Shelly and I have been bloggers for at least 8 years, if not longer, prior to opening Two Classy Chics. We have held many positions in many different companies and at varying levels of management; in huge corporations and small business. Since we have been blogging together with this review blog, I am astounded at some of the un-professionalism and down right Embarrassing things that we have heard and seen online. But today I am going to address one of my biggest peeves.
As many of you know and especially the people that enter our giveaways, we work hard to find unique and different sponsors for our blog. We bring beautiful items to you that are not seen on 50 other mom blogs. Because of that, we spend many long hours researching. Then we publish the review and the sponsor is thrilled with our work, since we are detailed in our reviews, and with the response they get on their site. Sounds wonderful, right?
Until the emails start pouring in……. pouring in from other mom blogs wanting to review their products too. Some of the emails our sponsors are getting are down right rude. They range from defaming our work; saying how they write better than we do – they have more followers than we do – and some bloggers out right lie about us trying to get the sponsor to do business with them. Heck, we don’t even know some of these bloggers and they do not know us, so why defame our work? At least kiss me first…. And many of the bloggers we do know, so I am appalled at the behavior and offensive emails. You sure find out who your friends are in the blogging community… NONE!
How do we know this? Oh, we have plenty of sponsors that enjoy our work and are astounded at what “professional” mom bloggers send out. One company alone received over 700 emails from bloggers requesting a review and giveaway within 1 week after our post was published. 700! How embarrassing is that, people?
Do those that “market” their business that way really think about how overwhelming that is to a small business owner that runs their business online with few or no employees? Maybe it is a mom and pop business. Does anyone think about the ramifications of that?
It is no wonder that more and more smaller businesses are Choosing NOT to work with mom bloggers and have attitudes like the post we wrote about the other day where we had a nasty reply to an email. Yes, it was nasty and uncalled for, but look at how overwhelmed some businesses must be. I would flip out if that happened to my business and I would Never do another review again. I would be Pissed! You can see that post here called Mommy Bloggers and Review Bloggers Should Get What?
Personally, I think this type of activity is rude and uncalled for. Bashing a fellow blogger, al beit a competitor, is ungracious and unethical – although more and more I am seeing so many unethical bloggers in this community. It is extremely embarrassing to me as I feel it puts a bad light on the mom blog reviewer community as a whole. I do not want my sponsor thinking I am just in it for the “free stuff” and damn anyone else who reviews a product I want and should have, even though my blog or my job performance many not warrant it.
So what is the answer? How can this embarrassing activity be stopped? How can we start looking like the Professional Mom Bloggers that we profess to be?
Do your own work! If you see something you truly would like to review on someones stream, do the research and look for like items or wait a few months to email the initial sponsor. Do you really think that emailing the sponsor within 1 week or 1 hour of it posting is going to better your odds of getting product? They are already committed to the other blogger. Sure, some may respond in the affirmative, but most are being overwhelmed with emails and running scared, which results in a loss to the whole community. Sad but true.
Review bloggers are in and have a very unique perspective in the blogging community. If you really think you are a professional at what you do, please act like one and think about the sponsor first. That is really what our job is about; Them not US!
I am sure that I am going to piss off plenty of bloggers and honestly I don’t care. Being ostracized is nothing new to us. That has been occurring since we started our blog, for some reason. But what I do care about is the blogging community as a whole and the embarrassing things I witness and see happening on blogs and from our sponsors.
Think about how you want to be perceived by others looking in. Can you honestly say you work hard finding your sponsors and you are giving your sponsor an HONEST VALUE in return? If you can, then you are in the right job and THANK YOU! My hat’s off to you.
Am I perfect? No. Is this blog perfect? No. And please understand, I am not pointing any fingers at anyone personally but the reviewing community as a whole. I do think that if we all work together instead of against one another this will be a better experience for many sponsors and we can all grow this business that We created.
If you have made it to the end of my rant, thank you. I hope you understand what I am trying to express and I only wish for a better blogging experience and a better experience for our sponsors, current and future.
