Finding Influential Bloggers in Your Niche
Feb. 19th, 2008 by Rich BrooksDear Rich,
I’m looking to identify influential bloggers in my niche who might be interested in reviewing products and linking to those products on my Web site. How can I find them?
–Blogging in Bowdoinham
Dear Blogging,
There’s a couple of issues raised in your question, so let’s hit the obvious one first: where to find influential bloggers?
One easy place to start is Technorati. At Technorati you can search for specific keywords that bloggers in your niche might be writing about…anything from “Paris Hilton” to “Paris, France.”
The default search type (at the point of this blog post) is “posts.” You can choose to see all posts, or filter by the amount of authority each blog has. In addition, you can choose to search by “blog” and then Technorati will sort by authority. (Technorati is constantly changing…so everything I write is as of right…now!)
Technorati currently throws two numbers at you: Authority and Rank. What do these mean?
Technorati Authority is the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the blog has.
Technorati Rank is calculated based on how far you are from the top. The blog with the hightest Technorati Authority is the #1 ranked blog. The smaller your Technorati Rank, the closer you are to the top.
Hopefully this will direct you towards the influential bloggers you so desperately covet. If you’re not specifically interested in a particular niche and just want to find the most popular bloggers, check out the Technorati Popular list.
The second issue is more thorny. There’s nothing wrong (IMHO) with sending products or services to bloggers to review. This has been part of public relations for just about ever. However, some companies pay bloggers for positive reviews or pay them for writing about the product or service and linking to the Web site.
Although there is a cottage industry of pay-per-post bloggers, I find the practice shady, even if the blogger in question admits this is a paid link. (Many do not.) Google is now cracking down on paid links to boost search engine rankings, and these pay-per-post scenarios may come back to bite a company in the ass.
I’d recommend staying away from pay-per-post situations, but I think sending influential bloggers demos, samples and PR packets is an understood cost of doing business.
In case you’re wondering, I’m open to reviewing software, books, beers, bourbons, travel and sweets.
About the Author:
Rich Brooks is president of flyte new media, a Web site design and Internet marketing company in Portland, Maine. Flyte works with small businesses to build professional Web sites that often include e-commerce, Flash and content management systems. They promote their clients’ sites through search engine optimization, e-mail marketing, business blogs and podcasts, and viral marketing.
About The Author
Rich Brooks is president of flyte new media, a Web site design and Internet marketing company in Portland, Maine. Flyte works with small businesses to build professional Web sites that often include e-commerce, Flash and content management systems. They promote their clients' sites through search engine optimization, e-mail marketing, business blogs and podcasts, and viral marketing.Posted in: Blogging |
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February 19th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
I also use Technorati to find new blogs, with similar topic as mine, to track my blog / my name and to find influential bloggers.
I have had some success with this. But I also suggest joining discussion forums, most influential bloggers are active at the most popular forums.