Blogger Relations Extra Credit Question

May 24, 2007 | Blogger relations, Science Fiction

Jeneane Sessum and Todd Defren both posted excellent quizzes for any pr or marketing agency that purports to be a social media or blogging expert.

I have your extra credit question.

This week has seen two rather interesting blogger relations mis-steps: the Fleishman Hillard "Marlo Thomas" pitch and the Vocus white paper "spam."  Many people have posted about these two incidents; if you need to catch up start here, here and here.

In addition to all the other advice you can find, on this blog and elsewhere, a couple points bear repeating and are the subject of today’s extra credit question.

First, give something first. Don’t ask the blogger to write about you. Give him something he wants — information, trial product, access, whatever. No strings attached. That’s what makes it a GIFT. And try to do it with a minimum of  "marketing speak." If you wouldn’t say it, don’t send it. Try it sometime. Read one of your email pitches out loud. After you get over how stupid it sounds, fix it.

Second, remember: with bloggers, you do have a window into their lives. Make sure you aren’t approaching them at an inappropriate time. Personal/life bloggers blog about their lives, so there is no excuse for not knowing. But even business bloggers give clues. Look for them and reach out appropriately.

Here’s the question: would you pitch me on something this week? Specifically tomorrow May 25th. What would you pitch to me and why?

Okay, it’s the holiday weekend, so I am going to give you the answer.

Unless you are the manufacturer of a hot convertible and want to give me a demo model to test drive for the next month or you can offer me a set visit to Battlestar Galactica, I would seriously advise you to steer clear. And the reason why is only one click away from this blog, on my new photo blog Snapshot Chronicles. I also twitted about it. In other words, the information about my craptastic day is pretty much public record.

I’ll make it even easier for you. Even though Marketing Roadmaps is a business blog, if you read it, even just once in a while, you’d probably know:

• I am married and have a 7 year old son Douglas.
• I breed and show Scottish Terriers.
• I am a huge science fiction and fantasy fan with a current obsession with Battlestar Galactica. You can introduce me to Jamie Bamber, Edward James Olmos, Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin or James Marsters? You can frak-ing fill my inbox with as much spam as you want.
• I am a lifelong Democrat. 
• I am vocal supporter of equal rights and often write about gender issues.
• I occasionally do book reviews on the blog but I have never reviewed products.
• I hate, hate, hate getting press releases with no cover note. Really.
• I just launched a new blog called Snapshot Chronicles.
• Today pretty much sucked.

These are easy to find clues about me, all accessible from Marketing Roadmaps. And guess what? I am not alone. Every blogger — personal, business, even anonymous — leaves clues about her interests, affiliations, current activities on the blog. Even what happened on a particularly craptastic day.

It isn’t about pitching bloggers. It’s about getting to know them and providing the information that THEY want, not just the information that you want to share. As I wrote to a colleague earlier today, don’t think about what you want to say TO your customer. Instead, think like your customer.

And by the way, that set visit? I’m waiting patiently. Ron Moore? David Eick? Are you listening?

Tags: Battlestar Galactica, blogger relations, pr, public relations

Diversions: Snapshot Chronicles

May 23, 2007 | Blogging, Douglas/Dogs

I’ve just started a new photo blog, Snapshot Chronicles. If you are interested in the misadventures of me and my son as we fool around with our point and shoot cameras, come on over. Looking for a serious photo blog? Umm. Nope.

We’ll be talking about our trips and photo projects. Evaluating the content of the tips pages at the major camera manufacturers. Who knows, we might eventually fool around with photo editing software and maybe even dabble with a digital SLR. But don’t hold your breath on the last. Or on anything too serious.

We aim to have us some fun. See you there.

Tags: photo, snapshots

Another Blogger Relations Learning Moment

Blogger relations

"He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone" (John 8:7)

Yesterday, pr management software firm Vocus apparently spammed  bloggers with an announcement of a (insert ironic drum roll here) a white paper and webinar about blogger relations, The Five Golden Rules of Blogger Relations.

I learned about the email blast from a fellow blogger, who emailed me about it because I was one of the bloggers interviewed by Vocus for the paper and mentioned in the email.

Needless to say, I was less than pleased that the firm appeared to have broken just about every guideline I and the other bloggers had suggested. Impersonal pitch, mass email, untargeted, no relationship with the recipient. You name it, all the rules broken. I immediately emailed  the person at Vocus who had interviewed me for the paper. To their credit, she responded immediately that this behavior was not their intention nor their usual practice, she would look into it and get back to me ASAP.

