Archive for March, 2008
An excellent read adventure
Average Jane was kind enough to include Marketing Roadmaps on her list of most excellent reads in the meme started by Kayla at Project Mommy. The terms and conditions of the award, as with most memes, are pretty simple: pass it on and link back to the originator. You can repeat blogs that have already been awarded, but I think it is a cop-out to include ones that are on the same list as you, which is why you won’t see my list below repeating a good chunk of Average Jane’s even though I regularly read many of these same blogs and consider them most excellent.
Rules say award at least 10 Excellent Blog Awards, so here are 10 (out of the 500+ feeds in my feed reader) that will give you an excellent reading adventure. In alphabetical order by blog name:
- Communication Overtones
- Galactica Sitrep
- It’s Not A Lecture
- Mary Schmidt
- Mom-101
- mothergoosemouse
- Motherhood Uncensored
- Murphy’s Law
- Occam’s Razr
- PR-Squared
And if you’ve got a few extra minutes, please check out three blogs that I recently brought online for clients:
Tags: excellent blog awards
Posted by Susan Getgood @
1:23 pm |
Can this pitch be saved?
Next week, Liz Gumbinner (Mom-101 and CoolMomPicks), Mir Kamin (Woulda Coulda Shoulda and WantNot.net), Maria Niles (ConsumerPop and BlogHer Contributing Editor) and I will be presenting a session called Improve This Pitch, first as a teleseminar for the Women Who Tech telesummit on Monday afternoon at 4 pm EDT and then as a panel at BlogHer Business in NYC on Friday afternoon at 1:15 pm.
As the title implies, we will be talking blogger relations, and specifically what marketers should do to improve their pitches. I’ll do a more comprehensive write-up of the session after we’ve given it at BlogHer — after all, the attendees should get first look at our collective brilliance — but I decided to share a few thoughts as a sort of sneak preview.
Some pitches cannot be saved. There is so much wrong with them that the only kind thing to do is put them out of their misery. There’s no good reason to send a 900-word email pitch about breakfast cereal. Or a pitch that talks down to the blogger.We’ll share a few specific examples and tell you what we would have advised the company.
Some products just shouldn’t be pitched to bloggers. That doesn’t mean the company can’t reach out to bloggers. Or that the blogger might not buy the product. It does mean that the company has to find some other connection point with the blogger. We’ll share some ideas on what marketing people can do if they are tasked with reaching out to bloggers about products like bleach and bathroom cleanser.
Read the blog and address the blogger by name. You’ve read that here before, and you will again. This does not mean "personalize" the email by mail-merging the names of a mom blogger and her children into a generic pitch. Added demerits if the pitch is bad as well.
Another tip I’ve mentioned here before is to give bloggers exclusive access to information. But it has to be exclusive access to something that the blogger will find interesting. Odds are, that’s not going to be a scripted conference call with a company exec. There are a few general exceptions to this rule, including highly anticipated product launches and extending access to financial results calls to the public, not just the financial media and analysts, but not many. We’ll talk about what sort of exclusives do appeal to bloggers, and how you should go about inviting participants. Generic email blasts addressed to BLOGGERS are not it.
If you will be attending Women Who Tech or BlogHer Business and have an example you’d like us to discuss, either yours or one you received, we encourage you to share it. You can send it in advance to me at sgetgood@getgood.com and I’ll forward to my co-panelists, or just bring it with you for the Q&A.
UPDATED, 3/31/08: PDF version of my Custom Scoop article: Some Advice for Reaching out to Mommybloggers.
Tags: blogger relations, pr, public relations, blogher, blogher business, women who tech
Posted by Susan Getgood @
6:29 pm |
Insanity
Insanity is often defined as "doing the same things over again but expecting a different outcome."
Using that definition, we, marketing and PR professionals, are most definitely insane. F*****g nuts.
While I’ve written about a few blogger relations SNAFUs in the past week, this rant is not about them. In fact, having spoken or emailed with many of the players on both sides of those blogstorms, I have no doubt that everyone in those specific examples was sincerely trying to make a contribution, do a good thing, build relationships, offer constructive criticism, etc. No bad guys. Not the companies. Not the bloggers.
