TODAY'S GUEST BLOGGER IS.....

Firstly, I'd like to say thanks to Jill for kindly offering me this opportunity to guest blog.

Secondly, allow me to introduce myself.

My name is Rich Leigh and I am one of the co-founders of www.bloggabase.com, a service I launched recently to try and improve the relationship between bloggers and marketers.  I've worked in PR for about five years, and blogged for longer.

In my day-to-day job, working with bloggers has become more important over the last couple of years, as clients have realised that niche audiences are sometimes more useful from a brand sales perspective than traditional media outlets.  Despite this, there is only one real way to identify bloggers to approach, and that's by good old-fashioned desk-based research (otherwise known as Google).  Trawling through lists of potentially relevant bloggers is something that takes a lot of time, and as such, across the industry, often falls to junior agency members, or professionals who are simply too stretched to make a good, thorough job of it.  This can lead to sloppy, irrelevant pitching, with a greater emphasis still placed on media relations, or talking to journalists.

That's where I think we are missing a service to help make 'blogger engagement' (or 'blogger relations' as you might also know it) easier and better for both parties.

Bloggabase will be a way for bloggers to send requests, receive targeted products and service review opportunities and also hear from guest posters and marketers who have stories to tell that bloggers might want to hear.  Through making contact with these marketers, it may also be a way for bloggers to make money from their blog, though for me, it's about the relationship, first and foremost.

My hope in launching it is that marketers will only contact bloggers about things they and their readers might care about, rather than the 'throw enough and some will stick' approach I have been subjected to when wearing my blogger hat.

If you're interested, please do take a second to sign your blog (or blogs, if you run more than one) up for free, here:

www.bloggabase.com (we're on Twitter @bloggabase)

It's for all bloggers, no matter what subjects they write about - we've had bloggers sign up with all sorts of interests, and even if you have a blog that is just personal to you and about nothing in particular, you may still find the service of use.

At the moment we're recruiting blogs - we aren't opening up to marketers until we hit 2,000 blogs just to ensure a useful proposition - so any help sharing the service to reach the target faster would be greatly appreciated and will of course make the service of use to bloggers sooner.  We're currently at more than 1,000 blogs, so I'm confident we'll get there soon and, I hope, find a way for marketers and bloggers to work together in a mutually beneficial way.

Rich Leigh
Co-founder

www.bloggabase.com and @bloggabase)