Working with Brands - GPlusFood Bloggers Community Education Series

Hi, I'm Chef Dennis Littley, and tonight we're here for our Community Education Series, Working with Brands. And my guests tonight are Lori Lang, Cheryl Suzanne, and Julie Daly, and Gareth Marcus with us. All right, so we're going to turn it over to Lori, and she's going to get started, and we're going to go through the panel a little bit, and then we will take your questions. We have some questions that were asked already. We'll go through those, and if you have questions, start putting them in the comments section and we'll do our best to get to them before it's over. All right, Lori, it's all yours.

Hi, I'm Lori from recipegirl.com and I started my website back in 2006 and started full-on food blogging detailed recipes in early 2008. I'd say it took about, I a year and a half for me to be contacted by the first brand that wanted to work with me. It was a major brand. Just received a random email saying, "Hey, we like your blog." And by the way, I was blogging a lot, like every day, working really hard and trying to create quality content for a year and a half. The brand contacted me and said, you know, we'd like to We'd like to pay you $500, I think it was $500, $350, maybe it was $350, $350 a recipe. We'd like you to create 4 recipes, you know, something unique. Would you like to take this on? Of course, that was super exciting. I had never ever done anything like that and thought, wow, wow, this could be a business for me. So I took on the job, created 4 super super unique recipes, worked really, really hard to make that client impressed with me, and I did a great job and got a lot of traffic for them. So on my first time out, you know, because I did such a good job for them, I was noticed by other people and other brands and started to eventually get more offers over the years. Really great things. You know, obviously some come my way that aren't very interesting and you just kind of have to go with the ones that you like. But for me, I receive emails and decide whether or not I want something. And I've never actually reached out to brands, something I would like to do and would like to learn from some of the other panelists here tonight.

Okay, great. Cheryl, how about you tell us a little bit?

Hi, I'm Cheryl Susan with TidyMom.net, and I do— I blog about many different things, but I do focus on food. And I was just telling everyone on the panel before we got started about how One of the ways I think I started getting more campaigns and offers to do things was when I first started blogging. I started blogging in 2008. I signed up for every kind of blogger network I could find, like Mom Central. Blogfrog wasn't around at that time, but Blogfrog is one that I'm on now. I've signed up for all of those different types of networks. Networks that will connect bloggers with brands. I would get small campaigns here and there. Eventually, brands started reaching out to me outside of those, emailing me, whatnot. The bigger the campaigns got, the more I started getting that way. Bigger campaigns. Like Lori said, I still get plenty of daily or weekly offers to do small little campaigns. I will sometimes still do a campaign just for product and not pay if I think it's a good product, a product I really can stand behind or I really like or I'm really enthusiastic about it. I think my readers will, especially if it's a bigger ticket item. I will do that without compensation, especially if we're giving one away too, because I get the traffic from the giveaway as well. I still do small ones. I do very large campaigns. I just kind of take each one as they come along, and if I think it's a good fit for me and it's something I can easily write about and something that I can work in and fits with everything, and I feel comfortable with what they're asking me to do. Sometimes, you know, we negotiate on pay and/or maybe negotiate what they want from me until we both have a mutually agreed-upon— so that's about it.

Very good. Thank you. And I'll move on to Julie. Julie?

Hi, so I started The Little Kitchen in December 2009, a little over 3 years ago, and I really just started it to share recipes with family and friends, and then it kind of like snowballed into a little bit more than that. And I've been blogging full-time since this past summer. I'm a little different than Lori, as in I've reached out to some brands and some brands just come directly to me. And like Sheryl, sometimes we have to do a little negotiating. There are some brands I do work with that is completely unpaid and I'm totally fine with it because I just, I love the brand and they support me in a lot of ways. So, and just like Sheryl, I take each offer that I get separately. And decide whether it's a good fit for me. The way I always tell everyone, the way I think for myself is if I'm not willing to pay for that, that item, that product, that food product, if I don't like it myself, it doesn't go to my grocery cart, it's already in my kitchen, it's not a brand that I believe in, then I'm not going to work with them. And I truly, I kind of stand on those principles just because I I just want everyone to trust me when I say I love something and when I say I'm obsessed with something, because I say that all the time on my blog. I'm totally obsessed with this. And I mean, it's, you know, and I want people to believe me, you know, and trust, trust when I say that. So that's my, my intro, I guess. That's it.

Okay, great. All right, before we move on too far to some of the questions, we did have one right away. Cheryl, you mentioned Blogfrog, and someone asked if you could explain a little bit more about Blogfrog. They were interested in it and what it is and what you can do with them.

Sure. It's like a lot of the other— I don't know what you want to call them— blogger networks, I guess, where they connect bloggers and brands. So they will send me— I think they have a dashboard, but often they email me when they have an offer and they'll run the campaign by me. Who the brand is, what they'll be wanting, and how much they're going to pay. It's usually just one post. Sometimes I have done other things for them where they have, they have like an area, I can't think of what you want to, like a message board type thing for some campaigns. And I've done that with Horizon Dairy, I think for 6 months, where I had to, as well as do a couple posts on my blog, I also had to keep up conversations on that message board that was strictly for Horizon Dairy. We had topics that we were supposed to keep up with. They were just short little things. You could link to your blog posts or friends, anybody's posts and whatnot just to get conversation going and stuff. One thing that is different with Blogfrog compared to some of the other networks is they embed comments. You actually go to their site. They have a dashboard where you write the post. I actually write the post in my WordPress dashboard first. Then I copy it and put it in their dashboard. It generates a code for me to put back in my blog. Then I go back to WordPress and install it there. What their code does is embed comments. I turn off the WordPress comments. The comments then come through Blogfrog. They show up on my post but they also show up on the Blogfrog site where they have a campaign page for that brand. You kind of have to go and see. It's a little more involved than most of them are. I've gotten a lot of fun campaigns that I've done through them.