No. We — the collective we — are nuts because we keep trying to impose mass media models on online social networks. In some cases, like the media outreach numbers game – throw as much at the wall as you can and see what sticks — the models are badly broken and dysfunctional in their natural environment. They just suck more when applied to bloggers.
Advertising messages that are just a little "off," or even mildly offensive, are at best amusing in their badness, but easily ignored regardless. We stop watching, We don’t buy. We make fun of them on our blogs.
Other mass market tools, like demographics and pychographics and "targeting" and models of consumer behavior are useful but not sufficient in themselves. Think about it. Engaging in online social networks is more like making friends than anything else. Do we make friends based on their demographic profile? I sure as hell hope not. If you are, please return to a previous century immediately. Don’t get me wrong — there is nothing wrong with using these tools in your marketing efforts. But they are simply a place to start. If you go no further, please, go no further in social media because we don’t need any more insanity. Just keep using direct mail and infomercials or whatever else puts your controlled message in front of your target audience.
Because we don’t need blogstorms. They are scary. Think about it. You are a marketer who developed a blogger outreach program with the very best intentions, but made some errors along the way — perhaps a few design flaws in the program or a junior staffer doing outreach who didn’t handle an objection properly or maybe just bad assumptions. All of a sudden, your program blows up. And not just one or two unhappy customers. All over the blogs, all over the ‘Net. And more often than not, it’s a case of simple mistakes. I can only imagine how it feels (and intend to keep it that way) but it must be an awful feeling. It must be so hard to understand why people are so upset when it is often an easily fixed issue or simple misunderstanding.
Here’s why. It’s a cumulative effect. Yours isn’t the only pitch a blogger receives or hears about in a given day. A mommyblogger might get 10 or 20 in a single day. If every single one of those is just a bit off — poor targeting, poorly written pitch, addressed to the wrong person or the name of the blog instead of a person — it’s like an escalating bad day.
You know, the kind of day when you oversleep and the kids miss the bus and you forgot to give them lunch money and then you are late for work. And once you get there, the day just spirals downward. Or if you work out of the house, the dog pukes on the carpet and email doesn’t work and Twitter is flaky. Then the kids come home and everybody is in and out of the family room, which just happens to be your office. Some telemarketer from a political campaign calls, but it’s for your spouse’s insanely conservative party not yours. And then in all of this, your partner or one of your kids says something perhaps a little clueless. Maybe not the worst thing ever, but just enough. You go ballistic. Nuclear even.
That’s why blogstorms happen. It’s not just your pitch. It’s your pitch in context of everything else, of an ongoing problem of marketers applying mass models to social networks.
Remember, a blog is not a media vehicle. Even if it looks like one, with advertising and everything. A blog is a personal publishing platform, and is driven by the passions of the blogger(s), not products and promotions. This is true even in the case of group or company blogs; without people and passion, they never get off the ground.
When you reach out to a blogger, he or she is also part of a social network, of which the blog is one piece. Everybody emails everyone else. They are also on microblogging platforms like Twitter and social nets like Facebook and Utterz and ooVoo and God knows what else. People are talking, the shot really is heard ’round the world in a matter of minutes and nothing snowballs faster than bad news. Trust me. It’s what I do for a living. It takes twice as much effort to spread good news as bad.
Recently I lost a piece of business that I really wanted. In part because I didn’t do enough self-promotion, which I am working to correct. And in part because I didn’t give easy answers. In the interviewing process, one of the questions asked was what small business bloggers would I reach out to on behalf of this potential client. I told the truth, which was that I didn’t know yet, because we needed to match the client’s messages with the bloggers who covered small business. The competition provided a list of bloggers and forums.
Now I suppose I could have sent them a list of SMB sites and bloggers. I have one, and it wouldn’t have taken long to "puff" it up. But I am absolutely convinced that the mass media numbers game is not the right approach for the long haul. The social media payoff for anyone, for any company, is in doing the upfront research to figure out who you want to know, who wants to know you. It’s about building relationships with your customers over time, not overnight.
