New Comm Biz

The great thing about bloggers is that, for the most part, they live very open lives, especially in regards to their opinions and thoughts. Sometimes though, you want to get a little more insight into the context behind their opinions or what they’re thinking about next. This is especially useful when following certain early adopters or influencers.

Here’s my 5 best tricks to get into a blogger’s head. As an example I’ll link to all these resources using my own accounts but it also works on really popular bloggers.

1)Start with the obvious

You’d be surprised how many people don’t even start here. Are you reading their blog? Have you read all the pages on their blog. Are you reading the comments on their blogs (at least the most popular posts)?

Are you following them on Twitter? FriendFeed? Posterous? These are the basics but start here.

2) Who are their influencers?

Do they list anyone in their blogroll? Who do they follow on Twitter? If they follow everyone back, who are they actually talking to? Check out their Twitter Favorites? Who and what are they favoriting?

3) The non obvious places.

Check out their Google Profile Page of FriendFeed account. This is the quickest way to see where else you can stalk connect with them on the Web. Some of my favorites are Google Reader Shared items pages and BackType accounts to track where they leave comments and what their saying.

4) Events

No amount of digital knowledge trumps face to face conversations. People often talk about ideas they have much earlier than they write about ideas.

This is how you really get to know people. One solid conversation at a networking event goes a long way in further communication down the road. Upoming is a great resource to figure out which events bloggers are going to.

5) Just ask.

You’d be surprised how far a question or two will go. Pick up the phone or shoot them an email or send them a tweet asking to talk on the phone. (You know, talking on the phone? That’s actually supposed to be the reason you cary that thing around with you everywhere. Some of us forget that).

I recently went through this exercise for a client and came away with a list of relevant topics to pitch the blogger as well as a list of 20 people inside their own company that this blogger followed on Twitter. Want to reach a blogger? Sometimes you just need to start with your own employees.

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