Is it wise to launch a start-up without reaching out to bloggers?

On the 4th of July Michael Arrington of TechCrunch was distracted. Rather than kicking back and watching the fireworks he published a post entitled “The Reality of PR: Smile, Dial, Name Drop and Pray”. At the time of wring this post for Brinkwire’s blog Arrington’s thoughts have tallied up an impressive 144 comments.

Arrington put the spotlight on two start-ups; Wordnik and Topsy.

Topsy launched via the blog route. In fact they were lucky enough to get TechCrunch coverage (for which many in PR should pray for) and in exchange gave TechCrunch exclusivity on the story.

The quick comparison Arrington gives is that now Topsy has 577,000 results on Google and Wordnik only has 56,000. Yes. Pages indexed by Google don’t mean that much and a single site could be responsible for the difference – however the point is Wordnik does seem to be flat-lining and Topsy seems to be doing well.

Arrington’s own post was inspired by another (which makes this one a third tier post and a classic example of smaller blogs following the key influencers). What caught Arrington’s attention was a story about Brooke Hammerling in her role as head of PR at Brew that was posted at CNET .

Ms. Hammerling, while popping green apple Jolly Ranchers into her mouth, suggests a press tour that includes briefing bloggers at influential geek sites like TechCrunch, All Things Digital and GigaOM.

But Roger McNamee, a prominent tech investor who is backing Wordnik, is also in the room, and a look of exasperation passes across his face at the mere mention of the sites.

“Why shouldn’t we avoid them? They’re cynical,” he says, also noting his concern that Wordnik would probably appeal more to wordsmiths than followers of tech blogs. “That’s where I would be most uncomfortable. They don’t know the difference between ‘they’re’ and ‘there.’ ”

Without missing a beat, Ms. Hammerling changes course, instantly agreeing with Mr. McNamee’s take. “I love you for that,” she intones. “I’ll leave the tech blogs out. Let them come to me.”

Instead, she decides that she will “whisper in the ears” of Silicon Valley’s Who’s Who — the entrepreneurs behind tech’s hottest start-ups, including Jay Adelson, the chief executive of Digg; Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter; and Jason Calacanis, the founder of Mahalo.

Of course, it is easy to say “You have to engage the bloggers!” but the question “How?” remains. If you do go about whispering in email ears then make sure you know the blogger first and have permission to talk shop with them. When it comes to issuing those official press releases make it easier on yourself by picking PR sites that reach out to bloggers as well as journalists.