Ryan Saghir is a force in the satellite radio industry. With a quarter million visitors to his Orbitcast blog each month, his words influence satellite radio customers and industry decision makers alike. He’s the perfect person to advise marketers on how to listen to bloggers who write about their company and their industry.
Ryan says that “Both XM and Sirius [the two leading North American satellite radio companies] do a good job of treating me like press,” but he offered advice for marketers in other industries as to how to treat bloggers who write about them.
“Companies have the wrong impression of bloggers,” Ryan believes, because they treat bloggers as some kind of second-tier journalists. Ryan says “the press is taught to be an unbiased source trying to read between the lines and interpret something [in a] negative [way]. They’re trying to create buzz and sell papers.”
Bloggers are different, Ryan asserts. “Bloggers are usually not trying to make money. Bloggers are fans of the product and of what the company does. We love the product more than anyone else does and we foster an environment where other fans can rally around.”
Clearly not all bloggers are cast in Ryan’s mold, but many industries have bloggers just like him. As he says, “Satellite radio is what I am passionate about and what I evangelize.” A little nurturing makes that passion a huge positive for XM and Sirius.
Ryan also advises marketers to use the blogosphere as an early warning system: “PR people I’ve spoken to have noticed that there’s a reaction in the media after I’ve written something.” If you have powerful bloggers in your industry, addressing the issues they raise may ameliorate later coverage in the mainstream media.
Ryan believes that marketers have a huge opportunity to win over bloggers. “If they speak like human beings (without the corporate-speak) they’d be amazed at the response they’d get from bloggers. Bloggers are on your side.”
