Last week, a video popped up on Barclays Business’ Facebook page of part of an interview with Julie Deane from the Cambridge Satchel Company. The 90 second clip has Julie explaining how bloggers helped her company grow.
Advertising budget a bit low? Maybe you could use bloggers to get the word out about your business… just like Julie Deane of The Cambridge Satchel Company did…
Posted by Barclays Business UK on Saturday, 23 May 2015
As you might expect, the video has been met with some pretty angry responses by bloggers. It’s a poorly worded post from Barclays because the actual video has Julie explaining how bloggers helped her company get noticed (and if you haven’t seen it before, check out the old Google ad where it’s explained further)
It’s worth remembering that Julie’s approach to bloggers was done a few years ago, when it wasn’t really a typical thing to do where brands worked with bloggers. If a brand wanted to do something similar these days, there would need to be more of an incentive to the blogger to post about the product – which is why people are getting so angry about the video.
If you’re a blogger who doesn’t know how to respond to these sort of responses – first, consider your price. There are going to be some products that you’ll be happy to write about for free – it’s up to you to decide that! Don’t be afraid to reply back to the person who emailed you though with a rate list – you can find out how to set your price for sponsored blog posts here. Always be polite – just because they don’t have the budget to provide you with an item to review now, or be able to pay for a sponsored post now doesn’t meant that they won’t in the future. And above all else – write about what you want to write about.
If you’re a brand that’s stumbled across this post, then there isn’t any harm in you sending press releases out to bloggers in the hope that they’ll write about your product, but don’t be offended if they don’t respond or reply with their rates. Just be open about whether you have a marketing budget – a honest relationship between brands and bloggers keeps both sides happy and more willing to work together in future (and if you have an opportunity that you’d like to share, tweet us and we’ll retweet it out to a huge group of bloggers who might be able to help you!)
What tips would you give to brands wanting to work with bloggers?
God. Good one Barclays!
I would say that brands should be 100% transparent with bloggers on what they want/expecting… and note that if their demands and Terms & Conditions are pretty detailed, they should expect the price to be higher!
I would recommend all bloggers to get the brand to sign official docs to ensure that they get the promised payment and include a due date for the payment!
Loved this post, I’ve literally just scheduled a post on my ‘bloggers guide’ series talking about a very similar thing, I find it is still seen as the norm for bloggers to work for ‘free’ and aren’t treated as if they were freelancers within their own right x