decent number of clicks in such a short amount of time we needed to increase the minimum bid on many of the keywords.

We informed the client of our progress and the changes we were making. Rightfully, they complained. They made it clear up front that they wanted a certain amount of traffic delivered for no more than certain cost. Essentially, they were not willing to pay any more than $0.05 per click, period. This is when I realized that we would not be able to meet these expectations. I’m sure somebody somewhere could give them what they wanted, but we just weren’t wired that way. We like seeing high profits, through testing of keywords and landing pages while tracking conversions rates. We don’t focus solely on cost per click.

If you know you can’t succeed, try to make things right

We informed the client that we would go ahead and close up the trial run as we would be unable to meet their needs. We saw no sense wasting our time or their money so it was best to just call it quits. Because we were the one voiding the contract I was fully prepared to refund the fees the client paid us to manage the campaign (a small set-up fees). The client however demanded that we refund more than that. They wanted all the fees paid to Google plus a severance of several thousand dollars.

I wasn’t prepared to refund the Google fees. After all, those are clicks that were delivered. But I went back to the contract and saw that we did in fact specify that we would deliver clicks at a cost of no more than $0.05 per click. We failed in that regard so I immediately conceded and refunded all Google fees as well. I was probably well within my right to refund ONLY the overage, but it hadn’t amounted to all that much so it was just easier to refund it all.

Despite this, the client continued to demand the severance. I politely explained that the contract was considered to be a trial run by both parties from the very beginning. A trial, by it’s very nature, implies that failure is a very real possibility. The client had been fully refunded of all fees paid to us and Google as a result of our management. It cost them nothing and we considered the matter settled.

When refunds should be expected and deserved

In both cases the refund was dictated by the contract. In the first study things could have turned out better for the client had they handled things differently. Nobody likes being dictated to, especially when they have a contract that favors them. By changing their tactics, however, I would have been compelled to do what was necessary to maintain the business relationship for possibly working together in the future.

But when it push came to shove, and it did, I had the contract to back up my position. The client had no right to demand that I simply release them, especially when there was clear evidence of success on our part. After we charged the client’s card for the remaining amount due (the final two months on their contract), they challenged it with their card holder. We presented evidence of the contract and the credit card company sided with us.

If you’re a client in a similar situation I suggest you take the softer approach. Ask, present your case and hopefully your SEM can see things from your site. We’ve done it more than once. Business isn’t just about making a profit it’s about taking care of people. And we like to take care of our clients even when they can’t be a client anymore. Don’t burn the bridge, build it.

In the second case the contract favored the client. We promised somethign that ultimately we didn’t deliver. Now we could have ran this thing through, keeping within the parameters but ultimately not providing total satisfaction to the client… and kept the money, but we looked beyond that. When we saw that we would be unable to satisfy the client we put an end to the contract, refunded the money paid to us and others.

Now the client didn’t get the severance, but then that was a silly request. We were not contractually obligated to provide that and our contracts protect us from such punitive awards. But we did the right thing by making sure our failure didn’t cost them anything out of pocket. We saw that the right thing to do was to provide a full refund, and that’s what we did.

When in a situation where you feel your SEM is underperforming, look first to the contract to see what it is you’re entitled to. If you want more than you are entitled, talk to the SEM. Present your side let them present theirs. You’re not likely to get more than you’re contractually obligated to but you may be able to get a deal that favors you in the long run.

The best thing you can do when dissatisfied is to work through the relationships you have rather than burning the bridge. Keep this in mind: if you burn your bridges it’s impossible to get what you want and need delivered to you. But if you build the bridge then good things are more likely to be brought your way.

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A Case Study of SEM Campaign Failure and Client Refunds

by Scott Buresh

Please bear with me as I go through a brief history of basic online advertising. The evolution of targeted online advertising is interesting, because I believe the perceived harmlessness of early advertising technology and targeting tactics lulled many people into a sense of complacency or perhaps even false security.

In the beginning of targeted online advertising, there were banner ads. As many people recall, these were supposed to drive the Internet marketing industry in its infancy. Scads of publishers paid scads of money based on a CPI (cost per impression) model or simply paid huge dollars for banner ads and other targeted online advertising on well-trafficked sites.

Then something crazy happened - nothing. It turns out that the banner advertising technology on the Internet was not the magic bullet it was purported to be. The old way of making money based on providing content (the way magazines and newspapers ran advertising) just didn’t seem to work in this context.

This new advertising technology was part of the reason for the collapse of the dot-bomb era. All the talk was about “eyeballs,” “stickiness,” “bleeding edge,” “cradle to grave,” and several other terms that, in retrospect, would have sounded more at home in a Wes Craven movie than in an emerging industry. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of business models depended on a traditional marketing strategy working more or less the same as it always had when introduced into a non-traditional setting.