Great. Thanks for sharing that with us. Okay, we're going to get into our questions that we had. And one of the questions we had was from Jane Bonacci, and she said she'd love to know what they're looking for in a brand and how they can make themselves stand out in a crowd. So what are brands looking for? How can they make themselves stand out in a crowd? And is it always about reach and numbers, or can a unique voice be just as attractive to a brand? Someone might take that?

I will.

Lori?

Go ahead. I think a lot of them are looking for community. I mean, it's not always about if you have the highest traffic numbers. I mean, I try to tell friends this all the time. You may not have a huge amount of page views compared to maybe someone else, but maybe you're getting, you know, 30 comments on your— every time you post, maybe you only post once a week, but you get 30, 50 comments on that post and people are tweeting conversations with you on Facebook and all that. I think brands look at that often a lot more than they're going to look at, you know, are you getting a million page views a month but there's no activity going on around it.

Yeah, whereas I have— I have pretty high page views, but it's interesting. I don't have a lot of comments on my posts. I have a lot of people who read my posts, who come through my website, but they don't take time to comment unless they actually have something to say for the most part, which is fine with me. I don't care at all about comments really on my website, but I'd have to say it's— One of the greatest opportunities that came to me was I did a very small project for Sam's Club. They wanted me to do a little, it was kind of like a little recipe contest around Super Bowl time. I had people post their favorite Super Bowl recipes linked into my post that I wrote about Super Bowl. For some reason, I was able to generate a lot of traffic on that. I think I was giving away a little gift card for them. I guess I did a really good job for them. They really liked it. They came back to me a year later. I was like nobody. I was like hardly any traffic. I was really active on people's blogs and had gotten to know the food community, which I think is really important. If you want to be involved in and get noticed in this big sea of food bloggers these days. But they came back to me a year later and they said, we have this neat opportunity where we want to bring a blogger with us to Italy to do some cheese tasting. We want consumer feedback. Would you like to go? And I said, Oh my gosh, really? Why are you asking me? I mean, you know, there's so many people out there. And they said, well, we remembered this little project that you did for us, and you did such a great job, and you brought a lot of people in and got a lot of traffic for us. And so we'd like to ask you to come. And, you know, this was years ago when I really didn't have a lot of traffic. And I don't know, I think my big thing is if you work really hard for an opportunity that comes your way, you know, good things will happen eventually. You just— it takes time, and, you know, I think it can still happen for anybody. But you have to work hard. You really have to take that opportunity, and, you know, don't— you know, you have to work hard. You have to work hard to make things happen.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Alright, our next question was from Swathi Iyer, and she would like to know how to contact brands. Is it simply by messaging them, or do you need to contact them through a PR person? Alright. Anybody do that? Julie?

So I've actually, you know, I do, if I really want to contact a certain brand, sometimes I will Google the name of the brand and PR agency, or other words you can do is the brand name and PR agency of record. There's other words that you want to use. So you, so you can find out what PR agency is assigned, you know, has been hired by that brand. You can Google press releases. A lot of times there'll be contact information on there. But I would say when you first contact a brand, don't ever I shouldn't say don't ever. You don't always want to ask for exactly what you want right off the bat. You really want to build a relationship. I think that's very important. Some of the brands I've worked with, you know, have— you know, the first few times we talked, nothing came out of it. And just built relationships with them over the years, meeting them at conferences, networking on Twitter, and just building that relationship. And then it turned into something else later on. I've done it before where I've actually talked to a brand on Twitter, just conversation-wise, and then after a while I will DM them and message them and say, "Hey, I'd like to talk to you about an idea I have. Is there an email address that I can email you at, or if you feel more comfortable, here's my email address." So I kind of put it in their corner. If they don't want to contact me, they don't have to. I caution against going right on Twitter and tweeting the person directly where everyone else can see and say, "Hey, I want to do this, this, and this with you." You're kind of putting them in a place because a lot of other bloggers and a lot of other people who follow you and follow them can see that conversation too. I think some of those conversations when you're trying to network or you're trying to work with them on a certain campaign or something like that, it should not be done in public. Does that make sense?

Yes, it does. Do you find Twitter is really helpful for getting brands? Brands seem to really love Twitter. I hadn't quite figured that out yet, but it seems like when you go to approach them, they're always on Twitter or they like to use Twitter for their campaigns and things. Is there a specific reason for this? Do you find this to be true?

I don't know what the reason is, but a lot of the, in the beginning for me, the brands that I first worked with are the ones that I chatted up on Twitter. And they were just innocent conversations or @mentioning some product that I was using or something like that. And then it turned into a further relationship.

All right, very good.

I think it's just easier to communicate than Facebook. I don't know if you get that, if everyone else gets that.

Can I add something to that?

Sure.

So a lot of times when I'm blogging, I'll just organically mention a brand with a link to their website, something that I love, that I use in my kitchen all the time, whether it's an appliance or, you know, a product like Nutella or whatever, you know, and That's another way to get noticed because you're talking about them, they see the link, you might mention it on Twitter that you have this post using this specific brand and then they pay attention to you and they retweet and you create a relationship that way too.

Very good. Lori, while we have you on, Amy Stafford wanted to know what you meant by working hard.

