My social media timelines have been packed for many weeks now, with lots of blog posts giving tips on Christmas on a budget, how to get through Christmas debt free, cheap days out for 2017 and the like.Does this mean that everyone in the world is skint?
This got me thinking about blogs and their target audiences; do bloggers have particular target audiences in mind or do they post issues relating to themselves and find that people identify with them?
Reason this started to churn around in my little pea head is; this week a PR company blogged about a pitch pack that they were recommending, because of the fact that they had found some discrepancies in info provided by bloggers themselves and google analytics data. An exchange between the PR company and the bloggers surfaced, as bloggers were outraged on how the blog had made it’s point by using an existing blogger’s info, although anonymously, without permission as they believed it would cause upset.
I don’t wish to get on my moral high horse about whether they were wrong or right to use the example, as to be honest, I probably would have done the same to get the point across.
What did make me wonder is every other form of publishing has some kind of KPIs that it must report, either to shareholders or boards, so why should bloggers pitching for paid work not be the same? Should there be an industry benchmark/standard pitch pack to ensure that brands and PR companies are getting maximum exposure for their money ?
From what I have seen many of these pitch packs miss out socio-economic profiling – probably because of the difficulty of getting such data from web users. However, it is probably something that pitch packs would benefit from capturing from the blogger.
The reason I raise this is that I have seen many bloggers in their early 20s, who I know from interaction with them, do not have large disposable incomes and from their posts on living on a budget etc do not resonate with having target audiences with large disposable incomes either – but then they work with PR companies who gift them designer goods, expensive prams and cots, that to be perfectly honest, they simply wouldn’t buy in real life, nor, in my opinion, would their audiences. Are the PR industry not missing a trick here in looking at the actual blogger and their socio-economic background and worrying a little less about DA? ( would say that, wouldnt I).
Just a thought.
Totally agree. I get that they want to get the name out there but sometimes I think it’s very much a numbers thought rather than taking people who would ACTUALLY BE CUSTOMERS and using them. The chances are the smaller number, actual customer type is going to have friends and an audience who are more likely to buy rather than a huge number of aspirers that can’t afford. Also, I like the idea of a standard pitch pack, that way I can clearly compare myself with others in black and white rather than how well we all present those facts!
Very thought provoking.
Excellent post and you make lots of very good points.
When I first started blogging it was so apparent to me that to improve your DA you had to be liked by other bloggers. Also to look as if you had engaged readers you needed other bloggers to comment on your stuff. Very rarely ‘real life’ readers comment on my posts despite the majority of my hits coming from them and not other bloggers. It often feels like a fake made up game we all play.
I told myself I wouldn’t buy into these fake games but I do. Sometimes I feel like a sell out. I got into blogging to help my little insta community of new mums by sharing advice on things that had worked for me. Yet, at the same time, I’m happy cos I got to meet you and other bloggers who I love interacting with.
I know the blogger who had their stats shared, although I haven’t spoken to them about it. I think the main issue is not that they were shared, but how it was done. They were called untrustworthy over a few hundred visitor discrepancy.
In November my pageviews were 22k different between Google Analytics and Google Adsense. Adsense was the higher figure, and they pay me for pageviews, but I think the lower figure is probably closer. However they are there in black and white, by branches of the same reputable company, and both seemingly trustworthy alone. It wouldn’t make me a liar if I quoted the higher figure. My pageviews this month will be 1/4 of that because I mainly review toys – so November and December are my biggest months. One week of each month I ususlly get double the views of any other, because of a regular monthly post which some months gets many thousands of views and others gets 200. That doesn’t make me a liar either. It was unfair of them and hurtful. No-one wants to be called a liar.
A company not declaring something which is clearly an advert, that probably makes them a little dishonest…
The debate between bloggers and the PR company wasn’t the rationale behind this post, the idea of a standardisation of reporting of data and brand targetting was. That was simply an example provided as it was topical.