Dear Rich,

I’m looking to identify influential bloggers in my niche who might be interested in reviewing products and linking to those products on my Web site. How can I find them?

–Blogging in Bowdoinham

Dear Blogging,

There’s a couple of issues raised in your question, so let’s hit the obvious one first: where to find influential bloggers?

One easy place to start is Technorati.
At Technorati you can search for specific keywords that bloggers in
your niche might be writing about…anything from "Paris Hilton" to
"Paris, France."

The default search type (at the point of this blog post) is "posts."
You can choose to see all posts, or filter by the amount of authority
each blog has. In addition, you can choose to search by "blog" and then
Technorati will sort by authority. (Technorati is constantly
changing…so everything I write is as of right…now!)

Technorati currently throws two numbers at you: Authority and Rank. What do these mean?

Technorati
Authority is the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six
months. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the blog
has.

Technorati Rank is calculated based on how far you are from the top.
The blog with the hightest Technorati Authority is the #1 ranked blog.
The smaller your Technorati Rank, the closer you are to the top.

Hopefully
this will direct you towards the influential bloggers you so
desperately covet. If you’re not specifically interested in a
particular niche and just want to find the most popular bloggers, check
out the Technorati Popular list.

The second issue is more thorny. There’s nothing wrong (IMHO) with
sending products or services to bloggers to review. This has been part
of public relations for just about ever. However, some companies pay
bloggers for positive reviews or pay them for writing about the product
or service and linking to the Web site.

Although there is a cottage industry of pay-per-post bloggers, I
find the practice shady, even if the blogger in question admits this is
a paid link. (Many do not.) Google is now cracking down on paid links
to boost search engine rankings, and these pay-per-post scenarios may
come back to bite a company in the ass.

I’d recommend staying away from pay-per-post situations, but I think
sending influential bloggers demos, samples and PR packets is an
understood cost of doing business.

In case you’re wondering, I’m open to reviewing software, books, beers, bourbons, travel and sweets.

Rich Brooks
Very Influential Blogger