Repeat after me. Mass consumer models do not work in the blogosphere. We aren’t going to get a different outcome the next time. Thinking we will is insane.
Stop the insanity.
—
Some additional resources:
Tags: blogger relations, marketing, mommybloggers
Posted by Susan Getgood @
11:16 pm |
PR people: do your homework BEFORE you reach out to bloggers
As we’ve seen this week alone, from the Camp Baby blogstorm and other incidents (like inviting Jewish moms to Disney over Passover), it is painfully apparent that many PR firms and reps reaching out to bloggers don’t do their homework. This is probably the root cause of the most egregious blogger relations SNAFUs. A poorly written pitch makes you chuckle. A poorly targeted one pisses you off.
Some of you may recall my 4Ps of social media:
- Prepare
- Participate
- Then and only then Pitch or Publish.
Companies and agencies spend far more time analyzing every word to create the perfect pitch and putting together spectacular events designed to wow bloggers and customers, than they do on the research — on getting to know bloggers, reading the blogs, figuring out who would be most interested in a particular product or program.
They still play the numbers game — build as big a list as possible, focus on the "top" blogs and bloggers, blast the pitch and see what falls out. I, on the other hand, am convinced that if you spend the time to narrow your list and reach out to a smaller number of bloggers who will be very interested, you’ll get better results.
I’ll give you an example. I created a small program for HP last year for the launch of the HP Photo Books. I’ve written about it here before, and we’ll be presenting a case study that includes it at BlogHer Business in April. I’ll publish the full case study here after the presentation, but for now, I want to focus on how we decided who to reach out to with the Photographic Memories component of the program.
You could make an assumption that most moms take pictures of their kids. Pretty safe bet. But the Photographic Memories project involved a time intensive component of writing interviews with the moms for HP.com. We also had a limited supply of the compact photo printers we were offering to make it easier for the moms to try out the books.
Twenty interviews. Something in that vicinity felt right. With 20, we felt we’d have a nice cross section of women from all over the US with different personal and professional backgrounds. We also wanted moms who were really into their photos, but that didn’t just mean women who were actively engaged with it as a hobby. We wanted a mix of moms that simply liked to take and share snapshots, dedicated hobbyists and professional photographers. Why? Because when other women came to read the interviews, we wanted everyone to be able to find someone they could identify with.
Homework time. I combed through my blogroll of mommy blogs. And trust me, that is a lot of mommy blogs. Looking for moms who wrote about their pictures, often included pictures in posts, and had a Flickr badge on their home page or a special photo album for family pics. I also contacted a friend who is a professional photographer and blogger for her recommendations.
In the end, I had a balanced list of 40 mommy bloggers. Some of them have lots of readers, but most are in what has been termed the "magic middle" - blogs with 20-1000 other people linking to them.
Only 40? I can hear you all now. That’s not a lot. Well no, it isn’t. And that’s the point. If you do your preparation properly, you don’t have to cast a wide wide net. Twenty-two –22 — from that initial list of 40 participated in the project. Even math-challenged me can do that math — more than 50 percent.
Do your homework. Build relationships. Develop programs that offer strong value to both sides. Narrow cast. As narrow as possible. Your program will benefit, and by the way, your selection criteria are much more defensible. One of the things J&J got tagged with this week was reaction from the many mommy bloggers who weren’t invited. The more focus you have, the better off you will be.
Friend and colleague David Wescott of APCO Worldwide has been working on a project for the past year or so with the Council of PR Firms to understand the perspectives of both PR agencies and bloggers. There’s a lot of good information in the study, as well as an opportunity to contribute to future research, so I urge you to check it out. What I found the most interesting was that it clearly proves the biggest disconnect between agencies and bloggers. Agencies think they are doing a good job identifying the interests of bloggers and sending them relevant information. Bloggers resoundingly disagree.
(source: The State of Blog Relations)
Uhmm. Yeah. That would be my experience. And that of many bloggers I know.
