Please Show Some Respect
Dear Companies & PRs,
I would really appreciate it if a few of you would show a little more respect for my blog and my time.
My blog is a personal site and not a business. I run competitions if I feel the prize is of interest to my readers. I write reviews because I enjoy it. I charge for advertising and sponsored posts as it helps to cover the costs of running my blog and attending blogging events.
When I write a review, it takes me time to try your product, take photos, write a detailed review and post it. Please bear in mind I also have a business to run, a full time job, two small children, a husband and a house which all take up a lot of my time! Therefore please respect the time I am taking out of my busy life to write your review.
It has taken me 18 months of hard blogging to build up my readership and my followers to what it is now so if you expect me to write reviews yet are only willing to send me £3 of products then please don’t expect me to be happy about it. If you expect me to write “guest posts” for free including links then please don’t be offended if I say no!
My blog is NOT a free or cheap advertising platform for your company and if you feel my time isn’t worth anything then please feel free to be offended when I tell you to sod off!
Kind Regards
Dawn
(steps down from my soap box and stops ranting – but thank you for listening!)
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That’s very interesting. I’ve only been blogging for a few months but it sounds like there are quite a few companies who still have a lot to learn about how best to work with bloggers. I don’t understand it when brands ask you to write a review based only on photos of the product – how can you review something you’ve never tried?!
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#8 written by Sandie 14 years ago
There’s a fine line here though I find, and sadly all PR’s seem to end up getting thrown into one evil group when it reality most of them are lovely people.
They’re doing their job, and communicating with bloggers isn’t the same as talking to a journo so it’s a learning curve all round.98% of the time it’s nothing to do with a lack of respect, its a lack of knowledge.
And lets not forget that the lack of respect can go both ways. There are a whole load of bloggers that, quite frankly, act like spoilt brats. I don’t want to be lumped in with that category so I try not to tar all PR’s with the same brush either.
If a PR approaches me then I appreciate that they have identified me as influential enough to contact – especially considering journalists have to go through years of education, rubbish intern jobs and working their way through the ranks to afford the same kind of offers that I have recieved in a little over a year.
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Don’t get me wrong, I deliberately wrote “a few” in the post as it is only a minority who are taking the mickey, whether due to ignorance or downright cheek! I work with lots of PRs and companies and the vast majority are a pleasure to deal with, I just seem to be getting more and more ridiculous offers at the moment.
I will never claim to be a professional when it comes to writing, this is only my hobby after all but it still takes up a lot of my free time. I hugely appreciate the opportunities that have come my way through blogging and I am extremely grateful but I still feel that for all the effort I put into writing and promoting posts, my time should be given some value. I don’t want much in return for my effort just not to be treated as a free form of advertising.
Sent from my iPhone
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Zara is...
Well said! I’m sick of being told by companies that they can give me interesting content for my blog in return for me advertising them! What planet are these people on?! I have a large following and an established readership and, without sounding conceited, I really don’t need people to write my posts!
CJ x