Working 20 hours a day for a year and a half. You know, just really thinking creatively when you're working for someone instead of just getting it done. You know, I mean, you know, there are people every day who have a job and they're just getting it done. They're going through the motions. You know, there may be even food bloggers, you know, there are people that are just, "Oh, I'm going to make some sugar cookies," or whatever, you know. You know, thinking creatively for a brand and just really working hard to try and do something a little different than what you would normally see in a recipe. You know, something that's going to catch people's attention, whether it's the writing behind the story, behind the post, the photographs that you take, or the recipe itself. Something a little different that shows that you're working hard.

I kind of see what you're saying, Lori. Do you mean also like overdeliver and impress them so that makes them want to come back and work with you again?

Exactly, yeah, exactly. I had actually that first brand that I said that I worked for, you know, years ago, it was a product I had in my freezer. You know, they contacted me and I was like, oh my gosh, that brand is in my freezer. Freezer, how can I not work for this brand? And like Julie mentioned before, I will never ever work for a brand that I don't already use or isn't natural or anything like that. Just, you know, it's got to be real. But yeah, that brand, one of the recipes I did for that brand, in fact some of those recipes I did for that brand are still super popular on my blog today. I mean, I was so excited to take on that opportunity. Opportunity, you know, to be given this opportunity to create recipes, something I had never done. I was a school teacher before I started blogging. So it was very exciting. I worked very hard, and one of the recipes I created for them, they said that no one had ever done that with their product before. And it was just, it was amazing to hear them say that, you know, that they had never seen anybody do this with their product before. So Think outside the box and try and come up with things. Hard nowadays with so many people creating such neat things, but just working hard to create something a little different.

Good advice. We have an interesting question here. It's from Mona Holmes. She says, my blog has a racy name but content that's harmless and fun. It's called Cook This and Get Laid. It's all about helping men— It's all about helping men cook healthy meals for their loved ones. I found that brands are a bit scared of me. They often don't even look at the blog before refusing contact. At a conference last month, one person told me to either change the name of my blog or just go without any brand partnerships. Do you have any suggestions?

Oh, wow.

Anyone want to take that one?

That one's really hard.

Any sage advice?

You stumped us.

I don't know, that's hard. So many brands are so family-oriented and they're so afraid to offend anyone. That's a tricky one.

I say if you really believe in your blog name and what you're focused on, then stick with it and don't change it, but you're going to have to know that some brands are going to be wary about working with you. And if you really want to work with brands, maybe if you can figure out a way to change the name and maybe add that to your tagline or add that to your about and still keep that as your focus when you write about the recipes and why you're sharing that particular recipe, and maybe it doesn't have to be in the blog name. So there's two different ways there.

You know, or look for kind of out-there brands that are really edgy and don't care about that sort of thing.

Red Bull.

Yeah, there's always Red Bull girls at all events when I'm there, so maybe they'd be into that.

Alright, we have another question here from Carolyn Hurley. Is it appropriate to contact a company and let them know you plan to review their product and ask if they'd be interested in providing a giveaway.

Does anyone do that? Yeah, I think so, for sure.

Any special way to do that or just—

Go ahead, Cheryl.

I've done that before when I'm doing, usually a lot of times, it's a good— I've done it when I've done like an anniversary post, maybe like my second year, third year, you know, something like that, or have— I do a recipe party annually with Love the Pie and Soupa Palooza and stuff like that where I want to have giveaways and I'll approach companies to see if they would like to participate and provide a giveaway for the post. Or I've done too, when it's a product that I use myself,. I'm going to let them know I'm going to write about it and see if they would like to do a giveaway along with it. I have no problem doing that.

Very good. Sounds like an easy way to get some interaction with brands in. Jocelyn Delk Adams wants to know, what seems to be the most important thing to brands? Is it traffic, subscribers, social media followers, content or something else?

Can I take this one? I think that every brand is different, and you have to figure out what's important to them. You can kinda tell by their press releases, you can kinda tell if they're very engaged on Facebook, are they sharing other bloggers' recipes? There are some brands that, that go around looking for bloggers that blog about or use their products in their recipes and they share those even without letting that blogger know. They just kind of go, "Oh, here's a link." You kind of need to figure out what's important to that brand. When you contact them, maybe they'll say, "What's your traffic?" A lot of times when I contact a brand to ask them for something or let's work together, I don't always initially say, "This is how many Twitter followers I have. This is you know, how many page views I have. I kind of talk about, you know, what I like to blog about, why I like the brand, and then I also go into, you know, if we work together on this one project that I'd like to do with you, you know, what I would do for them. So it's really hard to say what's important to every brand because I think every brand is different. It just depends on what's important to them and what they want to provide or how they want to promote to their consumers. And who they see as, you know, your blog readers are probably their consumers.

Anyone else like to add anything to that? Alright, we'll move on. Megan Sire had a question. She said, what are your suggestions for the most effective way to break into the food blog world in a more professional way and get the most out of the voice, her recipes, and her photography?

Well, I'll take that. I mean, I think to get into the community, I think that you really need to get to know everyone. I mean, that's the first thing. That's number one. You know, you need to visit people's blogs. You need to get to know people. You need to get into the, you know, food blogger groups on Facebook and interact with people. Go to conferences. You know, get in that community and really get yourself known and get some friends behind you. As far as wanting to be professional about it, you know, there are plenty of sites that will take people for writing for free or for a very small fee. And, you know, if you want to have resume behind you, you know, it might be helpful to take on some of those projects and get your name out there by writing for some of those sites as well.

Okay, great. All right, Barbie Van Horn would like to know, what are the pros and cons of working with a brand? And if you've worked with brands that you've had any problems with, is there anything you would do differently in the beginning, or did you have any regrets about some of the brands you've worked with?

