Weekly Blogging Tips Pitch Letters

I work with a lot of different Bloggers as well as various Brands and Companies in different capacities. Bloggers are always asking about Pitch Letters. Pitch Letters for those who don’t know are letters you send to a company or brand you would like to work with telling them all about your brand. Yes your blog is your brand and you want to wow them with information about your brand.

Where do I get the products I Review and Giveaway? The truth is I rarely initiate the pitch anymore. Meaning I don’t sit down and write individual letters to companies asking to work with them. But every so often the companies I do work with share YOUR letters with me asking what I think about their working with a specific blogger or what their numbers mean. Some of your letters are fantastic and the companies are impressed by them and wish they could do more then a product review. Then others are just so baffled by the letters they receive they just don’t know what to say in return. Pitching a company for a $50 product to review and one to Giveaway for a blog that has 50 readers a week that you started last month as your pitch is not going to wow anyone. Companies understand that all Bloggers start somewhere so sending Pitch Letters as a brand new blogger is perfectly acceptable as long as you can show the company you know what you are doing with your blog. Why should the company work with you why is your blog special and unique? You need to show that you have been following bloggers for a while, belong to blogging groups that can help you, and are ready to work hard to grow your blog.

In a Pitch Letter you want to include information about do you bring to the table that will benefit them? How will you talk up the Review and or Giveaway in a way to bring increased traffic to that post? You need to wow them with this information. Telling the company you have 100 readers a week will not wow them. Tell them why your blog is special and how active your readers are will. Did 25 of your readers go out and purchase the last product you reviewed? That is something that would impress the company (of course you want to say that not every campaign is the same but the potential is there.)

Is this Review / Giveaway one that you are going to use while participating in a Giveaway Hop? Tell the company how many bloggers are participating in the event. Have you done one before hosted by this same blogger or bloggers? How many entries did you get for that one?

Numbers are VERY important to companies. What do you do to increase your readership on a regular basis? How often do you blog? Do you have several reviews and giveaways a week or do you pick and choose companies and only have maybe one or two Giveaways a month. How do you run your giveaways? Do you use Rafflecopter or do you run the entire giveaway on your blog. Do you promote your posts through Facebook and Twitter? If so how often and how many fans and followers do you have on these Social Media outlets. Do you promote Giveaways in any other location? Tell the company. They like to know that you are promoting the post.

Not every company will want to work with you blog for one reason or another. You might have pitched them on a day that they received 100 requests and just flat out denied them all. You might have written to the brand itself using their contact information and they say sorry they don’t work with bloggers when you know they do. In that case you might have written to the wrong department or need to find out who the PR company is for that brand. There are so many reasons that your Pitch Letters get denied. Don’t get discouraged move on to the next company. Just like you are picky about which brands or companies you want to work with they are picky about which bloggers they want to work with. Its not all about numbers for the brands they want to see passion and blog that is geared towards their target audience. Just because I could pitch a children’s clothing store does not mean that I should or would. My blog is obviously not about children so unless it was a company that made dresses for little girls and their dogs then it is not going to be a good fit for myself or the company.

I receive a ton of requests on a daily basis for everything from posting a Press Release to a Review and Giveaway to paid advertising. I look at each one and decide if the company or product is one I want to work with. If it is I will either accept their idea or pitch them for what I would like to work with them on.

On the other hand I receive pitches to work with cat products all of the time. Sometimes I will say yes depending on the product. Why? Because many of our readers also have cats in their lives or currently only have cats in their lives because of living arrangements so I know that our readers will be interested in learning about products for cats once in a while. Which is why I wouldn’t necessarily ever push for a cat only product but will not just turn one down without thinking about how it could benefit a cat owner.

Back to the numbers issue. As a general rule there is no set number of readers that a company is looking for in order to work with you. Just like their product caught your attention its important that your pitch letter and blog catches their attention. They want to know that you can bring to them. By sending you product they are using a portion of their advertising budget however larger or small that budget is. They want to know that it has been put to good use. Your Pitch Letters should wow the company about your blog and the opportunity to work with you now and in the future.