The social media “industry” is built on the back of people doing “stuff” for free. The business models of most social networks — Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Flickr, YouTube etc. etc. — depend on consumers using the free/”freemium” services and thereby creating both the free content that attracts and retains users, and more importantly, a mine-able database. People. Topics. Linkages (who are your friends, what do you like, where do you go). Marketing gold. And the companies are reaping the benefits of our “work” in potentially ginormous valuations, as discussed in this Businessweek article.

You could argue that posting on Facebook or sending a tweet isn’t work per se. We, the users, are getting something in exchange for our activity — the use of the network to accomplish a personal objective. The question is whether the value is balanced — are we getting enough from our participation in exchange for the value we are helping these companies build?

Honestly, that’s a question that each person must answer for themselves. Participating on Facebook DOES mean that you are surrendering some of your personal privacy, and a great deal of personal information that is going to be aggregated, analyzed, mined and sold. Every Facebook item you post, link or share is going to earn money for Facebook and its investors somehow. Maybe ad revenue. Maybe data mining revenue. But certainly revenue. Facebook is a business, not a public service.

Is it worth it to you? If yes, play away. If not, don’t.

And of course, you can figure out ways to monetize YOUR participation in the networks. Use them to promote your business. Or yourself. It’s all about extracting the value you require from your participation.

The other “work for free” model prevalent in the social media space is influencer relations, which owes its structure to the earned media model inherited from public relations. I’ve written about this before – Is earned media an anachronism?

In a nutshell, the idea is that companies and brands can have such compelling stories that consumers will write about them, share them on their social networks, for free, without compensation. And you know, sometimes that’s true.

Sometimes a product is so compelling that we are happy to harness our word of mouth for no other reason than we love the product. Perhaps Apple products are the only ones that can generate widespread mass word of mouth at the mere whisper of a new version, but we all have things we love that we’re happy to share just because we love them.

I’ll use myself as an example. Recently I bought a SpotBot Pet, a little spot carpet cleaner from Bissell that I first learned about at the BlogPaws conference. It is TERRIFIC, and eventually I will get around to posting a review on my personal blog.

But… products we are intrinsically passionate about are few and far between. Certainly far fewer than the number of firms reaching out to bloggers asking them to work for free on behalf of the brand. To write about a new product. Or attend an event and tweet it up. And so on.

So here’s where I draw the line. If it is work – if you are asked to do a specific thing in a specific fashion or to a deadline — you should be compensated for your time and expertise. Because if you are not paid for your work, it is volunteer work, and if you are going to volunteer for something, it should be something that you care about personally and passionately. I’m pretty sure cereal and motor oil don’t qualify. At least for most of us.

Is a free product adequate compensation? In my opinion, it all depends on what you are being asked to do. Try the product and participate in a short survey? Or leave a comment on a Facebook page? Probably yes. Try the product and write a 500 word blog review? Unless it is use of a car for a year or some other equally large “in kind,” probably not. It’s your call, but remember that the FTC and the IRS do not distinguish between cash and “in kind” compensation. You get a free product, you must disclose, and if you get enough of them, you probably should be reporting the “income” on your taxes. Disclaimer: not a lawyer, not an accountant, consult yours if you have questions about your legal obligations, especially for taxes, which unlike the FTC guidelines, DO have defined penalties for getting it wrong.

So, if you are working in exchange for free product, whatever it is, best to make sure it is something you actually want. Because you may have to pay taxes on it. If it is not something you need or want, cashy money probably would be more useful.

A final point on working for free. I am not saying you shouldn’t volunteer your time, skills or blog content to causes — or even brands — that you care about and want to support. Everyone has to make their own decision on that score. However, if you do work for free, if you give it away, don’t expect the recipient to turn around in future and say, wow, you are so great I should be paying you. Volunteering in the hopes of a paying gig is a losing proposition. It is VERY unlikely to happen.

So when someone asks if they could just pick your brain, or could you just post about this thing on this day and include the following three points, or whatever, understand that you have just created a non-paying customer. And no one can afford too many of those.

Finallly, there’s a fine distinction that I don’t want you to miss. Doing something of your own volition — whether writing a blog, sharing a link or posting on Facebook — is very different than working to someone else’s specifications or timeline. Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference when the email box is overflowing with “opportunities.” All I can advise is to consider the value to both parties in the exchange. If it is an even exchange of value, if you are getting what you need to make it worth it (whether cash, products, connections or feeling good about helping out) and so is the other party, go for it.

If not, you may just want to say no.

–

Disclosure: I work for BlogHer. We pay the bloggers who write for us.

I’m back! You had to know I would not be able to resist commenting on the ConAgra/Ketchum “Sotto Terra” blogger events in New York last month that went so horribly, tragically wrong. So wrong that the fallout made it to the pages of the New York Times. Ouch.

