David Pitlyuk

Last week I had a post go live on the blog that generated a good amount of buzz around the blogosphere, What Do The Top Bloggers Drive?. As of right now the post has had 77 Diggs, 44 comments, and has been posted about on quite a few big blogs you may have heard of:

• John Chow dot com
• Twitter - A bunch of big name interneters (Yes, I made that word up) Twittered about it, including Guy Kawasaki, Ryan Caldwell, and Anne Swift
• CrunchGear (Sister site for TechCrunch)
• Jalopnik
• Self Made Minds
• SEOmoz
• AutoBlog Green

That’s not a bad list to get a few linkbacks from, huh? If you read the article you’ll know that I obviously had to get in touch with all of the bloggers…many of them get hundreds of e-mails a day, so how did I get them to respond to me? Read on…

How To Get A Response

I sent an e-mail to all of the bloggers I wanted to hear back from on Thursday, January 3rd. Here’s how quickly I received responses:

As you can see, the majority of responses came within 1-2 days of sending. You’ll also notice the subject I used for some of the e-mails. I always personalized by the blogger name so that they knew it wasn’t just a spambot:

Scott - Quick Questions

I also used the subject “Quick Questions” because I wanted the blogger to know that I wasn’t sending an e-mail to waste their time. I needed an answer, and my e-mail needed to get right to the point. As I mentioned before, these guys get hundreds of e-mails a day…you cannot bore them with a long e-mail. Get right the point, or your e-mail will end up in their delete box. My e-mail almost always went something like this:

Hey John,

David Pitlyuk (http://www.davepit.com) here. If you have a free moment to answer a few questions, I’m compiling info for a hopefully inspirational post about what cars some of the top bloggers drive.

1. What kind of cars/vehicles do you drive now?
2. If you had to buy a new car today, what would it be?
3. If money was no object, what car would you drive?

If you have any pictures of your vehicle(s) that you’d like me to use in the post, please feel free to send them my way.

Thanks for your time!
Dave

You can see that I got right to the point. First, I personalized the introduction, then I made a quick introduction, told them I had some questions, gave them a good reason to take 30 seconds to answer them (inspirational post), and asked the questions. Simple as that. Now keep in mind that the article I wrote and questions I asked were fairly unique I think…they probably don’t get asked that too many times. This generally will make them be more inclined to answer. If you’re trying to get some sort of interview, and you’re asking things that you can find answers to on 100 different websites with just a Google Search, don’t expect a response.

ShoeMoney wrote a good post, “10 Reasons I Delete Your Email“. Who better to hear from in terms of what will get deleted then from an A-Lister himself.

They’ve Responded, Now What?

First of all, I want to note that not everybody responded. I e-mailed a lot more bloggers, so don’t get discouraged when you don’t get a response. For example, Leo Babauta from Zen Habits responded saying this:

Hi Dave … normally I would try to help you out but at the moment I’m swamped. Would you mind if I respectfully declined?

While it was nice of him to respond, he could have easily just not responded (Thanks Leo! - Although he could have probably answered the questions in the same amount of time he took to write that ). You never know what the situation is on the other persons end.

I didn’t respond to everybody’s e-mail as soon as they responded. I waited until my post went live so I could give them a link and thank them. I did this for three reasons:

1. I didn’t want to send thanks AND another e-mail with a link…I haven’t said it enough, these guys are already extremely busy
2. I wanted to send them a link to the post so they could see, and also with any sort of hopes of them linking back (which worked of course)
3. I’ve now created a relationship or contact with each blogger. This can be useful for future scenario from both my end and their end. For example Guy Kawasaki and I went back and forth several times…he even showed me a new project he was working on that isn’t public yet!

I hope this information helps you get in touch with an A-Lister should you need to…just make sure you need to. Nobody likes to have their time wasted.