This is one of the reasons why I took such an extended break from the WAHM world. I don’t know if it’s desperation to succeed or just plain laziness, but the amount of COPY CAT work I used to see was insane. I had people flat out copy entire pages from my website, followed by copied emails that I had sent out. Rules, information, or whatever… just flat out STOLEN. I got to the point I stopped posting ANY ideas or helping people because my thanks was my hard work and ideas stolen, or catty people freaking out because they don’t care for my thoughts. SO, I hate to say, those copy cats are on their own. Come up with your own ideas and content, ‘cuz I’m done sharing mine.
It makes you sick, doesn’t it? Thanks for sharing Kara
You work hard to set yourself “apart” from the crowd, only to have your ideas and hardwork ripped off by copycats. That totally sucks!
I can’t believe how unprofessional some people can be- no, wait – unfortunately I can believe it. Some people always try to find the “easy” way to do things- even if it is not the “correct” way.
Wow. What a great post. This is such an eye-opener for me as a new(ish) blogger. It’s scary out there! I have yet to start doing reviews on my blog, but this is a really valuable perspective. Thank you and keep up the good work.
Hey Shelly and Chris
Sorry you are going through this garbage. I know how hard you both work to bring the super giveaways and reviews to us and I for one appreciate it.
I do NOT follow blogs and use their reviews to get products or ideas for my own blog. I think that is very unprofessional of anyone to do. Also I would never bash another blogger to anyone even if I knew something was wrong. Its not right.
Companies send us products to review and they expect to get a fair and decent review written about the product, not just a few words. What we do is time consuming and a lot of work for sure but fun at the same time.
Keep up the good work you ladies do. The bashers are just jealous.
Amen Darlene! Thanks for your support!
Hi Catherine and Caroline
Thank you for your comments and support. We decided to bring this topic out in the “open” as we have been dealing with it for 2 1/2 years now. While some companies “might” have staff to handle 700 blogger requests, most do NOT. Not only that, these 700 requests per week are mixed in with their customer service emails and it ends up being a big mess. They don’t have the time nor the staff to handle that type of email volume.
Next, we have site trackers on our site. We have caught various bloggers coming over to our blog and sitting for HOURS upon HOURS going thru our Archived posts and just clicking away sending companies emails and PR requests. They don’t comment on our posts, they don’t read our blog, they don’t participate here in any shape or form…but come over to “snag” and “contact” all or most of our sponsors. That is LAZY! We have NEVER EVER done that to another blogger. We do our own research, our own searches and don’t snag from bloggers.
Furthermore, we have NEVER slammed another blogger in an email pitch request to a company or PR firm. That is unethical and unprofessional, PERIOD. This type of behavior that ‘some’ are exhibiting is hurting our profession in a BIG BIG WAY and it needs to stop.
We have always prided ourselves in writing genuine & honest reviews. We write in very detailed length and sponsors don’t get one or two sentences and a bunch of copy & paste garbage from their site. WE totally agree with you Catherine on that and we wish Sponsors would be a little bit more choosy with which blogs they participte on. We see some of those “terrible” reviews and it hurts the profession when the blogger does that.
How sad. I’m sorry you have to even deal with this. How disgraceful is the behavior of these bloggers to the Sponsor. I enjoy this blog in that it’s so genuine in your reviews. You present your reviews on a level that makes me believe in your honesty. Don’t know exactly what it is but it’s there. There are too many bloggers who are definitely in it for the products, sad to say nut it’s quite evident in there review of said product. They don’t realize the way their attitudes and reactions affect everyone. If I were a sponsor and had to read an email bashing another blogger why would I want them to be associated with my product. You’re doing it right and true. I can’t believe and I’m always surprised at the lengths some bloggers go through to attack another. Thanks for posting about this.
I was just having this conversation with a vendor. I told him to hold on to his hat, because the avalanche was probably about to come crashing down on him.
Businesses are also becoming disappointed with how many “reviews” are just copy and paste from their own site. An informational post is fine, but if I get a product, I think my readers and the business owner deserve more than one or two lines and a paragraph of copied text.
I’d rather keep my small blog with only one or two posts a day and have them be real reviews. I have met some great people who have been so generous. I hope this new trend doesn’t become the ruin of review blogging.