I’m not going to rehash the details here, because this post is not about piling it on. The company, brand and agency have been thoroughly schooled in the blogosphere already. Instead, I am going to focus on a few lessons that have nothing to do with the specific brand, that anyone involved in blogger outreach can learn from.

However, this post will make more sense if you know the basics about the ConAgra program. Short version: blogger event in New York. Promoted as an exclusive opportunity to experience a chef-prepared meal. On the day, entree and dessert revealed to be frozen meals. Ooops.

For more details,  please take a moment to read the NYT article and the links below to read the blog fallout after the event.

Lesson Number 1: Don’t fall so in love with your great, clever idea that you can’t see its flaws. Every idea has flaws; every message, detractors. You have got to be willing to be your own devil’s advocate. Ask yourself — what can go wrong? Where can this idea fail? Who might not like our idea and why?  I’m not saying be Debbie Downer on your own creativity. I am however advising you to think it through. Understand that there will ALWAYS be someone who doesn’t like your concept. The question is, are they outliers or your target? If your target audience ain’t gonna like it, don’t do it. That’s what happened with MotrinMoms a few years ago, and it’s clearly part of what happened here.

Poke holes in your own idea. Better you than a bunch of bloggers and the New York Times.

Lesson Number 2: People don’t like surprises. Especially when they make them feel foolish. Think about it. If you are old enough to remember Candid Camera, you’ll know what I mean. The audience of the stunts enjoyed them. The victim, not so much.

More proof? Ever read the back page of a book before deciding whether to invest the time? Ever visit a spoiler site for your favorite TV show for a sneak peek at what’s coming? Ever shake your holiday or birthday presents? Or try to sneak a corner of the tape off and then rewrap it? Yes, brother dear, I am talking to you. Or ransack your mom’s gift closet to see if there’s anything new there? My son did this.

People want to know what to expect. We like to be prepared. In fact, recent research from UC  San Diego suggests that knowing the ending of a book increases our enjoyment.

And we don’t like to be embarrassed.  It is really bad form to embarrass your customers.

Remember this when planning your blogger programs. Building around a big “reveal” is a dicey proposition, and if the reveal might disappoint instead of enchant? Seriously. Go back to the drawing board. Create something that will appeal to your target audience without deception. It may not be as alluring or sexy, but it’s far less likely to backfire. The Sotto Terra backlash was not “bloggers gone wild” by any means. It was people feeling betrayed and deceived. Not a good way to build a relationship.

Lesson Number 3: Disclosure. Do not do programs without disclosing your brand’s participation. EVER! Strictly speaking, I don’t think the Sotto Terra event violates the FTC disclosure guidelines, as full disclosure of the brand’s involvement was provided when the exchange of value (the meal) happened. However, I am not crazy about the ethics here. Bloggers were encouraged to promote an event as a prize, apparently without full information about the sponsor of the event. Could the bloggers have done a little research and learned that the two hosts were ConAgra consultants? Sure. But they shouldn’t have to. That’s your job as the sponsor.

What did you take away from the Sotto Terra story? Please stay away from brand-bashing. I want to focus on what brands, and bloggers, can do better to ensure mutually beneficial outcomes, not on pointing fingers or trashing the participants in this tale.

Related articles

• ConAgra’s Switcheroo Doesn’t Go Over Well With Bloggers (mediabistro.com)
• Advertising: When Bloggers Don’t Follow the Script, to ConAgra’s Chagrin (nytimes.com)
• ConAgra Forced to Apologize for Tricking Bloggers Into Eating ConAgra Food [Public Relations] (gawker.com)

Normally, I’m proud to tell people that I’m a marketer. I love connecting consumers with the brands they love and companies with the products that fuel their business.

Every so often though, someone calling themselves a marketing professional does something that makes me embarrassed for my profession.

More than a few of these instances have occurred in the past few years, quite specifically related to the practice of blogger outreach. You’ve read about them here and elsewhere too — bad pitches, rude PR people, “spray and pray” mass mailings. And so on.

Many of these are mistakes made out of simple ignorance, lack of experience and miscommunication. Some are simply rude; for example, when a blogger says she isn’t interested in the pitch, replying back implying that she’s stupid is the social media equivalent of the classic Saturday Night Live line, “Jane, you ignorant slut.”

Most faux pas can be forgiven. There is however one for which there is no excuse. Pay close attention, aspiring and practicing PR pros and marketers.

Don’t pitch on the grave.

It is NEVER okay to pitch someone who has recently had a death in the family or her circle of friends. And particularly on the back of a blog post about the death. NEVER, NOT EVER.