Why, I have a pro.

Okay.

Um, I know I've found products that I would have not bought myself until I did a review. I was able to work with the brand and do a review. Um, some, especially some higher-end products that I thought maybe I wouldn't spent the money on that I, after getting to experience them and work with them, number one, learning about the brand and the people behind it and make me more aware of that company, that organization, and then getting to use the products. And now, I mean, I— besides on my blog, I mean, I tell people in real life how much I love these products. And I mean, they were ones that I wouldn't have I would have never owned those products maybe had I not had that opportunity. I think it's been a really neat experience getting to get my hands on things that I may not have before without having the blog to do it.

Great, that's a good pro. Any other pros or cons?

Yeah, I'll add something. I think that another pro is just really being able— when you're working with the brand, sometimes they bring you into their company, and just learning the whole story behind the brand is, I think, really exciting because there are things you would never imagine, you know, family companies that started years ago and you just had no idea. That part is really exciting. As far as a con, I'd say that just Making sure that all of the asks are in place that you agree with and are clear and the contract is such that you know what's happening and what to, what they expect and what you're supposed to deliver and that you've really gone through that contract to make sure that this is what you want with that brand.

I definitely agree with Lori, and Amy from She Wears Many Hats just mentioned, ask very detailed questions. I'm kicking myself because there's— I'm going through something with a company right now where I didn't ask enough questions in the beginning, and then things popped up right now, and I'm going, wait, I guess I should have asked that, and I didn't know that I should have— didn't think about asking that question. And I would also add, go with your gut. Go with your gut and go with your gut because something doesn't feel right and I'm, you know, you go back and forth and you talk to your friends, you go back and forth, and a lot of times when I go back and forth and I end up saying yes, sometimes I regret it. And a lot of times the great opportunities that I didn't regret are ones that I felt really good from the beginning and it was a perfect fit.

Great. And you brought up an interesting point there. You're talking about contracts and looking through them and asking questions. What are the things we need to look at in those contracts, and what are the questions we need to ask?

The ones I see a lot are exclusivity. Make sure you know, a lot of times brands will say for that period of the contract and also 30 days thereafter, you can't work with any of their competitors. Make sure you know who those competitors are and what those products are so that you don't get yourself into trouble and you don't want to ruin a relationship with that brand. The other thing is who owns the work product that you're creating, the recipes and the photographs. Those are like the main things that I usually end up looking at really closely. And I actually have an attorney that I send every contract to and he looks at it and a lot of, sometimes things I worry about he's like, don't worry about that, that's not a big deal. So it's actually nice to have someone else look it over.

Yeah, one other thing is one of the contracts I signed recently said something about being able to use my likeness and my name and my brand in reference to working with them for like 5 years or something like that. And you know, my husband and I both read through the contracts, we've got attorneys in the family, and You know, what's to say, you know, in 2 years I'm not on a TV show or something like that. I mean, you wouldn't want this brand saying, you know, I don't know, still being associated with you if you moved on to do sort of, you know, bigger and better things. So you kind of have to limit that. You know, watch that they can't use your likeness for a certain amount of time. 30 days for competitors, I've never seen that. Usually it's about 6 months, Julie, that I've seen on my contracts. Oh really?

Oh, so 6 months after you're— wow. All the ones I've been seeing is 30 days thereafter, and I'm like, gosh, that's a long time.

Well, maybe I need to watch that more closely then.

Great. Well, that's good stuff to know then. We had a couple questions from Cindy Kirschner, and one is, if you approach a brand, is it okay to name-drop other brands that you've worked with before that are not similar products.

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, it's your resume, why not?

Is that something that should be on your blog somewhere, who you've worked with?

I do, yeah.

Me too. The other thing you could do is if you've actually mentioned that brand or, you know, I do some step-by-step photos sometimes. And you've never worked with that brand and you're just introducing yourself, I think it's a good idea to send them those links saying, hey, this is where I've mentioned you before, this is how much I love your product.

Oh yeah.

Good.

Cindy also wanted to know, how do you break the ice asking about money? How do you ask them how much?

You don't.

How do you tell them how much?

You don't.

You let them talk first.

I usually, if they haven't said anything in the first you know, view correspondence, I'll ask if there's a budget attached to this campaign.

So rather than mentioning a monetary amount, it's always best to see what their budget is first, ask them those questions.

Yeah, because if they say there's no pay, there's no compensation, then you wouldn't— then you haven't thrown any numbers out. That's a good idea.

I always say, what compensation do you have in mind for what you're asking? But I will not give them a number first. I always let them name the first number.

What do you do, Lori, if they keep— when you ask if there's compensation, then I mean, I've had, you know, come back and say, well, what would you— how much would you want for this? I mean, what— how do you keep throwing it back to them?

If they ask me how much I want for this, then and they absolutely won't give me a number, then I'll give them something astronomically high and see how they react.

I've done that too, and you'd be surprised, they're like, okay.

Yeah, exactly. Wow. Yeah, I think that most bloggers would be surprised at how much companies are willing to pay.

Is there— talking about that— is there like a ballpark set figure, or is there a starting point that bloggers should think of? I mean, so they have an idea of what they can get for this or where they should start?

Well, it's hard to say because everyone kind of has to base their worth on their traffic and, you know, how much they feel like they're worth. But I base it on, you know, I was an unknown blogger in 2009 and a major brand contacted me and said, "We'll pay you $350 a recipe." So I don't see any reason why anybody just starting out can't get $350 for a recipe.

Okay, that makes sense.

