Team Up with Bloggers to Expand your Marketing Efforts

Fairy Godmother Carol Rice, Owner of Cherish Bound shares the following post about how she recently expanded her marketing efforts to include Bloggers by hosting an event for them. She writes:  I’ve spent my fair share of time lurking on blogs for a couple of years now.  I’ve found local bloggers and national bloggers that I really enjoy following their posts – rarely making a comment – and often wondering what the author is like in real life.

1. We like the power of the internet and believe in using technology to make our lives simpler.
2. We share a common audience.
3. We love our families and want to share our stories about them with the whole world!
4. We know the personal touch isn’t in conflict with being professional… in fact, its the best way to do business.
5. We like spreading good news, and…
6. We are all storytellers!

We knew there had to be ways we could help to increase their traffic and they could help us increase our customers.  So we decided to throw a party to introduce bloggers to what we do at Cherish Bound.  We wanted to give them a chance to experience performance storytelling and feel for themselves the power of story.  And personally… I just wanted to meet them all in real life!  Meeting this area’s prominent bloggers was a magical night for us.  The bloggers were as fun in person as they are on their blogs;  they are warm and welcoming, sincere and interesting!  We definitely consider our blogging event a success and here’s how we think it happened:

1. We teamed up with some GREAT partners for the event; Blue Lemon (bluelemon.com), Dear Lizzies (dearlizzies.com), Timpanogos Storytelling Festival (timpfest.org) and Syd Lieberman (sydlieberman.com).  These businesses were just as interested in the blogging community as we were and they were generous with their contributions and commitment to making the night a big success.
2. We worked with an industry expert who helped guide us through layers and aspects of the blogging community that we just couldn’t have known on our own.  We highly recommend Jyl Pattee, (momitforward.com) for  thorough, professional and conscientious help.  She thought of things we never dreamed of, and when things neither of us dreamed of happened, she remained professional and committed to our objectives.
3. We worked hard to make it special with a fun designer, Jen Skousen, who went all out with our theme and transformed the Storytelling Wing of the library into a magical place.  Our storytellers, Wendy Gourley and Cherish Bound’s co-Founder Bruce Jensen, presented stellar performances and April Atwater captured it all through the lens of her camera.  Check out photos from our event here.
4. The bloggers!  As I said before, meeting these ladies was a highlight of the night for me.  They are authentic and sincerely interested in helping others succeed.  They kept their commitments to share the news about storytelling and Cherish Bound and most were able to experience the joy of capturing their stories in a beautiful hardbound book from Cherish Bound.

In hindsight, if I were to do anything different  – it would just be to do it sooner!