If you know the blogger well, a message of condolence or a donation to the charity in memory of the deceased is perfectly fine.

But if you don’t know the blogger, don’t use the death in an attempt to bond with her, on any basis, about anything. It’s crass, and the social media equivalent of ambulance chasing.

In fact, when I was consulting, I advised clients to do a read-through of the blogs in their outreach list the day they planned to send their pitch just to be sure there hadn’t been a tragedy or death in the family. In which case, they should remove the blogger from the pitch list regardless of how perfect the pitch was.

Obviously, if the blogger hasn’t posted or publicly mentioned the death in Facebook or Twitter, you aren’t pitching on the grave, you’re just the victim of poor timing. If the blogger replies, apologize and move on.

Don’t believe this happens? A good friend has had it happen twice. She posted about a death, someone pitched her on the back of the post, and when she pushed back, the sender was not only NOT apologetic, but also rude.

That’s just terminally clueless.

anachronism – A thing belonging or appropriate to a period other than that in which it exists, esp. a thing that is conspicuously old-fashioned (Source: Google Search)

Perhaps anachronism is a little harsh, but not by much. The whole concept pf earned media, as part of the triumvirate of Earned, Paid and Owned, has always been a little squishy. There’s just something a little bogus in the idea that the story being told was so tremendously good that the brand earned its non-paid media mention in a story, when of course brands, entertainment properties and celebrities spend millions of dollars every month to PR agencies and publicists to obtain these placements. There’s nothing unpaid about earned media.

Nevertheless, earned media  is where “we” have been accounting for the results of blogger outreach and other word of mouth engagement programs. In part because many early social media engagement programs originated in PR agencies for whom the earned media model made sense (or at least as much sense as it ever will.)

Certainly more so than paid media, which was clearly understood to be paid advertising media, and owned media, which is a bit more complex but boils down to the assets that the company controls – its packaging, trucks, website and so on.

The problem is that nothing is that simple. It never was, but social media and the rise of the engaged consumer has changed the dynamic to the point that classifying things into three buckets just doesn’t work any more.

Blogger outreach programs often include freelance fees paid to the bloggers for their work. So that’s paid media, I guess. When readers of those posts leave comments or post to Facebook or tweet about the posts? Earned. What about if the blogger who was paid to write a post, either a sponsored post on her own blog or as a freelance assignment, tweets it out on her own initiative?

Digital ads almost always include Share icons for Twitter and Facebook. So the media is paid, but the sharing is what? Pearned, for paid + earned?

And then there’s Facebook. How do we classify the activity on Facebook? A brand page is owned, I suppose. But are the comments earned? And what about custom promotional tabs? Are those owned or paid? And when someone shares it, is it now earned?

Clearly, we’ve outgrown these simple models of Paid, Earned and Owned.

What matters is whether consumers want to share. It doesn’t really matter whether the story you are telling starts in paid, earned or owned media.

Will consumers share it?

This concept of shared, or shareable, media is easy to understand. Much harder to execute, because it crosses so many functional lines – media, PR, marketing, advertising, creative. Much harder to measure, because it is more than pageviews or Twitter followers.

Up for the challenge? I am, and would love to hear how you are navigating this world.

Over the past few years, I’ve written quite a bit about blogger relations, largely in the context of brands reaching out to bloggers. As I mentioned in my last post, lately I’ve started to think about it more in terms of influencer engagement.

The key to success in social media engagement is to forge strong relationships, deliver relevant content and most importantly, respect the writer and her readers. As a starting point for developing long term sustainable relationships between brands and social media influencers, here are some best practices for your consideration.

Focus on the people, not on your product. Pay it forward — give first, get second.

Effective influencer engagement starts with reaching out to people who will have a genuine and authentic interest in a company or product. That interest is what inspires them to create a story that connects with their (and their readers’) passions. That it also mentions a product or service in some context is only a part of the story; Not all the story nor simply a tack-on mention at the end. For a conversation to be effective for both the brand and the bloggers, the inclusion of the brand has to fit (much like Cinderella’s slipper), not be forced.

Social media leaders should be compensated for their efforts on behalf of brands, and the value should be balanced, with each party obtaining sufficient benefit. In other words, if the product the brand is offering the blogger is a car for a significant period of time, the blogger might consider that  sufficient compensation — depending on what the brand is asking in exchange. A few boxes of cereal or tubes of hand cream? Not so much.