We have got to get this right, folks. Bloggers are your customers. How do you want to talk with your customers? Think about it, and think hard.
I’ve said it before, and I guess I’ll say it until we get it right. Bloggers are your customers. It’s about the relationship over time, not overnight. Do you want a one night stand or a commitment?
If you want a commitment, figure out what matters to your customers.
Tags: Camp Baby, APCO Worldwide, blogger relations, Council of Public Relations Firms, HP, HP Photo Book, Photographic Memories, BlogHer
Posted by Susan Getgood @
4:48 pm |
Camp Baby Blogstorm
Lori Dolginoff of Johnson & Johnson has had better days. She started today on jury duty and ended it in a blogstorm around Johnson’s upcoming Camp Baby event.
For those that don’t know the story, here’s the Cliff Notes version. Johnson and Johnson invites lots of mommybloggers to a 2-day all expenses paid event in early April. Mommybloggers looked forward to seeing their friends, making new ones, lots of conversation ensues in the back channels. Then within the last few days, two well-read moms, Julie Marsh and Stefania Pomponi Butler, were "disinvited." Read their posts (if you haven’t already) for the full stories. Short version: both women were late RSVPs, for different reasons, but both were confirmed for the event. But when each introduced a variable unexpected by Johnson’s – Julie needed to bring her 9 week old son; Stefania couldn’t stay for the whole thing — both were "disinvited."
Now, as I’ve written here recently, I’m participating in a panel at BlogHer Business in two weeks called Improve This Pitch, and this sure sounded like one that could stand a bit. I also thought the whole affair would make a great blogger relations case study for Marketing Roadmaps. To do it justice, however, I would need the company perspective as well as the bloggers’, and it really couldn’t be done until after the event.
In light of the swirling blogstorm, however, I emailed the marcom agency doing the outreach asking to speak to someone from Johnson’s. About the disinvitations and for the later case study.
Imagine my surprise when Lori Dolginoff, Director of Communications for the Johnson’s brand, and the architect of the Camp Baby event, called within hours of my email. On some level, I suppose she was glad to hear from someone about this who she could call — my phone numbers are in my email signature – but still, it was a good sign.
Johnson’s made some critical execution errors in this outreach, which I will dissect shortly, but I want to state clearly that I was impressed by Lori’s wlllingness to take responsibility for the mess, and her genuine desire to mend the broken fences and learn from the mistakes. After speaking with her, I do believe that their intentions were good. They wanted to do something nice for the moms as well as promote their products. Give them a getaway from their kids and families. They also clearly understood the importance of transparency, which is no small matter.
We’ll talk more about the actual content of the event in my post-event post. Right now, let’s focus on the outreach.
Where did it fall down? Errors of execution.
They didn’t really understand the mom’s point of view. Lori told me that they thought it was understood that this was an adults-only event with no child care. Well, yes, it was. Part of the disconnect was that J&J thought that meant no children or babies whatsoever. Mommybloggers, however, likely interpreted it simply as no child care.
What J&J didn’t understand was that a mom with a very young nursing baby might expect something called Camp Baby to accommodate her and her infant since the whole point of bringing such a young baby was that the mother couldn’t be separated. In other words, she didn’t need child care. Remember: no one was looking to bring older babies, toddlers or children to the event, at least as far as I know. We’re talking young, breast-feeding infants. If Johnson’s wanted no children of any age for any reason, it should have been explicit. If it was, I doubt Julie Marsh would have given it a second thought.
Now of course, it probably should have had some child care options. Doesn’t mean it had to pay for air tickets for children. Doesn’t even mean it had to pay for the child care, although the spirit of all expenses paid implies all expenses. I know personally that arranging child care can be tough. I’m lucky that my husband doesn’t like to travel except on family vacations; he used to live on the road so he now prefers to stay home. But for many mommy bloggers, child care does make a tremendous difference in their ability to participate in an event or not. But no matter. The mistake was in not being explicit about the policy. Not in whether or not there was child care
Hype & lack of knowledge about the bloggers. Spaces are filling fast. RSVP today. Read Stefania’s post. They were really pushing her to say yes. So she did. And then once there was a wrinkle, it all fell apart. Now, as someone who both follows and participates in the momosphere, I absolutely understand why you would want Stefania at your event. She’s a smart articulate Asian-American woman who writes for multiple blogs. She has lots of readers. So,why, once you get her to say yes, would you f*** it up??? Particularly since she has written on more than one occasion about poor blogger relations. Do a little bit of homework on her blog. Just click the PR category. Takes a second.
