Beauty Blogging 101: PR Tiering

Posted on Sunday, at bought • 368 views

Jane at British Beauty Blogger, who works in the beauty-writing industry and sees a bit more of what goes on behind the scenes of how beauty PRs regard and work with beauty bloggers, posted a piece on tiering. This isn't about beauty blogger cliques, but about marketers starting to group beauty blogs into tiers, based on the blogs with the perceived widest reach, the “A-list” blogs, et cetera. Cliques and internal factionalism is a fact, not just in beauty blogging, not just in blogging, but in any group of humans larger than one. Humans categorize and group and rank. It seems to be part and parcel of being a tool-using being. This version of tiering is one of the few coming from outside the group, though. And it's going further to destroying the myth that people can start a beauty blog, launch a Facebook page, and start Getting Free Stuff.

Beauty Blogging 101: PR Tiering

I think that when marketers find ways to get things noticed – that is, when they find tools to do their job – they’ll use any and all channels available to them. If this beauty blogger tiering system is in widespread use, the tide seems to have gone even further in the direction of blogging being recognized as another communications channel, same as press releases – and if the marketers want to individually and collectively avoid going insane, they’ve got to work smarter with this tool. I’ve seen marketers work, both run-of-the-mill and a few superstars, and there’s a LOT that’s involved. It’s like project management meets herding cats, and it’s all on mescaline. If you don’t work smarter, you’re not nearly as effective, and you’re far more frazzled.

I’m not sure that tiering bloggers is the best way to go, because it doesn’t account for the fact that measuring the reach of a blogger is still an inexact science. Put a blogger into a category, don’t ever bother checking back to re-evaluate their content/audience (of just take a higher-up’s word on where that blogger could be rated,) and a marketer could miss some prime opportunities to promote their products OR could send products into a dead zone. All because the marketer is working off of a profile built a year ago, when the blogger had a different niche/published different content/had a smaller audience/was still growing/was on their way down/what have you. (I think that currently, blogs tend to evolve and change more than print publications, because most blogs are one- to four-contributor productions whereas print publications have a whole multiperson writing/creative/editorial superstructure that is more difficult to retool for a new direction.)

So: do I like tiering? Not especially, because it seems like a poor system to use for more mobile distribution channels like blogs; but the tiering is a reflection on what marketers perceive that a blog can do for them, rather than a reflection on me personally. I definitely don’t have another solution. (I should also say that I am not a pro blogger, nor – at this point in time – do I want to be. Anything that I review is something that I bought because I want to use it – or at least try it. My blog doesn’t currently depend, in whole or in part, on relationships with PR people. It does mean that I’m spending my own money for everything reviewed on my blog. But it also does mean that this tiering doesn’t affect me directly.)

For bloggers who are concerned about this, I would suggest that the best way to counteract this is to build closer relationships with marketers and PR people. Get known for yourself, rather than just for your blog statistics. Concentrate on a few people with whom you genuinely enjoy interacting. Then slowly, over time, some outlets will continue to tier you – and others, once word gets around, may start finding ways to reclassify your blog, or ignore the tiering system altogether when it comes to sending you samples and notifications. But this isn’t a short-term solution, and it isn’t something that you can work at and then ignore. It’s Schmoozing. It must be an ongoing effort, and it must be targeted carefully, or it will just fall apart and you’ll lose the benefits of your own work. (Are you seeing what I’m doing here? I’m essentially telling you to tier the companies and PRs right back. Concentrate your efforts where they’ll give you the most benefit. This isn’t a game where you can only be passive and accepting.)

Photo credit: Ayla87

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