Brands are best served by a “clean, well-lighted” space, in which editorial is clearly distinguished from advertorial content, and brand-influencer relationships disclosed.  There is no such thing as too much information, too much disclosure in the blogosphere. The FTC imposes requirements on brands and bloggers for both disclosure and accuracy, but those are simply the price of admission. Long-lasting trust demands even more than a simple disclosure statement. To gain, and retain, trust, brands, influencers and communities need to be upfront about their point of view as well as their relationships with other parties. It’s the only way the consumer has all the information she needs to evaluate whether the opinion in a blog post is from a peer, and thus relevant to her life. Or simply an endorsement from an interested party or an advertisement. Both have value in the awareness/adoption process just a different one.

Every conversation has multiple stakeholders – the influencers, the brands and the readers, and you have to keep all three in mind when creating a campaign. Is the content relevant to the readers’ interests? Is it interesting? How authentically does it integrate the messaging into the  story without appearing forced or fake? What will the reader experience be? Develop programs that will be interesting for the social media influencers and their audiences – wherever they engage with her — not just an opportunity to get paid for a post, and that support the brand messaging, without being a product pitch.

A sponsored conversation can be just as engaging as a straight-up editorial post, update or Tweet, provided that the topic taps into the woman’s passions, not the product press release.

Less is often more. Reaching out to fewer influencers, but ones that have a genuine interest and desire to support the brand is usually more effective than a larger number of mildly interested folks. A few really good posts by influential women who are leaders in a community can have a stronger, more positive impact than a slew of perfunctory posts. It’s also important to consider how many influencers should be included in a program; a fatigue often sets in when multiple posts about the same thing all appear on the same day. Intended to have a positive impact, such volume actually can have negative impact on a community.

“Keep your friends close. And your enemies closer.” Embrace your critics instead of trying to silence them. This is a tough strategy to follow; it’s hard to invite your critics to take a seat at the table, especially when you know there are hundreds of fans who would be happy to have that seat.

Own your words. When you make a mistake, ‘fess up and apologize. A little humility goes a long way. Bottom line: nothing spreads faster than bad news. If you don’t do social media engagement right, you will face criticism. Better to do it right the first time!

—

Cleaning out the inbox:

• Check out  Blog Marketing to Moms Is About More Than Parenting, an eMarketer study about the momosphere. Full disclosure: I was interviewed for the piece.
• On December 9th, I’ll be speaking at the Massachusetts Conference for Women at the Boston Convention Center. I’ll be doing a session on using social media to build your brand and professional reputation.  The session was originally framed as an intro-level session, but feedback from the previous two conferences — in Pittsburgh and Houston — has confirmed that the audience wants more advanced content, so in Boston, I’ll be adding content on building a blog strategy. I’ll also be signing Professional Blogging For Dummies in the bookstore.

Since I joined BlogHer earlier this Fall, I have had a lot going on — traveling, speaking, digging into the new job, moving my family to the NY area — and this poor blog has been sorely neglected. So neglected in fact that my 6th blog anniversary passed earlier this month and I didn’t even notice.

Thinking about that milestone over this holiday weekend led me to think about some of the changes I’ve observed in the blogosphere.

In 2005,  early adopters were dipping their toes into the blogging waters. The hot topic was the corporate blog, and the term “social media”  wasn’t even being used yet — Facebook was in its infancy and Twitter wouldn’t even be invented for another year. Public relations agencies were just beginning to reach out to bloggers on behalf of brands, mostly high tech and consumer electronics. Online conversation often swirled around the mistakes agencies and companies made with poorly targeted “spray and pray” outreach.

Now, according to research conducted by the Center for Marketing Research at UMass Dartmouth,  23 percent of the Fortune 500 have public blogs, including four of the top five corporations (Wal-Mart, Exxon, Chevron and General Electric), 60 percent have corporate Twitter accounts and 56 percent have Facebook pages (The Fortune 500 and Social Media: A Longitudinal Study of Blogging and Twitter Usage by America’s Largest Companies).

The study, which was announced at the Annual Research Symposium and Awards  Gala of the Society for New Communications Research, concludes:

“This [adoption of social media] clearly demonstrates the growing importance of social media in the business world. These large and leading companies drive the American economy and to a large extent the world economy. Their willingness to interact more transparently via these new technologies with their stakeholders is [a] clear. It will be interesting to watch as they expand their adoption of social media tools and connect with their constituents in dramatically new ways.”

Furthermore, according to research conducted by FedEx and Ketchum, and reported in eMarketer, 75 percent of companies worldwide participate in social media in some aspects of their communications and marketing strategy, with 10% actively leading in the space and 15% still mostly on the sidelines observing (Leveraging Best Practices for Social Media).

Another hot topic in the early days of this blog was whether the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would accept blogs as an outlet for material disclosure by public companies.  The SEC began studying the issue in late 2006 and in 2008, announced that it would accept websites and blogs as outlets for material disclosure under certain circumstances.