About an hour later, Bill Wagner, Vocus CMO called. Here’s the explanation, in his own words, which he sent at my request following our conversation because I didn’t want to get any of his important points wrong. 

I wanted to follow-up on our discussion about the Five Golden Rules for Blogger Relations whitepaper with some additional thoughts…

First, a little background….As you know, many of our customers use our media database to identify journalists and bloggers.  The vast majority of these customers research the journalists and bloggers who cover their space, make a personal connection, share relevant news and track their ongoing conversations.  In short, they build relationships.  On the other hand, we all know some PR people who build large lists and send mass distributions of press releases indiscriminately–something you and others have blogged about extensively.  While I believe these people represent a minority of PR practitioners, their actions give the entire PR community a black eye. 

As a leader in the industry, I believe Vocus should play an important role in educating our customers on best practices for media and blogger relations.  To that end, in writing our whitepaper we sought out advice and opinions from experts such as yourself, Shel Holtz, David Scott and Rachel Weiss, on what to do and not to do when approaching the blogsphere.

Now, with regard to how the Whitepaper was distributed…It was sent to our internal list of marketers and PR professionals as well as directly to our customers, including those from both Vocus and PRWeb.  While most of these recipients are familiar with Vocus and welcome our content, some are not.  For instance, many users of PRWeb (a company Vocus acquired last year) may not recognize the Vocus brand and don’t understand why they’re receiving communications from Vocus.  Understandably, some of them viewed our whitepaper offer as spam. 

Of course, anyone who receives communications from us can opt out, but the lesson is clear:  Whether sending news to journalists, reaching out to bloggers or sharing information with customers, we all have to strive to ensure that our communications are welcome and the information relevant.  I also recognize the need to clarify the relationship between Vocus and PRWeb for the thousands of individuals, marketers and PR professionals that have used the PRWeb service. 

The irony of course is that by trying to educate PR professionals about best practices in media and blogger relations, Vocus is addressing the "spam" issue head-on on behalf of journalists and bloggers alike.  As I mentioned in our conversation, Vocus is the first in the industry to allow journalists and bloggers to "opt-out" from receiving press releases from a particular company.  We’ll also continue to be aggressive in educating our customers in order to help them be more effective in establishing and maintaining relationships with journalists, bloggers and other important constituents.  We hope others will follow our lead. 

Please feel free to give me a call to discuss.  I look forward to working with you to continue to educate both our customers and the industry at large about this and other related issues.

Now some people, the only slack they are going to be willing to give Vocus is that on the end of a rope. I have a slightly different perspective. I absolutely think this could and should have been handled differently and discussed this at some length with Wagner. But, we all have a little dirty laundry in our glass houses. Mistakes are good; I think of them as learning moments :-)  A mistake is only truly bad when we don’t learn from it.

I doubt that Vocus wanted to be its own poster child for bad blogger relations and do think they’ve learned from this experience. And call me optimistic, but  it really does seem as though the company is making a sincere effort to get it right. Clearly, part of their motivation is to establish a competitive difference from the other vendors, but I’m willing to give them credit for doing some interesting things. Sure, having an opt-out link on press releases doesn’t make up for the poor PR practice of not building contact lists appropriately and carefully, but it is a start. It gives us back some control over our inboxes, and as I understand it, it is not optional. 

So here’s what I hope Vocus has learned from this moment. 

To start with, they should have thought more carefully about the PR Web user base. And I’m not  talking about doing a better job of communicating that Vocus acquired PR Web. That’s basic marketing table stakes, and they know it.

I’m talking about WHO these people are and what sort of communication would be appropriate for them. Think about it. People at PR agencies and in-house PR departments probably have PR Newswire or Business Wire accounts, if only as a matter of habit. Who was PR Web’s initial user base? Bloggers, small  to medium business owners, individuals, non-profits etc. etc. who wanted to issue a press release, often for the Google juice as much as anything else, and didn’t have accounts with the major wires. A communication written for Vocus customers, PR professionals, is not appropriate. No wonder bloggers took exception.

And of course, the irony was so delicious. How could they not blog about it?