All the while, one company, originally called GoTo, then Overture, and finally bought by Yahoo!, actually formulated a targeted online advertising system that worked - keyword advertising. Companies could bid on a per-click basis for certain key terms, which sent valuable traffic to its website.

Obviously, the improvement in advertising technology had to do with the model itself, which was perpetuated on relevance. By only bidding on keyphrases that you wanted, you could only pay for visitors who had already shown an interest in your products or services. This targeted online advertising model was soon copied by Google, who tweaked it and made it better.

There were not many raised eyebrows at this time, in terms of privacy. After all, the user was the one entering the query, and nobody suspected at the time that search engines might one day actually create individual profiles on users. We were all just really enjoying “having the information at our fingertips” without the potential hazards of ink stains and paper cuts that traditional research required.

Google then took a similar idea a step further. Instead of just serving up targeted online advertising on its home page, the company created a content distribution network called AdSense. In this program, owners of websites could sign up to have the ads placed on their sites. Google would then use a “contextual” logic to determine which ads to place where. In other words, Google would “read” the content on a page and then serve up targeted online advertising in the area provided by the site owner that was relevant to the content.

There were a few missteps with this new advertising technology (one classic example was when the online version of the NY Post ran a story in 2004 about a murder victim whose body parts had been packed into a suitcase. Running alongside the story was an ad that Google served up for Samsonite Luggage). Yet this targeted online advertising service also caught on, with nary a cry from privacy people. After all, you don’t have to visit the sites. And the site owners don’t have to sign you up for the service, right?

Suddenly, Gmail was offered and that raised some eyebrows. Gmail, of course, is Google’s free email-based platform. Gmail gave people an (at that time) unprecedented 1 gigabyte of email space (Yahoo!, if memory serves, offered 4 megs for free email accounts and charged people for more memory). The only caveat - Gmail would use a similar advertising technology platform as AdSense, but it would decide which ads to serve up by reading through your emails.

Well, this new approach to advertising technology creeped some people out, and privacy advocates were a bit more vocal about using targeted online advertising by parsing through people’s emails. A California lawmaker tried to introduce some legislation preventing the practice. International privacy groups chimed in with their own concerns. In the end, however, the fact remained that one had to sign up for a Gmail account and everyone that did was (presumably) aware of how the service worked before they did sign up. So it was an opt-in system - If you didn’t want Google parsing through your email and serving up relevant, targeted online advertising, you didn’t have to use the service.

So there we all were, happily surfing away, not a care in the world. What most of us didn’t realize was that enough free cookies were being distributed to each of us to turn the otherwise docile Keebler elves into tree-dwelling Mafioso erroneously plotting a turf war.

These cookies, of course, are the ones that websites place on your computer when you visit - little packets of information that record your visit, and sometimes, your activity there. Certainly, there’s a legitimate reason for this. When you return to a website, it can help if it remembers your last visit and you can pick up where you left off. Assume, for example, that you were making multiple purchases from an e-commerce site and had a bunch of stuff in your shopping cart but were forced to abandon the site before completion. It’s nice to go back and pick up where you left off without having to do it all over again.

Digital advertisers, however, saw another opportunity for targeted online advertising. They invented advertising technology that would scour through the cookies on your personal machine, figure out what you liked and disliked by looking at the types of sites you went to, and then feed up highly targeted online advertising based upon your browsing history. These companies included aQuantive, DoubleClick, ValueClick, and others. Of the companies I mentioned, only ValueClick is still independent. Google snapped up DoubleClick, while Microsoft snapped up aQuantive. Clearly, these companies believe in the future of Internet advertising technology and also believe in the long-term legality of this technology.

Now some real red flags were raised. I’ve written about this advertising technology before, so I’m not going to go over it all again here. Suffice to say that some government regulators were pretty skeptical about this new form of advertising technology and there have been numerous suggestions for regulation. The lack of uproar from the public, however, has not really created any backlash for the companies in question. It could be because there is widespread ignorance about Internet advertising technology (and I believe there is, based on conversations with people of average Internet experience). Perhaps a part of it is also that privacy has been eroding on the Internet one incremental step at a time.

To be continued in part two…

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The Evolution of Online Advertising Technology - More Targeting, Less Privacy (Part One)

by Jennifer Laycock

One of my favorite tips when I’m talking about bloggers is sending folks off to Technorati to do a topical search in an attempt to build a new pitch list. It’s easy for marketers to focus in on finding the topical bloggers who focus on our vertical. Unfortunately, this can lead us down too narrow of a path and causes us to miss opportunities to expand our reach. That’s why it’s essential to look beyond the most common stops when building your pitch list.

When it comes time to build a pitch list, most people have a few sites in mind. Ones they already know are worth talking to because they’ve spent a little bit of time in the space. Once they get those first few sites listed however, they need to go out and do some research to find a few more.

For your average person, this means heading to Google.