The topic that has engaged me the most since I dove into the social media pool, however, is the relationship between brands and consumers. Initially, this activity was called blogger relations, a name that reflected its roots in public relations and a focus on blogs. Over the past year or two, the term blogger outreach became more prominent — in part I think in an effort to distance the work from public relations. At least that was my reason for the vocabulary shift.

The sphere of activity also has extended beyond blogs to embrace social networks like Facebook and microblogs like Twitter and Tumblr, and influence is just as important as blog real estate, prompting a shift to talk about  “social media influencers” rather than just bloggers.

Going into the new year, I will be shifting my analysis of this topic to focus on influencer engagement. How well do we engage influencers across the range of social media channels? What can brands do to better engage the customer with the brand premise while retaining authenticity? What is the role of the influencer herself? What can she do to engage proactively with the brands she loves without “selling out?”

Bottom line, I am more interested in the two-way sustainable engagement, brand to influencer and influencer to brand, than I am in a one-way outreach or a single campaign.

Next week, I’ll kick this off with a brief summary of  some best practices for influencer engagement.

Recently I was interviewed by Chief Marketer about how brands are reaching out to women through social media. The reporter was interested in how brands were and were not “getting it right.”

As I wrote here last month (OMG, that long), it’s become increasingly clear to me that the brands that are doing excellent work using social media tools to reach their customers generally have done and do a good job in traditional media. Sure, even the best companies make the occasional mistake with a campaign, product or program but for the most part, their marketing communications are sharp (often clever) and do not patronize the consumer.

These companies already understand that it’s important to respect your customer. In all that you do. They just have to figure out how to translate that imperative using the social media toolset in a way that is authentic to the brand and relevant to the customer.

It’s more than just getting the mechanics right. That’s the price of entry into social media engagement with your customer. I’ve been saying it for years, and I’ll keep on saying it: there is NO excuse for misaddressed e-mail – for example, the “Dear XXX” pitch about toys (children’s toys) that many parent bloggers got last week – or grammar errors – like “conscious” for “conscience,” also from last week’s in-box.

As Marketing Mommy said on Twitter:

@sgetgood My reply to him: “Despite my efforts to break into the porn star business, I’ve yet to use the moniker XXX.”

The poor interns come in for a lot of flack when we talk about these often humorous mechanical mistakes, but really, it is management’s job to create a system with the proper checks and balances.

If you MUST mass e-mail bloggers (and I wish you wouldn’t), invest in a decent CRM system and assign your interns to getting the data entered properly. Not on cutting and pasting pitches. Buy everyone who drafts, edits or sends customer facing emails a dictionary and make it a requirement that it be displayed on their desks. Why? Because it will be a constant visual reminder to check not just the spelling of words, but their meaning. Spell check and online dictionaries can’t do that.

The mechanics are the first, most basic level of getting blogger outreach right. We can do it. I know we can.

Your message is the second, more important level of “getting it right.” My favorite fantasy is that next year, even more companies and their agencies will see the light and understand that what they should be doing is sharing compelling ideas and stories with their customers. Exciting things that will make them want to write about the brand.

Instead of trotting out formulaic pitches and recycling the same product launch templates from project to project, client to client, brand to brand.

Be careful though.This requires more than just identifying the blogger’s passion that drives interest in your product and inserting the message point in an otherwise bland pitch. That’s a start (I guess), but it’s not enough. There is honestly still far too much of this sort of pitch circulating in the ether.

Really getting it right requires that you connect with that passion. To do that, you need to know the bloggers you are reaching out to. It still comes back to the 3 R’s as coined by good friend and colleague David Wescott in 2007 – respect your customer, be relevant and build a relationship over time.

Good blogger relations is  still (and always will be) a commitment, not a one night stand.

–

Pennsylvania Governor’s Conference for Women ticket giveaway – Stay tuned: I will pick a winner this weekend from the comments on this post. I also have one ticket each for the Texas Conference for Women in November and the Massachusetts Conference for Women in December. Watch for a post next week about the conferences and details on how I plan to give away those passes. More than likely it will be on Twitter, not here on the blog as finding time to write is a bit problematic for the next two weeks due to my schedule.

Next week, I will be in NYC most of the week, digging in to my second week on the job as VP Sales Marketing for BlogHer and speaking at a PRSA event on Friday. The following week, I travel to Orlando to present a social media workshop at AARP’s Orlando@50+ conference.

In between all of that we are trying to find a place to live for 3 people, 3 dogs and 2 cats. Fun times!  We need a rental within about an hour’s commute to Manhattan by train until we sell our house in Massachusetts. If you’ve got leads, let me know. We’re leaning toward western Connecticut but open to all suggestions.

