Once you review products pertaining to the theme or niche of your blog that you currently own and market your blog appropriately you will be ready to make some cold contacts for product reviews. While this may see intimidating it truly is easy and gets easier the more you do it. One of the best avenues to get a foot in the door is joining blogging communities such as Mom Blogger Club and The Product Review Place.
How to make a contact:
Before you email know which product you are interested in reviewing. It is perfectly acceptable to ask to review a product in particular and state the reason why. For instance, your readers may be interested in a review on a preschool curriculum and you have a preschool child. If you are writing a series on a particular topic you may want to request a product that correlates. Companies like to know you have a focus and a purpose so you can best represent the product to their target audience.
Keep your email short and respectful. You may want to ask if they are willing to work with a blogger. Introduce yourself and give your blog statistics. Companies normally are interested in how many followers you have and how many views your blog receives a month. You may want to include Alexa ranking or Google Analytics. PR or page ranking is asked from time to time so be aware of your Google page rank if needed or simply include it. Do not forget to give them a link to your blog.
Do not forget to disclose on your blog post that you received a complimentary product in exchange for an objective review.
Do not guarantee a company a positive review. Do not work with a company who wants to approve your review before posting or requests you do not post a negative review. Please be objective and fair in your review. Do not be afraid to post a negative review. As long as your review is fair and respectful you should post it.
When you receive the product you may want to inform the company you have it in your possession. If you do not receive the product in a fair amount of time it is acceptable to inform the company you do not have it in your possession. The company may have sent it and it got lost or they did not send it out as of that day or they changed their mind. Try to have your reviews finished within 2 weeks unless the product demands more time to test.
Tip: If you happen to see reviews on a blog of a product that you want to review go ahead and email the company. Chances are if they allowed one blogger to review the product they will allow another. It is a good gage to find the blogger friendly companies.
Tip: If you are working with a PR person please do not pass out their name and email address without their prior permission.