Now I abhor mass emails for blogger relations, but I do not object to them for customer marketing communications, if the customer has opted-in and the material is targeted, relevant and preferably short. In this case, I told Bill that perhaps a better path would have been to have different communications, better targeted to the population receiving them.You tell me, PR Web users, but if you had gotten a short 2-3 line email that told you:

•  why you were getting this –  PR Web customer, PR Web now owned by Vocus;
• gave you a short, simple reason to be interested — "as someone who has issued a news release over the Web, we thought you might be interested in this white paper about blogger relations that we’ve produced with the help of Holtz, Scott, Weiss and Getgood"  — and
• gave you the download link without all the marketing-speak,

would you have had a negative reaction? Some certainly still would have, but I am willing to bet that some of you would have been interested, and if not, you would have just hit "delete" and moved on. 

That said, in my opinion, the best approach still would have been to lead by example. Practice what is preached in the paper.  Take the time to read the blogs, get to know the bloggers, mention relevant posts from their blogs, write individualized emails. Perhaps to fewer bloggers, but this is a pretty frequent topic in the PR/marketing blogosphere. There would have been PLENTY of bloggers to reach out to

I’m guessing that Vocus will do things differently next time. I’m sure plenty of people will be watching. Me included.

And here’s what I’ve learned:

I agreed to be interviewed for the white paper and to participate in the upcoming webinar because I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to help Vocus’ customers understand how to do blogger relations right. I still feel that way. However, in future, with any projects like this, with anyone, I will ask to see all promotional materials that mention my name. It may be their white paper, but it is my reputation.

Finally, in the interests of full disclosure, because we care about stuff like that here in the blogosphere, I have not nor do I expect to receive any compensation from Vocus for my participation in the white paper and proposed webinar or this post.

But hey, I’m a consultant. In the future, if they or anyone else wants to retain my counsel on this subject, I’m game.

Tags: Vocus, blogger relations, ethics, pr, public relations, pr spam

The Bad Blogger Relations Game

May 18, 2007 | Blogger relations, Ethics

Regular readers of this blog will recall my April 24 post in which I promised to start "outing" bad blogger relations practitioners using a simple metric.

After May 1st, once I have been spammed three times by the same PR spammer, I will share information about it on this blog. My own small version of the Bad Pitch Blog.

The good news: So far nobody has qualified for this dubious honor.

The bad news: Two firms that have spammed me many times in the life of this blog have indeed sent one spam each since May 1. And I’ve received a few more from new folks.

So stay tuned. At this rate we should be naming names by the end of June….

Tags: blogger relations, ethics

Enough about catz you say?

May 17, 2007 | Blogging

(courtesy LolCat Buildr)

If I Can Has Cheezburger wasn’t enough for you, Anil Dash has a detailed analysis of kitty pidgin. And over at pet blog Scratchings & Sniffings, they are having a cat video contest.

Ah well, at least it’s better than if everything had gone to the dogs…

Are we sure it isn’t all about cats?

May 16, 2007 | Humour

Cartoon by Randall Munroe, xkcd

It’ll be raining cats and dogs on Typepad’s Featured Blogs

Blogging, Douglas/Dogs

Scratchings & Sniffings, the pet blog written by blog buddy Yvonne DiVita and sponsored by Purina, is scheduled to be a Typepad Featured Blog this Thursday, May 17th.

Congratulations, Yvonne!

Tags: Yvonne DiVita, Scratchings&Sniffings, Purina

Is this blog haunted?

May 15, 2007 | Blogging

Lately, the topic of ghostwriting has been the subject of a few posts in the little corner of the blogosphere where I hang out.

It all started due to a client blog written by staffers at Boston-area PR firm Topaz Partners and escalated from there. Investor’s Business Daily also had a story.  I followed the conversation on blogs and Twitter, but just haven’t had a minute to write about it until today. You can go back and read all the relevant posts, and I urge you to — some very smart folks had some very smart comments.

Here’s my take. Ghostwriting, bad. Hiring people to write a blog or sponsoring a blog, ok.

As long as the person whose name is on the post is the person who wrote it, does it matter whether they were hired to write it? I don’t think so.

Which is why I am the editor of a client blog and post there regularly under my own name. My client wants a blog, knows I understand the market and the products, and trusts me to build a good experience for the customers and readers. A good friend writes a blog that is sponsored by a major company, but the blog content is driven by her, not the sponsor.

I do not believe there is anything wrong with either approach. The key is of course that the person writing has, or has developed, expertise that makes him qualified to write the blog.

