When the blogger universe exploded, marketers beheld a population of influencers somewhere between everyday folks and professional journalists, but with serious word-of-mouth marketing power. So they met the blogger ego.

As someone who’s been a journalist and a blogger receiving hundreds of public-relations e-mails per week, I’ve seen the good, bad and ugly ways marketers solicit coverage. And no one is more jaded these days than bloggers.

Bloggers, who now compete (or join forces) with journalists in news gathering and reporting, require a different communications strategy in order to effectively reach them and, hopefully, develop a rapport.

Step 1: Know your audience

The biggest misconception about a blogger-outreach strategy is that it is simple and easy. Blogger lists take serious resources and hours of labor to create. At Mullen, we have spent years cultivating good blogger lists, which we are constantly adding to or updating.

To begin building your list, think about who may already be talking about your product. Find them. Next, think about who isn’t, but should be, talking about your product. Find them, too.

Once you have a name, you must read the blog. Read at least the past three posts, but look for regular features or other specialties they write about. This will make sure you are pitching relevant information to the blogger, and you can flatter them by showing that you know what they write about and can speak to why it’s a fit for your product.

Pay attention to how bloggers suggest you contact them. Contact forms may seem like a hindrance, but I’ve had great blogger response when I take the time to fill these out. Additionally, start following them on Twitter and Facebook, so that you are engaging with them across mediums. This could also lead you to further bloggers to target for your outreach.

Step 2: Seduction

Once you’ve built your blogger list, you are ready to begin dialing (or typing) and smiling.

And, above all, do not act like a spammer.

Your first introductory sentence elicits a dance with the blogger ego:

1. Salutation: Always include the blogger’s name, some reference to the title of the blog and proof that you actually read it (comment on a recent article, let them know some common ground they share with the company you represent, or add your thoughts to something they mention in the “About Me” section).
2. Body: Write something personalized that explains why this blogger is being pitched. It doesn’t have to be lengthy, but it does have to be authentic. Then include the approved release or pitch materials.
3. Following up: The absolute worst thing you can do is not write back if the blogger comments on your pitch. Always be prompt with responses – part of showing them that you care.

Step 3: The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Remember: bloggers like to feel special. Whenever we do any sort of blogger-outreach strategy for clients, we emphasize that exclusive offers and giveaways are a key ingredient to getting their attention. Before you do this, make sure you are well-versed in the FTC regulations about sending gifts to bloggers.

You also need to give them something they can offer their readers. Most bloggers will tell you that, for the most part, they are in it for altruistic reasons – sharing the untold, impressing knowledge on the populace or spreading their wisdom or information. Don’t just send them something to try; send them something their readers can try, too.

Step 4: Listen

If you are doing something wrong in your outreach efforts, the bloggers will tell you.

Christine Hohlbaum is an author, “mommy blogger,” and ex-patriot now living in Germany (an important fact she says is overlooked by many PR pros who pitch to her). Her blogs, The Power of Slow and Mama’s Musings, get 2,000 to 3,000 unique site visitors per month, primarily at Mama’s Musings. She receives dozens of pitches from PR professionals each day, even more during the holidays.

As a PR consultant, she is sympathetic to time- and resource- strapped marketers who are trying to get the attention of a robust list of bloggers. But as a blogger, she sees good intentions go completely bad.

“Many people e-mail blast, which is something that you do not want to do with bloggers,” Hohlbaum said. “If you’re going to take the time, actually talk to me.”

That means be personable. Hohlbaum likes it when a pitch begins with “Good Morning” or “Happy Monday!” or comment on a recent post. Anything that shows they did more than look a contact up on Cision. These are things that separate the savvy PR professionals and the spammers, Hohlbaum says.

Susan Kessler is writer of The Frual Diva, a blog about frugal living that also has appeared in the Los Angeles Times. As someone who regularly receives marketing pitches, Kessler offers her own tips:

• Don’t assume the blogger will want this deal or company.
• Don’t hide who you are or the nature of your product – this is an ethics red flag.
• Don’t tell the blogger that everyone else you contacted is interested (in other words, don’t lie).
• Don’t ignore the blogger to push your own agenda when they tell you what their readers are interested in.
• Don’t let the e-mail conversation end negatively – always thank people for their time.
• Do try again politely at a later date if the blogger is uninterested – attitudes change.

And finally, she said, “Do flatter – it still works!” Everybody’s ego likes a little stroking, but that doesn’t guarantee you’ll get a write-up.

Street teams promote the Men's Wearhouse National Suit Drive in Times Square Aug. 31

Only in New York City would a group of shirtless, pantless men walking the streets be considered commonplace.

Men's Wearhouse street teams promoting the National Suit Drive outside the CBS Early Show

Still, the street teams you see here garnered a great deal of attention in the Big Apple (including a spot on the CBS Early Show), and in the other four cities where Mullen coordinated a guerilla marketing and public relations campaign for the Men’s Wearhouse National Suit Drive.

In New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., teams of men – wearing only dress shoes, socks and ties – held signs encouraging any passerby to “Give the Suit Off Your Back.” The promotion kicked off the third annual National Suit Drive Aug. 31, which Men’s Wearhouse boasts is the largest suit collection in the country.

Throughout September, the more than 1,000 Men’s Wearhouse locations will accept men’s and women’s gently used professional attire that they will donate to more than 200 regional charities throughout the United States.

The drive aims to help those struggling to reenter the workforce by suiting them up with a great suit for his or her next interview. Men’s Wearhouse hopes to collect more than 100,000 items in the month-long effort and there are just nine days left to donate.

To give the suit off your back, visit the nearest Men’s Wearhouse location. For your generosity, Men’s Wearhouse will give you a tax receipt and a 25 percent off coupon for your next purchase (restrictions apply). And for every suit that’s collected, the company will donate a dress shirt to the cause.