I've had a friend tell me, explain it to me in a way that, you know, decide how long it takes you to create a recipe and photograph it and write the post and edit everything, and then decide what your hourly rate is, and then kind of figure out, okay, if it takes me 10 hours, how much an hour? And then kind of come up with a ballpark figure and start from there and see what brands say. That's how I started coming up with numbers, and then it's just grown ever since.

And talk to other bloggers too that are maybe at the same level as you are and what they're getting paid for doing similar campaigns.

And start with more than what you really want too.

Exactly. That's a very good— Yeah, because if they're willing, if they're going to negotiate, they might talk you down a little bit. I usually say that to people too and do that myself. Ask for a little bit more than what I'm willing to take.

Then if they say yes, that's a good thing. You're right there.

Exactly.

Makes sense.

Carolyn Hurley wanted to know, she's been approached about using a photo of hers, I'm assuming for a brand campaign, and is there a way if they just want to use a photo photo, do you approach them the same way asking for money or if there's a budget or compensation? Have any of you ever had that where they just wanted your photo?

I'm not sure exactly what the photo is for for her, but I had a brand, it was like for a coffee creamer, contacted me and said, "We want to use your photo on our coffee creamer," you know, that's in the grocery store. It was Very odd, I had never had that. That was a few years ago too, and I had no idea what to ask and started contacting food photographers that I knew, and you know, they had all kinds of questions like, you know, do they own the photo, you know, whatever. Anyway, I ended up selling the photo for I think $500 or something, and it was in the grocery store on the coffee creamer, so it was just kind of a cool thing, and I got to blog about it. But I gave up my rights to that photo. They let me keep it on my blog on the post that it was already on, but I'm not able to sell it to anyone else or anything like that. So yeah, I mean, you know, it's certainly worth something. You just have to figure out, you know, what it's worth.

Okay, that's a good one. Jocelyn Delk Adams wants to know, how have you become a brand ambassador? And what are your duties included for particular brands in that role? Is someone here a brand ambassador?

I am.

Okay, Cheryl?

Oh, and like we've said before, I mean, every campaign is— each ambassadorship has been completely different. Some, I mean, I've done some, I'm currently doing one that I blog every single month for them.. And that's basically all I do is just, you know, one post and share on social media sites and whatnot each month with a different promotion that that brand is doing that month. And each of the bloggers that are ambassadors help promote that promotion each month. Then I have others that I maybe— my contract's maybe for 6 months or a year, and I have to do couple posts throughout that year and maybe do shares on social media or travel, or I'm doing one currently that I have to do a TV segment for with a couple blog posts. Another one, creating a couple recipes and the pictures for them to use on their site. They all just vary so much. It's been a wide variety of things.

Great. This is not a question, but Kim Baloo just said she's thankful for the advice, but off topic, does anyone else think Lori looks like Elizabeth Shue? She's adorable.

Yes, she does. Thank you.

I've not heard that one before.

Next question comes from Jerry Spears, and he wanted to know, when providing a brand with traffic numbers, do you give them total page views, unique views, or a total of all?

I answered his question, I think last week on Google+, and Usually they want an average, and I usually, you know, I have a spreadsheet where I keep track of my traffic. You know, each month at the end of the month I put in the numbers for, you know, number of visitors, unique visitors, and page views. And then I keep a 2 or 3 month average, and depending on what they want, I'll give them the average, you know, page views or average unique visitors.

Okay, very good.

I usually, with traffic asks, I give them everything. I give them all of that, and then I give them my Twitter, my Google+, my Pinterest, you know, all of that. And I don't have a spreadsheet like Julie, but I do at the beginning of each month record how many followers I have on all of the social media sites and subscribers to my blog and everything, just so I can kind of keep track month to month and see, you know, how that stuff is increasing and maybe think about what I've done that month to make that happen. Give them everything they want.

Alright, Cheryl, since you answered the question before, Tammy Northrop wants to know, what's the difference between a sponsored post, review, and a brand ambassador?

I think they kind of cross over some. With an ambassadorship, it's usually more long-term. Maybe 3 months, 6 months, a year. A sponsored post and a review, in my opinion, are about the same. I do an advertorial post where— well, I guess a sponsored post isn't always a review, but I think a review is still a sponsored post. I review the product as well as if it's a— food product, then I usually include, if they want, you know, a recipe with the product and pictures and whatnot. So I mean, in my opinion, a review is still a sponsored post.

Okay.

I think a review cannot be a sponsored post if you bought the product yourself, because there's still a lot of bloggers, and I do too, where you don't, you know, where if the product wasn't provided to you, but if it was, then I agree, it's a sponsored post.

Okay.

Now we had a question from Heather King, and I think we might have talked about, touched on a little, but she wants to know how do you go about contacting brands? Is there some specific method? Say I'm just starting and I want to go after brands and I want to contact them. How should I go about doing it?

I think Julie talked about it, saying that what we talked about earlier.

She did. Was that contacting a PR person?

Yeah, trying to find PR people via Google searches, or I mean, I think really, really starting conversations on Twitter really helps.

Twitter, yeah?

Works, yeah.

Okay, great. Amanda Redkey wants to know, Hey, man. Is it proper etiquette to approach a blogger who's working with a brand that you may want to work with? Has anyone ever done that?

I think it's only appropriate if you're really good friends with the person. I've gotten, sometimes when I've worked with certain brands, I've gotten messages from someone that has never talked to me, never initiated conversation on Twitter, or never commented on my blog, and I just would never do that to someone else, so I just, I feel awkward when someone does it because I don't know what exactly what they want, or if maybe they really just want the contact person's name, and I think it just puts me in an awkward position. So I think it needs to be someone that is someone that you've networked with and someone that you guys trust each other and you can talk about it. That's how you should contact another blogger about working with another brand.

