Erica Morris from PRWeek wrote an interesting story today regarding a protective baseball glove company, XProtec, who has teamed up with Dotted Line Communications on a social media campaign. They will focus largely on promoting their product by reaching moms of youth baseball players through “Mommy Blogs.”
I think this is a great strategy and with the changing media landscape it has become more important to focus your PR efforts through targeted channels rather than a mass audience.
When I used to work on the DEWALT Tools account at my previous firm, we followed this model by largely focusing our efforts on earning attention for their various industrial tools in construction trade magazines that are read by construction workers and contractors. They were the “end users” of DEWALT products and they were the primary audience we wanted to read about DEWALT'S tools.
I believe this to be the same approach by educating Mommy Bloggers on your organization’s product or service if it’s something that’s related to parents, kids and families. Developing a relationship with Mommy Bloggers has especially become important to our PR Firm because we work with many great organizations that can serve as a credible resource to Moms and Dads. The fact that Mommy Blogs have a targeted audience and large passionate following makes them a great outlet to get your message out.
In December 2009, we reached out to Alison Rhodes, the Founder of SafetyMom.com, about USA Football's Concussion Awarness Plan. Rhodes has been a contributer to national outlets such as The Today Show, The New York Times and CNBC, and was very receptive to USA Football's plan. Since USA Football's information was newsworthy to her audience, she wrote about it in one of her blogs, and she now wants to keep in touch about future USA Football initiatives.
As PR professionals, we all want to secure coverage for our clients. But it's important that we are securing coverage in outlets that will reach the audiences that would benefit from our client’s news. It's refreshing to see various PR professionals implementing this tactic.
Chris Daley is an account executive at Maroon PR. Contact him at Chris@MaroonPR.com.