At Mullen’s Winston-Salem office, employees are holding their own collection of business attire – but luckily for all of us, nobody has taken the “Give the Suit Off Your Back” call-to-action literally … yet.

The campaign was inspired by the fact that there are places men really feel like they belong. Many of these places have been captured on film, on TV or in great sports moments. The work shows men walking into the middle of dramatic cinematic moments and asking the characters, “Is this Men’s Wearhouse?” The characters nonchalantly direct them to the nearest store, recounting their own stories and great experiences at Men’s Wearhouse.

Jason Black, the ECD of our North Carolina office, got to sample the Men’s Wearhouse store experience firsthand, which helped inspire the new work.

“Most of us knew that Men’s Wearhouse has great prices, but we were impressed by how truly unique the shopping experience is,”  Black said. “We wanted to tell that story, which is why the campaign focuses on those special attributes: the on-site tailor, wide selection of styles and colors and top designers.”

You can read more about the campaign in The New York Times.

As if social media networks haven’t shortened my attention span enough, I now seek recipes and cooking tips that are more pithy than verbose. And I’m not alone.

For the past four months, we’ve been posting frugal-living tips to Live Solid, part of SunTrust’s initiative to help people get on more solid financial ground. Our more than 4,200 followers have been responding well to the topics about savings, coupon-clipping and other consumer-interest pieces. But then we posted something about food, and the conversation exploded.

“What staple is your go-to for affordable weeknight meals?” Live Solid asked. Thirty-six responses later, we had everything from one-word answers to entire recipes written to fit in a not-too-lengthy comment box.

That question generated our most responses to date, and it made me think about how social media has changed the way we respond to open-ended questions. Even when people have room to write more, they opt for shorter responses, which are easy to read, re-tweet and reply to.

A co-worker pointed out that, thanks to social media, you don’t need to call Butterball University anymore. Instead, you can send random cooking questions out on Twitter and Facebook and let the responses find you.

Our conversational appetites have long been shrinking, but when did this begin translating to something as complex and scientific as a baking recipe?

@TwitRecipes is the handle for an Oregon mom/foodie who saw a way to turn the national trend of affordable, back-to-basics living into a successful Twitter resource. Bend, Ore. resident Julie Anderson created it a couple years ago on the premise that Twitter offers the perfect parameters for simple, affordable meals. After all, how complicated can you get in 140 characters? Now, she shares hundreds of recipes that are passed throughout the Twitterverse.

@MarthaStewart also occasionally posts recipes within her Twitter feed, which adds further evidence to a trend I’ve noticed in Martha’s recipes: they are getting dumbed down. No longer does her brand release Julia Child-esque recipes that include four pages of culinary jargon. Instead, they are simple and totally doable for the at-home cook. But even better, they translate well on the Web, where her adoring fans can easily re-tweet her tips to their friends. This was the right way for Martha to evolve her brand and it has bought her even more consumers.

I used to think this change in the foodie landscape was more of a “Rachael Ray effect” – less gourmet, more home cooking. But now I think it’s more about social media making brevity king.

Before opening a cookbook or e-mailing a friend or calling my mother, I turn to my Twitter feed, where I can find a recipe for strawberry-rhubarb compote in fewer than 140 characters.

Twitter is like a more-manic version of Facebook networking – consumer interest only lasts as long as an item appears on their feed and users can remove followers from their list for any fickle reason:  they don’t get the user’s attention, they annoy the user or they just lose interest.

The trick is making Twitter more interactive for the user and spreading the brand name every step of the way. That’s where the new Twitter application TweetSwell comes in.

TweetSwell, still in beta form, is an engine for surveys, quizzes and polls that allows organizations a new way to engage with followers. We’ve been casually playing with TweetSwell for about a month and have been pleased with how interactive it is. We also appreciate the frequency with which the results are re-tweeted, spreading the brand name every step of the way.

How it works: Companies create a survey for the purpose of collecting consumer sentiment, sparking discussion or conducting product reviews. You write and manage the survey, then TweetSwell hosts it and uses your Twitter account’s design settings for a seamless brand experience. Once you publish the survey and promote it on Twitter, respondents can personalize their Twitter responses. TweetSwell collects all the metrics to show how successful the application is.

Other online survey and polling applications exist, including KwikSurveys and SurveyMonkey. For Twitter, however, TweetSwell founder Eric Chang saw an opening.

Chang acknowledges that Twitter-friendly applications already offer surveys and contests: TwtPoll allows you to create branded surveys on Twitter; PollDaddy offers easy, free polls that you can publish on your blog, Web site or social network; and CrowdCampaign allows users to create a contest while promoting a brand.

Where TweetSwell is different, Chang says, is that it focuses on creating customizable tweets from the surveys, so the survey is more engaging and has more marketing potential.

“Many companies have already been using Twitter to collect anecdotal feedback and address consumer questions and concerns,” Chang said. “What’s been missing is the ability to back this anecdotal feedback with some real analytics and do it in an automated way.”

Chang’s focus is twofold: to create deeper analytics for the clients, showing the “social reach” of the brand; and support better incentives for followers to engage companies through Twitter.

There are currently a handful of organizations testing the TweetSwell service. Chang hopes to use their feedback to better hone the design and metrics. One tester is the maker of men’s clothes, Bonobos, which is using TweetSwell to see what its customers want out of a good dress shirt: “Should cuffs have one button, or two?”

Once TweetSwell is officially up and running – sometime early next year – Chang says he’ll have a pricing system in place.

For now, he’s working on developing even more utilities for TweetSwell. He recently included a “roll your own tweets” feature that allows hosts to pre-populate the respondent’s “What’s happening?” box on Twitter, and the ability to add images to the surveys.