When people ask me, and like Julie is saying, if it's not a close friend, I usually will tell them that I will pass their name on to the PR person. So if they're interested and they're looking for other people, you know, I can provide their name that way instead of just handing over the name.

Yeah, I would have to agree with that. I would think it would be hard to ask someone for that kind of information unless you really had a personal relationship of some kind with them, and that's probably the best way to answer it. You know, that way you're not— and someone shouldn't really put you on that spot either, too. It's not really the thing to do. It doesn't create a nice warm fuzzy feeling. So Claudia Lama Scola asks, he goes, "When you're doing these sponsored posts, if you're already aligned with an ad network, say like BlogHer or Plateful or any of those ad networks, is there a problem doing these paid sponsored posts from other brands or from brands?" Well, I have BlogHer and Plateful both actually on my website.

With BlogHer, if you do a sponsored post, there's a way to block the BlogHer ads. You have to work with them on, or with your designer on creating a category for blocking sponsored posts. And then your backup ads can show. Plateful doesn't have a problem with it at all. It's just BlogHer, and you have to of course disclose that you're, that it's a sponsored post.

Talking about disclosures, do you all disclose all the time when you do sponsored posts? Is that something you should do on the post? Should there be a specific page for that of disclosures or just after each post?

I put it at the end.

Mm-hmm. And then usually, you know, I'm talking about it along the way, like I developed this recipe for so-and-so. And then I also have a disclosure page. I think you can—— is it disclosurepolicy.org or disclosure.org? You can create, you can check some boxes. I haven't done it in years, but you can check some boxes because actually brands have to disclose that if it's a brand blog too. Because as any reader coming to any blog, you want to know if this person is hired by XYZ brand and they're blogging, I mean this blog is owned by a brand. There was a few brands a few years ago that got in trouble for that. They were they hired some marketing reps and they created a blog and they did a whole campaign around it, but people didn't know that these people were hired by this company. I think it's disclosurepolicy.org, someone correct me, but you can check some boxes and it will say this blog is not run by a brand or this blog is run by me personally and I do accept product reviews or I don't accept them or you won't see that on this blog or something like that. I have a disclosure page for that too. But then on every post I disclose. Sometimes I feel the need to disclose even though there's nothing to disclose because I don't want anyone to think because I kept saying, you know, I really, really like such and such product and I say at the bottom, I go, this company knows nothing about me. They don't know that I did this, you know, just so that I can put them at ease that, you know, they didn't think that I forgot to disclose.

I do the same thing. I say this company knows nothing about me. I just really love them. That's the disclosure.

I think that's a good disclosure then when you're being that honest and say you love something like that. We had a question from Samantha Ferraro and she says she's getting a lot of unsolicited PR requests or emails from PR companies wanting to put things on her site. They may not pertain to her or just don't feel right. Is this something that a lot of people get, or how do you handle that when you do get them?

Delete, delete, delete.

And if they keep bothering you, you can hit the spam button too. I've done that, and then they don't end up in my inbox anymore.

I got an email yesterday that said, um, we would like a response for our emails that were dated January 25th and February 4th. I thought, you know, okay, I don't know you people, you know, isn't a non-response non-interest? So yes, then they got the spam button from me.

Good old spam button. Alright, we have a question here from Amy Locurto, and she wants to know how many sponsored posts do you do per month? She sees a lot of bloggers doing them almost each week, and she's just curious about how many you do.

I try to spread mine out. I mean, sometimes it ends up I have to do a couple in a week, just if that's, you know, what's on my editorial calendar, and I don't prefer that, but, you know, 2 or 3 in a month I don't think is excessive. Excessive, maybe for, you know, it can get excessive and I think unless that's what you want for your blog to have it be a lot of sponsored posts and that's fine if that's what you want for your blog but I think that readers don't like to see that many times in a row.

I think it depends on what it is too because sometimes it gives me good content ideas that maybe I wouldn't have thought of on my own and some of my, like I think Lori mentioned earlier, some of my most popular posts are sponsored posts about things that I would not have ever written about. I have one, it's not even food-related, but it's about a natural drain cleaner, pouring vinegar and baking soda down my drains. That was for Arm Hammer, I think, or something. That's been pinned so many times. That's a post I would have never done had I not been doing that campaign. I think sometimes I might have a few in a week. Yet if they're not real obviously, real commercial type sponsored posts, I think they're easy to work in. If you write them well enough that they sound natural and they sound like all the rest of your posts, then a lot of times people don't even hardly realize they're sponsored posts. I've had lots of friends tell me, "Oh gosh, I had no idea that was a sponsored post." I'm like, "There's a disclaimer right there in it." If you can write them good enough, I don't think it matters if you have maybe a few a week if you need to, not maybe all the time if that's, you know, like Lori said, like if that's not what you're wanting to do. But I think if you write them well, your readers won't have as much of a problem with it if they're a natural flow with what you normally write about.

I completely agree. You know, you can make your blog look really fake with a whole bunch of sponsored posts, but if you're creative about it and it's just natural with your blog and products that your readers love anyway and that you love anyway, it comes across as natural and it's totally fine.

I guess it would have a lot to do with how many posts you actually do in a week too. I mean, some depends on how your frequency of posting. Feast or famine, sometimes you're just going to get a bunch at one time and then you may not have them for a while.

I think you just need to do what's comfortable for you. It is your blog. Blog. If you start feeling kind of uncomfortable with something, then step back from doing so many sponsored posts.

Okay. Amy asks again, do you think doing work for brands takes away from your own time of building your brand?

