Blog Outreach

This week I received an inquiry from a PR person representing a CEO. She wanted to know if my CEO would interview her CEO and write up the interview on her blog. Interesting. Blog outreach is something I have done tentatively - mostly with bloggers that already know ABI. But this is a whole new concept, reach out to a total stranger and request an interview and a write up?

And with it I realized that I needed to develop a process for handling this sort of request. Here's what I came up with - first off I spoke with Telle to see how open she was to doing interviews. She was actually very interested. Next step, research the CEO. I sent her rep and inquiry asking for a more detailed bio and I began doing Google searches. What I found was that while the business was outside my awareness (online Memorial sites) that in fact this is becoming big business. And that the site the woman had launched was generating revenue and was quite interesting. I found myself moved to tears at the heartfelt memorials people posted for their loved ones. And, in keeping with our non profit heart, there was a giving component where people could link to the "instead of flowers" donation sites.

My final step was another talk with Telle and then going back to confirm that she would do the interview. Now we just have to find a time that works for two busy CEO's. But that's a whole other story.