Same for Julie. She announced Oliver’s birth on the blog. There is really no excuse for not knowing that she’s a new mom. She even told the person organizing the event that she just had a baby. I suspect that the fact that the agency person didn’t understand the possible ramifications of this is due to a common blogger outreach problem: the folks sending the emails are often junior staffers without much experience. Clearly, in this case, no kids.
Clarity & expectations. If space was limited and preference to be given to women who could attend both days, it should have been stated upfront. Women who couldn’t commit to the full timeframe wouldn’t have replied. Or tried to arrange childcare as Stefania did. It is all about expectations. Set the right ones, and you’ll be successful. Confuse people? Blogstorm.
Final point. In recent months, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend toward big programs/events. It’s understandable and entirely consistent with a "big brand" approach but not necessarily consistent with establishing long term relationships with bloggers. Or your customer. Because that’s what a blogger is. Your customer. Don’t forget it. It’s about the relationship over time, not overnight. So, think about it. Do you want a one-night stand? Or a commitment?
I gave Lori some advice, which she seemed to appreciate, and will be watching closely to see what the company does now. The most important things to to do, IMNSHO:
- reach out to the women who were not accommodated, starting, but not ending, with Julie and Stefania;
- address the whole mess head on at the event in two weeks. The women there already know about it. Deal with it;
- put on a good event;
- do it better next time.
I’ll be watching, and I know for sure, I’m not alone 
Tags: Johnson & Johnson, Camp Baby, blogger relations
Posted by Susan Getgood @
10:57 pm |
Coming attractions on the Roadmap, Now playing elsewhere
Next month I’ll be speaking at BlogHer Business and New Comm Forum. I gave you a bit of a preview of the panel I’m moderating at New Comm Forum last week. Later this week, I’ll give you a sneak peek at the two BlogHer Business sessions.
In the meantime, please enjoy my posts now playing elsewhere:
Posted by Susan Getgood @
10:03 am |
SNCR research surveys that need your input
The Society for New Communications Research is doing two research projects right now that need your input.
I mentioned the survey with corporate partner Nuance on the impact of blogger/customer opinions a week or so ago here, and have some additional comments on customer satisfaction today at For the Face of Your Business.
The second survey, sponsored by SNCR, Deloitte and Beeline Labs, was designed to assess the effectiveness of online communities and learn how organizations are measuring the success and progress of their online communities. If you’re involved in managing online communities for your organization, please give us about six minutes and take the 2008 Online Community Effectiveness Study at http://www.communityeffectiveness.com.
All participants who complete the surveys will receive a special discount to attend the Society’s annual conference, New Communications Forum where the preliminary results of both surveys will be discussed.
Please help us with this important research, and when you are done with the surveys, pop on over to my personal blog, Snapshot Chronicles, for an early peek at Spring from the Boston Flower Show.
Tags: SNCR, customer service, community
Posted by Susan Getgood @
9:31 am |
The best commentary on the Spitzer mess
Like so many, I’ve been following the Elliott Spitzer mess since the news broke Monday. I’ve restricted most of my commentary to Twitter as I don’t really have anything new to add. Others have already done a terrific job commenting and analyzing the disaster. Among others, check out Huffington Post for great columns by Nora Ephron and Chris Kelly.
But this morning, I read what has to be my favorite commentary on the whole debacle, including the inordinate amount of attention the news media paid to this story. Sure Monday was a slow news day but by Wednesday there were other events in the world.