I don't think so. For me, it's, it's, uh, it's It's kind of forced creativity for me sometimes. You know, when I get an email from a brand that says, "We want to work with you. Will you create a recipe?" And it's a brand that I already use and love. You know, then I take that brand and I put it on my counter and I'm looking at it and I'm thinking, you know, "Gosh, what could I create with this to do something really neat that I'm going to love, that my readers are going to love?" And I might not necessarily be that creative if I'm just creating a recipe for my website. So, you know, I really love to work with brands because of that. I think it just kind of pushes me a little bit.

Yeah, I can see that, because you don't want to make the same thing that everyone else has made with it. You want to show some individuality and show some creativity, so it does force you to think a little bit more outside of the box. That's an excellent way to look at it. Alright, we did have another question. We had Kendra Bailey Morris, and it was specifically interested in hearing from food bloggers or writers who have worked with appliance brands and how to pitch them. I think we talked a little about this before we went live. Cheryl, was that you that worked with—

Yeah, I have. I think Julie has too. Mine goes back to how at the beginning I said that I had originally signed up with a lot of different blog network programs. And so when I was first contacted about my first appliances, it was through one of them. They were doing a campaign. You had to fill out a form and they picked out, um, I don't know if it was 25 or something bloggers that from those forms to get those appliances. And it was a washer and dryer and I received those. And out of everyone that got those appliances, they picked, I think it was 8 of us, to travel to their headquarters and stay somewhere and tour the facilities and whatnot. And I got to know the people within the brand a little more. So when that campaign was over, then they reached out to me to do more. I traveled to an event with them and got to know the PR a little better and stuff. And then we— from that, you know, things grew, and then I got the kitchen appliances, and it's still an ongoing relationship with them.

Julie, have you worked with—

Oh, I just stubbed my toe, sorry. Yes, I've worked with a major appliance brand and it was a relationship that I built. I actually started talking to them on Twitter and then wanted to do some kind of fundraising project that the brand— the brand supports a nonprofit organization that I volunteered with and I wanted to try to work with them on a project and it didn't work out for that first time but I just kept building that relationship. I don't even think I even got to work with them the first whole year, but I just kept in touch with them. And then last year I received major appliances from the brand. So I really think it's about working with brands, working with other bloggers, working on my blog. It's been about building relationships. And, and building trust between the brand and yourself and showing that, that you believe in the product and that you believe in the brand and that you can be a good ambassador for the brand.

Great.

Okay, we're coming pretty much to the end of it. We have a couple things to talk about though. And one of the questions we had, or that I had, was what is the importance, or can you discuss the importance of delivering a quality project or when someone contacts you? I mean, can you tell us a little bit about that? What do you go about to deliver that really good quality post or project that you're working on with someone? Is there anything you do specifically or—

I mean, because you can always— Yeah, I've mentioned, you know, you just You've got to be creative. I just did work for a brand a couple of weeks ago that I had never thought I would do work for before. It was a single post, kind of an unusual brand, but it was actually a brand that I had used before and really enjoyed. It was kind of a hard product to think of a recipe to make with it, and I came up with a great recipe photography, really worked hard to get great photographs and write a nice story behind the post. It ended up getting a lot of traffic. They took the post and shared it on their own brand website and got a lot of great feedback, and they contacted me, and now they want to work with me again. So it's, you know, you've just got to work hard to create quality content all the way around, the writing, the photography, the rest of whatever it is you've agreed to do for them, you know, do it and do a really great job with it, and they'll come back to you.

And photography is really playing a much bigger role in everything, especially with brands now. They're really looking for some, some better quality pictures. Uh, would you all agree with that? Definitely. Any advice for budding photographers? I mean, I'm sure you didn't start out is thinking you were going to become photographers when you started doing your recipe blogs, but it's kind of forced upon us. Practice. Work hard and practice. There we go. Alright, well, here's another question from Michelle Palin, and she says, do you alienate a brand or make them not want to work with you if you mention or work with a competing brand?

I think you do. Sometimes you do. The major appliance brand that I work with, the PR rep at the time, it was a couple of years ago because I've worked with 3 or 4 different PR reps with this one brand, and I watched her speak at a conference and she said, if you want to work with me, don't cheat on me with my competitor. Those were her exact words. And I really do think that you can turn off a brand if you really want to work with them. You go and pitch them and the first thing they do is they come to your blog and the first post is something— I think it's different if they don't make a product in that line or that— I'm trying to be vague but not vague. If they don't make such and such item, that's one thing, but if they make something in that line and and they come to your blog and that's the first thing they see. So don't pitch a brand if you're working with their competitor currently, definitely for sure.

Yeah, there's a lot of other brands to go after to kind of stay away from the same kind of brands. That's good advice. I think you don't really want to show that you have no— I don't want to say you don't have ethics, but that you do have some kind of loyalty to the brand that you're working with.

On that same respect, if someone reaches out to me with an offer but it's a competitor or something that I can't do because of someone else I'm working with, I make sure I let them know that, that that's why I can't work with them right now because I'm working with another brand, or I may tell them who it is or whatever, just so you don't— you leave the door open for maybe down the road, whether it's 3 months, 6 months, a year from now. If they want to come back to you or they have something else, that they know that you weren't just ignoring them, that they know why that you couldn't work with them.

So when you do get some questions for working with them, you should really take the time and answer everything that you get.

If it's something from a PR company, and especially if you can tell if it's something reputable, Yeah, I have a reply that I try to, even if, because it might be a brand, they might be offering something that I don't think is a good fit, whether I have another contract or it's something totally that doesn't go with my blog, but that PR person may have another brand that will be a great fit that they just don't have anything right now or maybe it'll come down the road. So if I treat this offer If I'm respectful to turning down that offer, hopefully when they have something else that will work, that they'll come back.