Regardless of the industry segment or specific details of the campaign, the best influencer relations programs have one thing in common: the value exchange between brand and influencer is balanced. Each gives something of value to the other, both are satisfied with the exchange and nobody feels taken advantage of.

In paid media like advertising, this exchange is easy to understand. Publisher — whether online or off, broadcast or print — develops an advertising package based on audience demographics and content. Company pays an agreed-upon rate for its ad to appear within the media vehicle. Publisher gets money; advertiser gets eyeballs.

In influencer relations, the equation is a little more complex, but it’s not rocket science.

For the influencer, balanced value means that the program offers something interesting and relevant to his or her interests or activities, and the “ask” — what the brand hopes the influencer will do as a result of the offer –  is proportionate to what the influencer has or will receive from the brand. And let’s be clear — there’s always an ask, even if it’s only implied and the pitch includes the oft-repeated words, “if you choose to write about this on your blog…”

If the company asks too much of the influencers — for example, multiple posts and status updates in exchange for a few tubes of toothpaste — the value equation is unbalanced.

From the company side of the equation, the cost of the program has to be justified by the results. That means setting, and measuring, realistic objectives, and culling out programs that don’t deliver. The best way to do this is to build long term relationships with the online influencers that truly matter for your brand.

I tend to prefer simple programs aimed at small numbers of influencers so the brands can really focus on the “fit” with the influencer and add sufficient value to the pitch. Plus, we all like to feel special, and nothing says “not special” like a promotion aimed at hundreds.

One of the best influencer relations programs I’ve seen recently (and full disclosure, I was a beneficiary of it) was the Gap’s outreach prior to the 2010 BlogHer conference. The company reached out to the conference speakers, offering us a styling appointment at our local Gap where we’d get to try on the new Fall clothes.

The initial email was fairly vague; while I’m sure most of the women assumed we’d get a gift card of some sort, there was no specific dollar amount mentioned. The fun and convenience of a styling appointment at a local store, combined with the fact that many women in the BlogHer community were already acquainted with the WOM agency doing the outreach was enough. It was easy to say yes because we didn’t have to do much.

The genius of the program was its generosity. Instead of the token gift card I’m sure many (including me) expected, every speaker got a $400 clothing allowance. That’s two or three outfits, depending on what you picked.

There was no requirement to wear the clothes at the BlogHer conference, although it was clear that the brand hoped the participants would. In the document circulated to the stores (yes, I peeked — it was attached to the rack of clothes I was picking from), we were described as influential women, and the reason for the promotion our participation as speakers at the conference where our clothes would be seen by hundreds of other women.

As for results, many speakers tweeted and blogged about their experience and most wore their new Gap clothes during the conference. Quite simply, we were grateful for the generosity and it was fun sharing the experience with friends and fellow speakers. And that’s where the company gets its value in the exchange.

Smart marketing all around. Had the gift been less generous, I’m certain the activity at and around BlogHer would have been far more muted. Had the outreach numbers been smaller — only a select few top blogs versus all the speakers, regardless of size of blog or niche — the impact would have been far less. Had the outreach been focused on the top mom or style blogs that normally get such offers, it would have been just another influencer relations program. Instead, by reaching out to the small group of speakers, the Gap recognized the women for their achievements. That’s special.

No influencer relations program escapes without a few criticisms, and the Gap Magic promotion is no exception. I think there would have been less criticism if folks were more aware that BlogHer strives to have 80% new speakers every year. The speaker roster doesn’t equate to an A-list of any kind, unless smart accomplished women willing to share their knowledge and experiences with each other has become one.

If that’s the case, I call that an Amen-List, not an A-list. This year, I think there were more small, niche bloggers than ever before speaking on topics like loving your small blog and work-life balance. For some, it was their first time ever speaking at an industry conference.

The Gap Magic program was not an official BlogHer sponsor program. Had it been, perhaps there would have been more emphasis on the merit basis for the selection of participants. Attention clothing brands: something to think about for next year.

As for ROI, it’s too soon to tell, but the program must have been pretty inexpensive, given the total costs of retail marketing. According to agency Brand About Town, about 100 women participated. That’s $40,000 in clothes at retail price. Even if you add in a generous amount for overhead and agency costs beyond the wholesale cost of the clothes, it’s still far less expensive than an ad in a fashion magazine.

On principle, with BlogHer, I tend to prefer the programs of official conference sponsors because the sponsor fees offset registration costs for the attendees. In my next post, I’ll talk about the sightseeing trip to Ellis Island that sponsor Liberty Mutual’s Responsibility Project did the day before the conference started. Preview: it rocked!

I will have more personal commentary about BlogHer — including how I see the community evolving —  on Snapshot Chronicles sometime over the weekend. Here on Marketing Roadmaps,  I am going to explore what brands can learn from BlogHer 2010.