First Stop: Google

Google is pretty much the granddaddy of all starting points when you’re searching for anything online. Why should sites to add to your pitch list be any different?

Let’s say you were trying to promote a new blues CD from an upcoming artist. A natural inclination would be to go out and run searches to for things like “blues blog.”

In fact, here’s what I get when I run that very search on Google:

If you go and visit any of those sites, it quickly becomes clear you’ve found the bloggers who spend the greatest majority of their time talking about the blues. In fact, if you visit some of the blogs on the list, you’ll find they write almost exclusively about albums. This makes them prime fodder for any pitch list you want to put together to promote that new CD.

That’s fine and dandy and it’s a good start.

The problem is, too many people stop here.

You need to keep rolling…

Second Stop: Blog Rolls

One of the easiest ways to build out your pitch list once you’ve found a few blogs is to browse through their blog roll for additional sites. The people who blog about a topic tend to be pretty immersed in that community and they tend to gather their favorite sites into lists called blog rolls.

These lists tend to appear in the sidebar navigation and often feature a nice mix of popular and niche blogs.

The great thing about using this method is you can often find newer blogs that will soon build up strong audiences, but are still relatively unknown. Bloggers tend to pick up new blog URLs by watching commenters or running their own topical searches, so chances are, they’re way more adept at finding good options than you will be.

Another benefit of working through a blog roll is the fact that you can reach the people who influence the blogger you are trying to influence. I wrote about this concept a few weeks back in my post on “Turning the Gears in the Viral Machine.”

Spend some time reading the blog of the person you’d like to reach. Chances are, you’ll notice a pattern in terms of smaller blogs they tend to link to or quote on a fairly regular basis. Then, focus on going after THAT blogger. Chances are, getting coverage from them will give you an even better shot at a pick-up than a direct pitch would have.

Because this type of indirect pitch uses the foundational principle of viral marketing to actually launch your viral marketing campaign. When a bigger blogger picks the story up from a trusted source, the story has credibility. When they pick it up from a smaller blogger, they still get the “ego” benefit of having been the first to share it with the masses. When they do the right thing and refer back to the original poster, they strengthen the relationship from both sides and make future interactions even more powerful.

Most companies that build pitch lists are going to do a pretty good job by working their way through the first and second stops listed above. You’ll have a nice list of recognized and authoritative blogs you can make contacts with and that will reach your target audience. That’s a good thing.

That said, there’s a common problem with using this approach. The biggest one is that the sites you find using this method are the sites everyone else is finding using this method. That means there’s a good chance you are competing against a lot of other companies when you try to get their attention. It also means you are limiting your outreach to the audience that is already most likely to find and buy your product on their own.

After all, a blogger who exclusively writes posts about blues albums has a pretty good shot of writing about the new album you are promoting, even if you don’t end up pitching it to them. That’s why I like to add a third level to any pitch, one that goes outside the super focused niche blogs and reaches a more diverse audience.

Third Stop: Related Searches

Sometimes, there’s a strong benefit to pitching complimentary bloggers rather than topical bloggers. If you do your searching right and pick the right types of sites, you can end up getting some nice exposure to an audience that probably wouldn’t have a shot at hearing about you otherwise. While the overall conversion rates and engagement rates from these types of pick ups is obviously going to be lower (because it’s simply not as targeted), it can be a very nice way to test out some new audiences.

I saw this in action a year or so ago when I was contacted by a company that sells household products built from sustainable sources. They were fans of The Lactivist and had seen me write about organic foods and the rain barrels my husband had built for our back yard. They were looking to promote their new line of bamboo towels and blankets. Since bamboo is a renewable resource and I was writing to an audience that was interested in (but not dedicated to) renewable living, they asked if I’d like to review their product.

They sent a bamboo towel and a bamboo blanket my way and I loved them. I’ve written about them several times on the site and included them in my year end gift buying guide. Based on reader feedback, they did a nice job of reaching out to some new customers. They also caught my eye and my interest with their pitch because it wasn’t another baby product or breast feeding product. Bloggers get a little bored reviewing the same stuff over and over…it’s nice to change things up a bit.

So, continuing along our earlier theme of pitching a blues CD, you might head off to Twitter and run a search to see who is listening to the blues…

From there, you could easily run a quick scan to see which posters have a nicer following on Twitter.

You could also head off to a site like Technorati and run a similar search. For example, you could check to see who is blogging about Kingston Mines, the legendary Blues club on Halsted St. in Chicago.

The key here, is to look past the blogs that focus on your topic and to seek out influential bloggers that have overlap in interest. This way you are pitching something they and their audience will be interested in, but you won’t be pitching something they or their audience is tired of.

Mix all three steps together and you’ll find yourself landing coverage on a wide range of blogs that will give you a much better chance of reaching a vast audience and gathering some extended pickup.

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Dig Deep With Your Research When Building Pitch Lists