With the growing importance of social media and people increasingly trusting a ‘person like themselves’ rather than corporate messages, blogger relations have become crucial for PR specialists.

Just as media relations, blogger relations aims to, on behalf of companies and clients, build meaningful relationships with bloggers (by media relations – with journalists).

Such a positive dialogue with these influencers can lead to bloggers reporting PR news or events and so sharing their opinions about a brand and its products that would then have an impact on the brand’s reputation.

The challenge lies in how exactly to build that relationship. Of course, PR professionals offer bloggers free samples of products, or encourage them to participate in contests, or invite them for special events as VIP guests etc. What’s particularly difficult here is finding the right blogger for the specific campaign or event. Some PR agencies have developed large databases of blogger details around the discussed topics, be it fashion, automobile, tech etc. However, considering that new blogs are being created every day, these databases need to be updated regularly and at the end they become massive lists of data, which is time-consuming to analyse and go through to find those bloggers that fit the specific campaign requirements best.

Here’s where a brand new tool might come in great help for PR people. I came across it the other day and I thought I have to spread the word.

BELOONG is a project developed by Christopher Hauffe as part of his BA dissertation at the Macromedia University for Media and Communication in Cologne.

It offers a world map of blogs and statistics about each as well as filtering options by categories allowing better search opportunities than the endless Google results. It makes it easy to estimate whether blogs are relevant and worth the investment as the platform provides detailed statistics about each blog allowing you to tap into vast amounts of customised data. So, essentially the tool helps PR pros find the right blogger target audience for their events, press releases or campaigns.

The benefit for bloggers listed on the platform is increased SEO and traffic as well as the provision of a detailed statistical analysis allowing you to compare your blog with those of others (e.g. competitors if we are talking about a corporate blog). Through the platform you can also get requests from investors who want to place ads on your blog, helping you with monetisation.

Here’s how it works:

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/53581880[/vimeo]

And if you were wondering, yes, of course, I added my blog on BELOONG! :)

The project is still in development, but it will be interesting to follow its progress. I for one will do so and report. :)

What do you think about the platform? Do you find it useful? What is its potential?