In this post and the one that follows, I’ll share my perspective based on what I experienced: the good, the bad and the ugly.  Over the weekend,  I am privileged to have guest posts from Meagan Francis from The Happiest Mom and Elizabeth, the one only and original Busy Mom, with some advice for marketers on how to reach them effectively.

If you have thoughts for marketers/about marketing to bloggers that don’t quite fit your blog, I am more than happy to host you here. Email me at sgetgood (at) getgood (dot) com. My only request is that you provide specifics so that marketers who are interested in getting it right when engaging with customers in social media  can learn from your thoughts and experiences. The marketers who aren’t interested in doing it right don’t read this blog so don’t worry about them. If you’d rather write it on your blog, send me the link and I’ll include it in a round-up.

First, some general observations about the good. As I noted in my pre-BlogHer post, only official BlogHer events and sponsors had space at the Hilton. This worked like a charm on the most important level — people who weren’t attending the  special, invite only events from non-sponsors didn’t have them thrust in their face at every turn. And the official sponsors got their due.

The downside, of course, was that numerous off-site events pulled people away from the Hilton and the conference sessions far more than I would like. I don’t have a problem with extra events scheduled the day before or after the conference, or the evenings. That is typical for any conference, and shows that BlogHer has truly grown up to be a major player in the blogging world.

However, I do not think it’s smart to hold your off-site events  during the conference sessions.  Especially the keynote sessions. In particular, an offsite Scholastic brand event held Saturday morning at the same time as the four international scholarship recipients, some of whom were at personal risk for speaking, shared their stories with the BlogHer audience, did not go over well with many in the community.

This is the ugly, and here are some of the comments from Twitter  about it:

@lauriewrites (Laurie White) tweets:  @Cecilyk @sgetgood I’ll never touch a Scholastic product again, as a teacher or an auntie. Schedule stuff during conference, offsite? Nope.

@zchamu (Shannon McCarney): @sgetgood scholastic woulda scored far more points by sponsoring the int’l scholarship session than by holding a rival party, no question

Shannon also wrote a beautiful post about all that BlogHer 10 meant to her, and while there was far more good than ugly, there were some strong words about holding events that conflict with the conference schedule:

“I’ve come away from BlogHer 2010 with a lot.  I’ve come away angry as hell at a corporation for having such disrespect as to hold gatherings to shill their wares to bloggers while women in another building were literally risking their lives to tell those bloggers how their words were changing the world. “

Go read her post. Read the comments too. I’ll wait.

The lesson for marketers – check the schedule before you schedule your event.

There really wasn’t a lot of bad in terms of marketing this year. The new personal sponsorship guidelines meant you weren’t accosted by someone thrusting a sample in your face at every turn.

However, watching the Twitter stream and reading the post-BlogHer reports I can’t help thinking , it’s too much. There’s just so much going on across a 3-4 day span that I’m afraid it starts to become a blur.

I understand the opportunistic strategy of scheduling events when  your target market is already gathered,  so you don’t have to pay for travel. But how much information can humans really absorb? How much marketing budget was squandered last week throwing big events that are a blur the week (if not the day) after?

I think  a lot. An awful lot.

My advice is to think carefully about what you want to achieve at a conference like BlogHer. Start with the official sponsorship opportunities. If one of those fits your objectives, you are supporting the organization as well as your own objectives, and that’s a dual win.

Then think about what your audience really needs. Is it one more party that they have to squeeze in or is a free limo service to the airport on arrival and departure day more meaningful? Or perhaps a smaller sightseeing event that really gives people an opportunity to speak with each other? How can you broaden your reach — beyond who you already know —  to new influencers that you’ll want to know.

In my next post, I’ll cover two influencer relations campaigns that I think hit the mark: Gap’s #gapmagic outreach to BlogHer speakers and the trip to Ellis Island sponsored by Liberty Mutual’s Responsibility Project. Full disclosure: I participated in both, and have known the PR people for both Gap and Liberty Mutual for more than a year.

That’s why I opened the emails. But not why I think the programs worked.

Stay tuned. More tomorrow.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The evolution of community: BlogHer at 5 (snapshotchronicles.com)
• FTC Guidelines Session at BlogHer 2010 – What Has Changed After One Year? (360prblog.com)

Professional Blogging For Dummies will be in your local bookstore by the end of the month! Hard to believe it’s only been a year since I first met Dummies Acquisitions Editor Amy Fandrei at BlogHer.

Speaking of which, I will be signing copies at the BlogHer bookstore in New York next month, but I’m not sure of the day/time yet. I’ll also be speaking at the Pennsylvania Governor’s Conference for Women (Pittsburgh, 10/14), the Texas Conference for Women (Houston, 11/10) and the Massachusetts Conference for Women (Boston 12/9), and I think they will be organizing a book signing at those venues as well.

