As our society moves away from traditional media and we begin to go to web-based resources for our news and entertainment needs, the public relations game is shifting as well. Connecting to online sources such as blogs is now an important aspect of many public relations campaigns.

If you’re thinking of using blogger outreach for your business, here’s my quick primer on how to approach this tactic.

Qualify blogs based on their audience
There are over 200,000,000 blogs on the WWW and the vast majority have little to no following. Not to say that more is always better (if what you are marketing is a very niche product then that niche blogger with a small but loyal following could be an incredibly effective media outlet) but in general, a decent size audience is important. The other thing that I think should be obvious is that the blog’s audience should directly correspond to the target market of whatever it is you are marketing.

Read the blog
This is also part of the qualifying step because there is nothing worse for a blogger than to have to waste time going through pitches that aren’t relevant to their blog or their audience. Engaging through comments or on twitter is also a good way to start to build a relationship with the bloggers you are hoping to gain coverage from.