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How can PR determine which bloggers to work with?

Changes in the media landscape have made bloggers important contributors to how consumers receive information. But deciding which bloggers to target for a communication campaign is often challenging. While we can look to circulation for print media or to viewership for broadcast, no similar method for determining "reach" exists for blogs. It's easy enough to find blogs that cover specific industries or topics, and even rankings of blogs from the likes of Google and Technorati, but that's only part of the picture. Influence is the new currency. What really matters is how much influence a blogger has with the audience a client is trying to reach. This is where PR can add significant value through established skill in identifying and building relationships with influencers.

We evaluate influence by analytically scoring and ranking a blog's influence and putting each in the context of what the client is trying to achieve.

At Access, a separate Ketchum PR firm specializing in technology, we've developed a proprietary scoring model called the Access Blog Influence Engine, or ABIE, which we use to examine blogs from multiple dimensions — including influence, audience, topic and market segment. We've employed ABIE for various brand clients, ranging from Kellogg and Best Buy to Absolut Vodka. We start with two questions: First, how do we evaluate a blog's influence? Second, what is the best strategy for engaging that particular blog?

We evaluate influence by analytically scoring and ranking blogs and putting each in context of what the client is trying to achieve. We combine eight unique blog ranking engines to produce a single Influence Score for each blog. Once we know which blogs and bloggers are most influential, we gather additional information to help determine how a client might interact with them. Such information might include how bloggers talk about brands and companies in their postings or their behaviors with linking to articles on other Web sites. From these characteristics, we create an Engagement Score, which helps identify which blogs might be right for engaging on a particular topic.

ABIE is a sophisticated and proven way that PR can identify target-right bloggers, but the value PR brings to blogger relations goes well beyond that. PR practitioners can pinpoint not only which bloggers to target, but also how to target them. Good PR helps brands engage with bloggers in ways that are both meaningful and credible with a brand's ultimate target audience.