Blogspotting is right: talk to the B-list bloggers

Unless you’ve got a private line on a big-name blogger like Scoble, the chances getting him to notice you, your company, your product, or that facebook message you sent him last week is pretty damn small.

The fact is that “A-list” bloggers are inundated, and no matter how cool you are, there are a lot of demands on their time, and only so much of it can be spent responding to every single comment and every single e-mail.

Part of the advantage of a blog (and indeed the personal computer) is that you can talk to thousands of people, one-on-one, at the same time. But that doesn’t make you any better at receiving thousands of communications, one on one, at the same time. When you hit a certain size, as a blogger, there’s only so much you can humanly respond to. (duh)

Blogspotting calls it right:

So is it axiomatic that once your scale extends beyond the camp fire, or perhaps beyond the range of a single human voice, your ability to respond to a single customer or voter flickers and dies?

If so, there’s good news: For every blogger who grows big and turns off comments, new opportunities sprout for attentive newcomers and small-fry.

When we work with clients on blogger engagement, we often encourage them to reach out to not the A-list bloggers in their space, but the B-list or C-list bloggers. Those who are topical, enthusiastic, and who aren’t completely swamped with invites, messages, and requests.

A lot of the time, the A-list bloggers “outsource” their content filtering to these smaller blogs - they’ll find cool products or topics on bloggers who have a much smaller readership. Which means that by courting the B-list, you’re also courting the A-list—albeit indirectly.