Professional Blogging For Dummies was written to help individuals and small business owners develop a blog  to generate revenue directly or support their small business. There’s a whole section just on monetization.  That said, I think anyone with a blog or considering starting one — even if they aren’t focused on revenue generation — would benefit from the chapters on strategy, planning, development and design. Plus, the book is chock full of case studies and interviews with successful bloggers.

It’s the silly season for bad pitches

Last week, I told you about a marketing agency that sent me a press release offering expert commentary on celebrity use of social media. Because that’s what I write about, right? Clearly they aren’t reading my blog, or they would not have sent me this week’s release offering their services as a source on “how social media monitoring tools can be used to track weather patterns.”

I kid you not. Here’s the money quote:

“Everyone is talking about how hot it has been lately, especially on Twitter,” [name redacted], chief optimism officer and founder of [name redacted] said. “By analyzing keywords like ‘hot’ and ‘heat,’ our social media monitoring tools, in addition to our social media team of experts, have found a correlation between what people are saying on social networks, and actual weather patterns.”

Really? It’s actually hot in those places that people are talking about how hot it is? I never would have thought of that without your press release. One more of these silly releases crosses my desk and I will invoke the Bad Pitch Blog‘s “three strikes and you’re out-ed” rule.

Other gems from my inbox this week included a request to post a video link of some chef making ceviche and a press release about a self-published book of nude photographs by (not of) some dude who created a series for Playboy TV.

And then there was the social network that offers to let me share my dreams with the people I care about. I cannot make this stuff up:

Have you ever wondered if anyone had a similar dream to one that you had, or which celebrity is most dreamed about? Did you know that global news events impact dreams in a tangible way, and that millions of people are already sharing their dreams with others? There is a good chance that your readers at Marketing Roadmaps are thinking about it as well.

So readers, tell me. Are you interested in this? I’m thinking not, but… Maybe this social network has mined your dreams and this is what you want from a blog about marketing, social media and best practices. Please advise.

Now I know I’m not the only one getting ridiculous pitches this summer. I’m actually lucky. Mine are funny, not offensive.

Alas, that was not the experience of my friend Allison Blass. Allison has type 1 diabetes and often writes about the disease on her personal blog  Lemonade Life. Professionally, she’s a PR person and regularly reaches out to bloggers on behalf of her clients, so she’s not opposed to getting pitches to her personal blog.  But she wants them to be relevant. If the pitch angle is about diabetes, the product had really better be for diabetics. Not simply a diabetic “gloss” on a consumer product intended to make it seem relevant to her blog. For example, the pitch she recently received for  a water filter.

Allison mentioned the pitch on Facebook and at my request, forwarded it to me. There were two basic problems with the pitch. First, as noted above, the product is a water filter. It isn’t something special for diabetics. Linking it to diabetes was just a hook. Worse, the basis the company used to link the product to diabetes didn’t sit well with Allison, who was diagnosed as a child and is very active in the diabetes community. When Allison called the rep on her facts, the PR rep got defensive and then a bit offensive. And that’s problem number two.

When the blogger or reporter says “this isn’t for me and you have all your facts wrong,” think twice about engaging. Most of the time, it’s better to apologize and move on to someone more receptive. Hard to do, especially if it’s a writer you really want to reach, but probably a better tactic than getting into a pissing contest with the person.

And pay attention to the objections. It doesn’t matter what YOU the company know. Success is in the customer’s perceptions. Reach out to them on their terms, not yours. If they think your pitch is a bit dodgy, it is. Period.

News from Liberty Mutual’s Responsibility Project

I first learned of Liberty Mutual’s Responsibility Project last year when its PR Agency reached out to me because of Blog With Integrity. I’ve since written about the project, attended a teleconference interview with Chuck star Zachary Levi about a short film he directed for the Project as part of a partnership with NBC, and will be attending a pretty cool (private) event next month the day before BlogHer. That’s the disclosure.

Here’s the opinion.

I’m not a customer of Liberty Mutual’s insurance products so I can’t offer an opinion about them. However, I am a customer of its message about responsibility, and they have done some admirable work.  The new TV commercial is excellent and makes a strong point about the need to “do the right thing.” A message that has value no matter who you are or how you are insured.

As the parent of a 10-year old, I also appreciate the attention Liberty Mutual is paying to issues like texting, online safety and personal responsibility for teenagers. The latest initiative is “Responsibility Project For The Win,” an essay contest for teens to encourage them to contribute to their communities over the summer. The five winning essays will be featured on the Responsiblity Project website and the company will make $500 donations to non-profits selected by the winners.