Bloggers; The new wave of digital influencers who are continuing to grow in popularity and redesigning the customer journey both online and instore. Countless studies have proven that bloggers are the missing link between brands and consumers, providing honest reviews and valuable credibility to products and services alike. So it’s no surprise that brands are eager to get involved with these powerful influencers and their loyal followings. However, far often than not, brands believe they can buy such influence outright, and whilst free samples and payment can be involved there are some key practices that you should really take note of when working with a blogger.

1.Be Personable
Sure, a blogger’s site is their business, however you shouldn’t approach potential offers in the same way you’d close a B2B deal. Get personal, take the time to learn about their content, their likes and dislikes. Keep proposals engaging and fun, at the end of the day bloggers who are promoting brands they love and products they truly believe in will generate the best kind of attention for you business. Win them over with personalised pitches, product samples and really strive to build a great relationship with them so that the process runs smoothly and both parties are satisfied.

2.Be honest with your objections and gentle with your delivery
It’s key that you explain to the blogger why you’re looking to get involved with them. Be it that you’re looking to raise the brand’s overall profile, target a new market, or launch a new product. This will give context to the partnership and will enable to the blogger to streamline their approach when spreading the brand’s message. It’s also important you take the process slowly so both parties can take the time to discover if the opportunity is right for them. 


3. Get it writing and keep it legal
It’s imperative that you both agree to the professional relationship in a contract if payment is involved. Although you can encourage bloggers to link to your site and post about you on social, you shouldn’t bind the blogger by contract. If you’ve developed a relationship with a blogger that loves your brands and products, they’ll be eager to do this naturally. Forcing bloggers to provide this content can leave a bad taste in their mouth and can result in bland content. Remember, quality over quantity. You should also note that it’s against Google’s terms and conditions to pay a blogger to link back to your site without a ‘ nofollow tag’, as paid links are not organically driven and the nofollow tag allows you to request that the search engines don’t pass any authority through to the page being linked to. It’s totally fine to pay a blogger to work on a piece of promotional content, but you’ll also need to take into account the national laws on transparency of ad content. In some countries (including the UK) all such content needs a disclosure or labelled AD. 

To conclude, working with bloggers is vastly different to working with businesses, with various laws and courtesies to be considered. That said, it’s a small price to pay for such influential media that could springboard your business into digital fame.