What isn’t right is hiring professional writers to write for employees, whether the CEO or a product manager, without attribution. If your CEO doesn’t want to write, find another way to connect her with your customers. For example, Bill Marriott records a podcast, which is then transcribed for the blog. Nothing wrong with that.

I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. Blogs are a communications tool, not a religion. As long as you are honest about what you are doing and why, please, please push the envelope. Try new things. Just be relevant, be honest and don’t try to fool anybody. Do no harm and don’t hurt the humans   And don’t be afraid to f*** up. Tom Peters said it years ago, and it is still true - aim for fast failures. Rethink, retool and do it again.

Tags: ghostwriting, blogs, blogging, sponsored blogs

Playboy gets a Second Life and Delta Tweets

May 11, 2007 | Blogging, Marketing, PR

About 2 months ago I posted about how I had been having some difficulty putting my head around whether or how virtual worlds like Second Life would develop commercial value, but then I noticed two things.

First, my  7-year old son’s complete engagement in the virtual world of Nicktropolis. In other words, digital natives aren’t going to have nearly the trouble navigating and using the new worlds as the digital immigrants do.

And second, the porn industry was in Second Life. On every street corner, you might say. The porn industry is really good at spotting new distribution opportunities, so I saw this as a sign that real business models might eventually emerge in virtual worlds.  :-)  In the comments to the original post, Adam Zand mentioned that he hadn’t seen any of the big porn players in Second Life.

Well, not anymore. Playboy has announced that it is opening up shop in Second Life (AdRants via Spin Thicket).

Guaranteed: Playboy will figure out how to make real dollars from Second Life. Folks who are interested in the potential value of virtual worlds as marketing spaces should pay attention to what they do. We may lag by a number of years in terms of our audiences being in Second Life and other worlds, but by the time my son is a potential (legal) visitor to Playboy’s virtual mansion, I’m pretty certain just about everybody will be. Start paying attention now.

And in other social media news, Delta is apparently twittering. And with a human, not robotic corporate-speak, voice. Joe Jaffe has a great recap of the conversation so far. He closes his post with a series of questions, the most important of which is:

Is this (or should this be considered as) the voice of "the brand"? Does it speak as an "official agent" of the company? And if not, does it matter?

If not, does it matter? That’s the most interesting bit of all. I don’t think it matters at all.

Marketers the world over may wish that the brand equaled the construct we create with official communications, but we do know that isn’t the case.

A brand is the sum of our experiences with a product, with a company. The official communications, like advertising, product manuals, packaging and customer service,  and the quasi- or unofficial ones, like interactions with company employees, on and off the clock. If you personally know or have a positive exchange with someone, you are going to add that interaction into your measurement of that brand. The same is true if you have a bad experience. Even if the negative interaction is not in the work context. It is one of the reasons that people who wear recognizable work uniforms are expected to adhere to  codes of conduct while in uniform, even when not on duty.

So it doesn’t matter whether "deltaairlines" on Twitter is official or not. What matters is that the persona is engaging with other Twits in a meaningful, positive way. More than likely, those folks will add these good twitting experiences into their calculation of the Delta brand. The product delivery — air travel — still has to live up to the promise, but if it does, this tweeting might accelerate a shift in overall brand perceptions among a key audience for the airline (Twits tend to be travelers).

This is actually a useful way for companies to use Twitter. Beyond seeing who is around for lunch or tapping into the collective expertise on an issue.

Twitter is a more informal channel of communication. If we accept that it doesn’t have to be an "official spokesperson" speaking from on high (in fact, it is much better if it isn’t), then companies can use this conversation to have that quasi-official interaction with their customers. Find out what they care about. Make them feel good about the company. Put a more human "face" on the company.

But it only works this way if we are willing to let it be an informal conversation. You can’t switch back and forth from informal voice to official statement. It would be too confusing. 

Personally, I’d prefer that companies not use Twitter and other short form spaces for official announcements. Let Twitter et al be informal, public backchannels where we can chat with brand ambassadors without expectation. Let the long form spaces like blogs and Web sites and news releases do the heavy lifting on official statements.

Then we can be pleased surprised and flattered when our informal conversation changes or improves something in a product or company we love.

Wow. If this works, Twitter might be useful after all.

Tags: Second Life, Twitter, virtual worlds, Delta, Delta Airlines

Happy Mother’s Day

Holiday

You Are Totally Like Your Mom

You and your mom are practically clones. You think alike, and you even seem to read each other’s minds. You’re definitely your mother’s child… and that’s just fine with you.