Leeds-based Muireann Carey-Campbell is the lifestyle blogger behind Bangs and a Bun. She published a letter of complaint this morning on her blog to PR agency Mission.

The letter sets out how she was mistreated by Mission in its efforts to engage with her on behalf of its client, Nokia, as she prepared for a half marathon. You can read it for yourself on Muireann’s blog along with a developing conversation between bloggers and PRs in the comments – and apologies from both Mission and Nokia.

Muireann took a risk with her personal reputation in singling out an agency and a brand but the response has been overwhelmingly positive.  I caught up with her this afternoon to find out what the PR industry can learn from her experiences.

Her message is simple: respect bloggers, treat them as individuals.

“I wanted to start a conversation but I’ve been surprised by the scale of the response. Bangs and a Bun is almost three-years-old and gets 25,000 views per month; I’ve had 14,000 alone today,” said Muireann.

“Agencies and brands take bloggers for granted. There’s an inherent attitude that ‘they’re just a blogger’… a name on a list, whereas bloggers invest a huge amount of time and effort in their blogs. In my case I was training for a half marathon and didn’t know if I had a place,” she said.

Good blogger relations is about understanding blogs and developing relationships. It cannot be a mechanical process. A cut and paste email approach simply won’t work. Yet that is a commonplace approach according to Muireann.

PR practitioners need to take the time to read the blogs that they are targeting and understand a blogger’s motivations.

Related articles

• Commonsense prevails at bloggers vs PRs meetup (speedcommunications.com)
• Nokia screws blogger due to marathon PR failure (econsultancy.com)