It’s short so I’ll give you the whole thing. From Famous Mark Verheidens of Filmland:
The Helicopter Shot…
I’m watching MSNBC as I write this, and they’re
twenty minutes into live helicopter coverage of NY Governor Eliot Spitzer’s SUV
driving across Manhattan so he can theoretically resign. Forget all the other
issues involved… my question is, do these news folks really think there’s a
chance Spitzer’s gonna run? (posted March 12th)
Posted by Susan Getgood @
12:08 pm |
More on podcasting and Business Forward SMB podcast
"I think she’s got it." — Professor Henry Higgins
It was an experience, my friends, but I’ve finally nailed the various technical and software issues I was having in the podcast production process. There is so much more involved than simply recording and uploading to a server to produce a professional sounding podcast. I don’t think you can fully appreciate the process until you do it. I certainly didn’t.
I mentioned the Holtz-Hobson podcasting book in my previous post. Another book that proved invaluable was Sound Forge 8 Power! by Scott Garrigus.
Take a listen to the most recent program, Business Forward #6: Making Channel Sales Successful, our interview with SAP Channel Sales VP Dan Kraus. While the content of all the episodes is great (if I do say so myself), and the previous episodes sounded okay, this last one just sounds cleaner.
On another, but related, note, if you are a small business owner and will be attending BlogHer Business next month in New York, I’d love to interview you for the podcast. Drop me a note at sgetgood@getgood.com if you are interested.
Tags: Business Forward, SAP, podcast, small business marketing
Posted by Susan Getgood @
1:41 pm |
New Voices of Experience: A New Comm Forum Alumni Panel
Last year after New Comm Forum, it was crystal clear that the most popular sessions were the ones that featured case studies and people’s personal experiences. Of course, a certain amount of teaching-type panels and workshops are necessary at any conference, social media or otherwise, but once we get past the 101 level, we really want to know, what have other people done? What works? What doesn’t?
And it’s even better to hear from the people themselves, not just about them and their projects.
A common criticism of conferences is that it’s always the same speakers, the same material. I don’t think that’s true of New Comm Forum by any stretch, however, we do have a certain number of repeat players every year because one of the first speaker pools the Society for New Communications Research draws from is its Fellows. Most of whom are great speakers who deliver new content every year.
But…. thinking about both of these dynamics — case studies and new voices — I suggested to executive director Jen McClure that we do an alumni panel at the 08 conference. Recruit speakers who had attended a previous Society event but had never spoken at one, and who had a project from the past 18 months that they would be willing to share.
New Voices of Experience, the panel that resulted from our discussions last spring, will be the Wednesday April 23rd luncheon session at New Comm Forum 08. I’ll be speaking with Doug Bardwell (Forest City Enterprises), Wendy Harman (Red Cross), Bob Siller (Altera) and Chris Turner (Christian Lifeway Resources) about what they learned and how they applied their new knowledge once they were back in the office.
I spoke with the panelists in a conference call last week and am excited about their stories. Whether you work for a non-profit, B2B or B2C organization, there’s something for everyone. We’ll be talking about everything from social media in internal communications and lead generation to what’s involved when you are trying to introduce social media into an established culture. There will be plenty of time for questions from the floor, and we are looking forward to an interesting conversation.
As a speaker, I have a very limited number of deeply discounted registrations. Three. If you are interested, email me. First come, first served.
—
Shifting gears completely, I’ve decided to move one of the topics I occasionally talk about here to my personal/photo blog Snapshot Chronicles. Specifically, my obsession with certain science fiction television programs — currently Battlestar Galactica, Torchwood and Stargate Atlantis. I’ll still talk about sci fi here when there is a marketing, communications or social media angle. But I’m feeling the need to rant (and rave) more about the programs themselves, and that’s really content that belongs on my personal blog, not my marketing blog. So, never fear, if you are interested in my thoughts on sci fi marketing, you’ll still find them here. If you want to know why I think the PTB made a dreadful mistake in dumping Torri Higginson from Stargate or my speculation on who the final Cylon is, you’ll find that over on Snapshot Chronicles.
Tags: SNCR, New Comm Forum
Posted by Susan Getgood @
7:03 pm |
