Marketing Roadmaps

Defining Social Media Success, Part III

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Yesterday I did a webinar on Blogger Relations with David Meerman Scott and Vocus. Looks for links to the replay and Q&A tomorrow.

Afterward, I started thinking about the definition of success for blogger relations. Not how you measure it. That’s a topic for another day.

But quite simply, what is effective blogger relations? I came up with three critical things.

And, as I looked at my list I realized that these three things define successful marketing, full stop, not just online. Not just on/with blogs. Probably why I’ve embraced social media so strongly 🙂

  1. It’s all about making friends. Treating people like you would your friends. With respect. Paying attention to what they need, what’s going on in their lives. Realizing that good, true friendships take time to mature.. That it’s about both parties getting something out of the deal.
  2. Be relevant. Tell interesting stories to the people who care. If they don’t really care, the story won’t be interesting. Even when it is.
  3. Put the bloggers (customers) first. Think about their WIIFM not yours. Really. Pay attention to theirs and yours will follow. Think about ways you can help them, make their lives easier… and not just if they accept your value proposition and buy your product. That’s table stakes. Doesn’t count.

What are your three critical measures of success?

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Comments

  1. Susan, it was great to tag team with you on the call. I agree with your three points above. And we’re proof, if we hadn’t been blogging, we wouldn’t have met each other or been asked to participate on this panel.

    Cheers,

    David

  2. Hi Susan — thanks for leading this discussion, it’s an important one.

    To me, success is whatever you and the client agree it is. It looks different in each situation. You described the CBS project and I learned a lot from that. I have a lot of respect for you for that.

    I’m sure you agree that relationships and relevance are important in the off-line world as well. Maybe they matter more in this space because most bloggers aren’t journalists who are accustomed to the PR/marketing dance. I won’t get a client six column inches in the NY Times by calling Robert Pear cold and telling him that there’s a great new OTC treatment for nail fungus.

    I won’t speak for you – but I’m friendly with Liz at Mom101 for 2 reasons — first, she’s incredible, and second, I think trading emails with her is more fun than working. To your point, I’d have been out of luck trying to introduce her to GreenStone Media if she had no interest in Gloria Steinem or Mo Gaffney.

    but here’s the thing: I reach out to hundreds of bloggers, but I’m only really friendly with a few. Does this make me less successful with the bloggers I won’t chum around with if they’re engaging with my clients? Not so sure.

    Going beyond the “table stakes” you describe takes time and energy, and I refuse to do it for everyone. I want to make sure the bloggers I trust and truly enjoy — people like Liz — understand that they’re really special to me. I can’t be that way with everyone, or it diminishes what I bring to the relationships I have. I can’t fake that, and I won’t try. I’m confident you’re the same way.

    Love to read more of your thoughts on this.

  3. Thanks for the comments.

    David W: I agree that you won’t develop friendships — real friendships — with every blogger you might reach out to. That’s one of the reasons I tell clients that a blogger “A-list” for any given thing shouldn’t be more than 20-30 at the very most. And of that, you won’t become friends with every single one of them. But you should treat them as well as you would a friend.

    Some of the bloggers you meet will become friends along the way. Many more of them will be acquaintances, no matter what we call each other on Twitter and Facebook.

    But… when you reach out to them, whether friend or merely acquaintance, I truly believe we should be able to answer *yes* to these questions: would I send this communication to one of my good friends, assuming they had an interest in the area? Are we both getting something valuable from this exchange?

  4. The Inside Scoop on Blogger Relations

    I participated in a Webinar audio conference on June 26, 2007 called The Inside Scoop on Blogger Relations which was sponsored by Vocus. The conference was moderated by Jiyan Wei, Manager of Social Media Strategy at Vocus and the other