Grasshopper.com is a telephone service for entrepreneurs. They recently changed their name from GotVmail.com — and it's become a classic case study in well-done rebranding and high-quality blogger outreach. What they did:
1. Chocolate grasshoppers: They mailed a buzzworthy gift to bloggers — a bag of ready-to-eat chocolate covered insects. 99% of the time, us bloggers get a lame generic email. We need to write something every single day — give us something worth writing about and we'll do it.
2. Substance for a story: A blogger needs more than a gimmick to build a big story. Grasshopper created a decent video to add depth to the blog posts.
3. Professional outreach: Jonathan Kay, their Ambassador of Buzz, sent a well-crafted email to me after I received the candy bugs. He knew that I usually run an inspirational post on Sundays and suggested their video. It was the opposite of the usual, "Hi I love your blog" generic spam we usually get from PR people.
4. Start with the big bloggers: Jenn Van Grove at Mashable had covered the story before I heard about it, and Jonathan linked to her posts. That gave me a reason to think it was a real story worth paying attention to. (I assume grasshoppers don't fit in her vegan diet.)
5. Give facts: Mashable provided nice data to back up the campaign:
- 4,911% traffic increase from April to May
- 144,843 video views with 162 comments
- 1,500 tweets
- 120 blog posts in one month
- Tweets from Guy Kawasaki, Kevin Rose, and Jason Calacanis
- 7 national TV mentions
6. Have fun!
The lesson: A blogger outreach campaign isn't sending emails to bloggers. You need to have a real reason for them to talk about you. You need to get to know them. You need a quality story. (Hmmm… sounds just like traditional media relations works, too!)
P.S. Here's a sample of the amazing coverage:
Clorox: Using gaming strategies to grow community
BlogWell: How Big Brands Use Social Media
