Designers, if you don’t know who is in your official bloggers group, you’ve already lost control of your branding. My friend needed support earlier this week, for a pair of shoes that was sent to her. When she contacted the designer, this person did not even know who she was, even after she said she was in the blogger’s group, the designer didn’t bother to take two seconds to look at the group for her name, and the exchange continued to be awkward, almost insulting.
Even if a designer is so busy, the group so big that the names are a blur, take two seconds to verify that someone is in fact, in your blogger’s group, that someone had to invite them to — and ACT LIKE YOU KNOW WHO THEY ARE. Act like their time matters to your brand, and their free advertising matters to your business.
I’ve been trying to think of reasons why this designer may not recognize the bloggers in her own group, but I really can’t come up with any valid ones. Maybe she has a blogger’s manager that does the invitation, but as a designer, to be completely ignorant of your marketing team/press team is not good.
My point is, we all take the time out of our busy lives to promote YOUR brand, at least pretend you care.
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Everyone runs their business in their own way. If you don’t agree with how they run it don’t blog for them.
Gogo, I have mixed feelings about this. For one, most desgners don’t have bloggers groups and even if they did, many of us couldn’t join them because we have been maxed out on groups for years. I also have mixed feelings about “official bloggers”. I have no problem with them if they blog on the brand’s blog, but I think there should be more of an objective wall between designers and bloggers.
I also think that ALL customers deserve great customer service, not just bloggers and other “SL famous” avatars.
But…as you said, bloggers are effectively the marketing and PR people for brands so if they do have a “bloggers group” they should know who’s in it and treat them as they would a marketing team. But there are so MANY bloggers these days. Seems like everyone and their KittyCat is a blogger, so I can understand the sheer number of people trying to get into blogger groups for “the free stuff” could be overwhelming, especially if they’re saying things like “zOMG, Debbie Designer hasn’t given the blogger group new stuffage in like 3 days. Where is mah stuffs? I need stuffs nao, kthxbai”
Both sides could probably use a little more “professionalism” of a sort.
Groups often don’t load. The larger the group, the longer it may take to load. If you are an owner or officer in a group it may take even longer, as for some reason, the system seems to process your officer status first. 2 seconds is wildly optimistic.
Oh well, it’s just sl, and another example of some designer thinking they are *special, I think its time for you friend to blog some different shoes and open up a free space on her group list lol.
I think it shouldn’t matter if they’re a blogger or not, you should treat anyone who either blogs for your product or buys your product with politeness and respect. It could also be a case of the creator being overwhelmed, or maybe they’re forgetful. Sometimes my brain plays tricks on me and I forget my own zip code for a minute or two lol. If a store has more bloggers than they can keep track of or manage, it would probably be a good idea to cull the group to a more manageable level. I have a subscriber group as well as a regular blogger group for our store bloggers. We also keep a folder with our current bloggers applications so we have a reference for their blog URLs, etc.
I’ve had issues with bloggers myself when organizing them for events. I have simple rules about blogging withing a time frame and only require them to blog a couple of items out of over 30 different ones. One potential blogger and her friend asked me for pics of the items before she agreed to join the event (yes, she wanted pics before she agreed to blog free stuff even though some of her official sponsors were in my event that still wasn’t good enough for her). I’ve also had a blogger get upset because a designer didn’t give the full color change hud for an item (hello, it’s free and you’re complaining because it isn’t the full product?!). When asked what product it was she said “I don’t remember”. So literally it was enough of a problem to complain about but not enough to remember the name of the item?! Sadly, I’ve seen this pattern over and over. I’ve also reminded people about their blog post being due to get a notecard back with saying “I still have 2 days” and them not having the post done still after the 2 days! I get frustrated that adults need so much prompting when 1. they are getting free items in exchange for taking 1-2 hours to take pics and write up a post when most creators take days or longer to make an item 2. they should read the notecards creators and organizers send 3. should be a bit more grateful that they are getting free stuff period when others have to pay for it. What’s even sadder is I myself blog occasionally and did a post for one of the events and blogged over 5 items with ease. When some of them struggled to blog one item. Oh, and designers can be just as bad so don’t even get me started! Entitlement is universal from the buyer to the seller to the blogger.