Part of the reason for my success with bringing in review product for my blogs is open communication. Keeping the lines of communication between yourself and the review product company is an essential element in maintaining the company/blogger relationship.
As you start to bring in high dollar items from your blog, it is increasingly important to keep the review product company in the loop on the progress on the review, any notes associated with the product and links to related articles to their product. After the initial relationship is started, how do you keep the lines of communication open without being annoying?
Communication Between Company and Blogger
The communication between the company employee and blogger is an interesting dynamic. One thing to remember, you are not the most important “to-do item” on the desk of the employee for that day. You need to be quick and efficient in your communication and realize that their time is very valuable. Even if their time isn’t that valuable, you need to operate under the assumption that it is.
Since you have already established a relationship that is strong enough to warrant review product, you can now drastically shorten your emails and phone conversations. Once the review process has started, I shoot out short update emails on how things are progressing.
John,
I know you are busy today, but I just wanted to shoot you a quick link to the intro post of the review process that we discussed over the phone. Please let me know if you have any questions, concerns, etc.
http://prowidgetreviewer.com/john-widget-in-for-review/
Thanks again and talk to you soon,
Robb Sutton
rs@proreviewer.com
123.345.8765
Simple and effective…
The idea is to show your follow through without having to take up an hour of their day. A simple update email keeps the company involved and provides the necessary feedback that is required to keep a long lasting business relationship.
99 times out of 100 you are going to get a nice, short response back that goes something along the lines of this:
Robb,
Thanks for the update. Looks great.
John
J@johnswidgets.com
That 1% of the time you might get back a longer message with some feedback. This normally happens when you get some fact or spec incorrect. I wouldn’t worry about it too much as they already know that this sort of thing happens. Typos and misinformation happens from time to time, and the instant feedback insures that the mistake gets fixed in a timely manner. To combat this issue, do as much proof reading and research as you can before hitting the publish button.
Keeping these lines of communication open shows your commitment to the company/blogger relationship, but it also goes to further that relationship past just one review. The more pleasurable the experience (no matter what the outcome of the review is), the more likely you will be to see more review product from that company in the future.
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2 comments
I haven’t let any company see a preview, just the finished product. The results have been positive, but I’m also dealing on the lower end of the product scale, bags of coffee versus the more expensive coffee makers and espresso machines, I’d like to start reviewing.
Typically, I do not show them the article/review until it is published. In rare cases, the manufacturer has asked to see the review beforehand and in those cases…the review is not changed for content. It might have a couple of small specifications or feature list updates…but the overall review of the product stays the same.
Keep getting at it! You’ll have the machines on your front doorstep in no time!