This guide offers a broad overview of the role of blogging in the media and provides general advice on how to sustain productive relationships with bloggers. It is a good place to start for those unfamiliar with the blogosphere and can be read as a preface to Seven Success Strategies for Pitching Blogs and Advocacy 101, which offers more specific suggestions. It touches on the major differences between the blogosphere and traditional media outlets and identifies the potential pitfalls of pitching bloggers. —Alicia Freese, ReThink Media

This quick read explains the steps necessary to engage bloggers, offering several very tangible tips to help both monitor and maximize your organization’s coverage. Media expert Colin Delany is the founder and editor of the award- winning website epolitics.com specializing in the tools and tactics of Internet politics and online advocacy. As someone who is familiar both with pitching stories and getting pitched to, he offers firsthand advice of how to insert your organization’s campaign into the blogging world.

This article offers a concise summary of the most important things to keep in mind when establishing relationships with bloggers and does an especially good job of explaining the particularities of pitching to blogs as opposed to traditional print or broadcast reporters. Tips range from the very straightforward—addressing the blogger by their first name— to the more complex—using content-distribution tools to expand a blog’s audience, but all are easy to implement.