I completely agree with Cheryl, and sometimes I recommend my friends for stuff that aren't a good fit for me at the time, too. Right.

Along those same lines, if you do get a bad PR pitch, which I'm sure we've all had, the form letters that are addressed to somebody else that come to us. And just bad pitches in general, you can tell it's a form letter. It may be coming from someone who's new to PR who really just doesn't know how this whole thing works. And if I have the time, I try and respond to that person anyway and just say it's not a good fit. Or sometimes I'll say, you know, you've addressed this to the wrong person, you might be careful next time. Some kind of gentle way to tell them that they've really messed messed up. But you know, that PR person who's new to the job, you know, is going to be working in PR for a long time probably, and soon they'll be an experienced PR person and they might be with a better firm where they are more experienced and they may remember your kind reply to when they were just starting out. So I think it's important to be nice to all of the pitches that come your way if you have the time.

I totally agree, and don't go on Twitter bashing PR pitches you get. Especially if they start out, a lot of PR reps follow you first on Twitter. Sometimes I'll see a follow, or after they pitch me, they actually follow me. And so I try, like you said, Lori, you try to be nice because you know, you remember the people that were nice to you when you first started, the ones that reached out and helped you, or if you reached out to them and they were nice to you.. And you also remember the people that were not so nice to you. So I think same for PR and marketing, they're going to remember the same thing. If you're completely rude and you bash them on Twitter, they're going to remember that.

I'm guilty of twittering, bashing people, but especially when you get weird comments on your blog and you go on Twitter and say, I can't believe this person just commented. Sometimes that person is following you on Twitter. You really, really have to be careful what you say on Twitter because you just don't know who's was following.

It's true. And I read this great article once about when someone looks at your Twitter profile and if they don't follow you, their first impression is your last 3 tweets. So your last 3 tweets is going to be someone's impression of you. So whether it's PR or someone that's about to follow you, so I try to think about that sometimes. But sometimes I'm just tweeting about my dog or something.

Okay, we got a question here from Carrie Weber, and she wants to know, how do you take it to the next level with the company? She has a PR person that keeps sending her samples but doesn't want to send her any compensation. So is there any advice for that?

Uh, I don't really take a lot of samples unless I'm willing to review something. So I'm not sure. I mean, don't take the samples unless, unless you want to do something with it. And if you expect to be compensated, you need to let them know.

Yeah, I mean, you can email them if you have some ideas. Maybe just say, I have some great ideas. I mean, don't give the ideas right off the bat, but say, I have some great ideas. I'd like to develop a couple of recipes, you know, are you interested? Do you have a budget? I can and put a proposal together and say what in the proposal it will include, if you want to do an ad or tweets or social media or however. But open the door and say, instead of saying I want to get paid XYZ, say are you open to this because I'd like to put a proposal together. If they're not interested, I think I'd hope that they'd give you a respectful answer so that you don't waste your time putting a proposal together. And then you decide from there if they say with no compensation. If you really love the company, if you want to keep working with them. Or start saying, as I've said, I get emails saying, "We want to send you this product." I always say now, because I'm so busy and I don't want to not meet someone's expectations, because sometimes you don't know their expectations, and I right off the bat say, "You're welcome to send it to me, but I can't promise I'm going to write about it or post anything about it. And 95%, 99% of the time, they still want to send it to me.

Good to know. All right, we have another question here from Lauren Greer, and this is probably going to wrap it up for us. It's, uh, what if a food company sends you a product to review, you agree, you're happy to get it, and it comes and it does not meet your expectations and it's actually pretty bad? Any thoughts on that?

I would let the PR person, your contact, know about it and tell them your experience and how you feel and ask them what they would like to do, you know, what they want you to do with that. Usually I would think they would say then don't post about it. I haven't personally had that happen with I can't recall having that happen. I did have it happen with something that I reached out to someone about, and we ended up not posting about it on something. I would definitely talk to the contact about it. I agree.

It kind of goes back to saying then that you should post about things that you use that you really like and you know. Just taking something blindly, you don't know what you're going to get. So, well, and it goes back to what Cheryl said.

Sometimes some things that you didn't even know existed and now you love it. So, you know, sometimes that can happen, but you want to be completely honest in your post. So if you're going to be honest and say I didn't like it, I think they're going to say don't worry about posting it.

Yeah, that's— I think it's really important just right up front, like you said, Julie, just I have 3 products actually sitting on the floor in my office that people sent me, and I told them, you can send me the product, and I'll try it. I won't promise that I'll blog about it or write about it, but I'll try it, and perhaps it'll make an appearance, but there are absolutely no promises. And I think that you need to make that very clear up front. Definitely.

Okay, good to know, good advice. All right, well, I think that's going to wrap it up for tonight. We covered a lot of material. It was a lot of great questions and a lot of great answers, and I think you shed a lot of light on working with brands and what they can expect or how to approach it. So I'd like to thank you all for coming, our guests tonight. If you have any last words you'd like to say or any comments or remarks— feel free, but if not, Lori, thank you very much for your time, for coming tonight. Cheryl, thank you. It was great having you. Thanks. Julie, thanks again for coming. Thank you. Gareth, thank you very much for being here for support. It's always good to have some members of the community with me, too. I'm Chef Dennis Littley for the Food Blogger— the G+ Food Bloggers Community. Thank you so much for attending this session of working with brands in our community education project. Thank you, and I'll see you all real soon.