Good Advice on Marketing to Bloggers – from BlogHer Business

More from BlogHer Business ‘07, held last month in New York, about which I posted a couple of days ago.

On Susan Getgood’s Marketing Roadmaps, another report from the conference and with lots of links to women bloggers, together with an observation, presented with a touch of whimsy but pointedly enough, for the benefit of males planning conferences and claiming to want some gender balance in the speaker lineup:

<Steps on soapbox> All those “all white boy, all the time” conference organizers who shake their heads woefully and say, “but we don’t know any women to ask to speak at our conference,” or “but women didn’t submit any sessions,” or whatever other lame excuse, could do well by getting a hold of the conference program and noting the great women who spoke at this conference. And don’t stop there. Any of the women who attended could do a better job than some of the lame stuff I’ve seen in my career. <Steps off>

Nice to see a mention of entrepreneur-blogger-speaker extraordinaire, Shirley George Frazier , who is on a promise to be interviewed by me about the event – as soon as I can get organised to follow up on that.

But what really caught my eye in Susan’s post was the list of Do’s and Don’ts for marketing to bloggers. Just to list here the Don’ts (not because I’m feeling negative, but because I would prefer you go to Susan’s post to get the full list with the Do’s and the comments and the link to the session where it was developed …):

• Do not send obvious form letters.
• Do not ask for links, unless you are willing to pay for them.
• Do not leave blog comments plugging your products.
• Do not come on too strong.
• Do not put the blogger on your mailing list without permission.

Great advice.

We like some respect :)