I’m on vacation this week. I’m going to try to get a couple of long case studies written later this week, but in the meantime I’ve collected a few of my favorite recent blogger outreach posts.
Blogger Relations: A Refresher Course
Archives for 2009
Don’t miss New Comm Forum 2009
New Comm Forum is known for assembling a terrific group of social media and marketing experts, and this year is no exception. On Monday April 27th, I’m honored to be moderating a panel on blogger relations featuring some of the honorees from the 2008 SNCR Awards: Julie Crabill, SHIFT PR, Laura Tomasetti, 360 Public Relations and Paull Young, Converseon.
Other speakers on the program include: Sashi Bellamkonda, Chris Brogan, Laura Fitton, Tom Foremski, Paul Gillin, Francois Gossieaux, Shel Holtz, Shel Israel, Charlene Li, Geoff Livingston, Mike Manuel, Jen McClure, Jeremiah Owyang, Katie Paine, Brian Solis, Joseph Thornley, Todd Van Hoosear, Dr. Mihaela Vorvoreanu and Zena Weist.
This year, New Comm Forum is co-located with the Inbound Marketing Summit, and New Comm attendees will have access to the Summit’s expo area. The combination of the two events in the same space should foster some very interesting hallway conversation, with New Comm drawing a national group that tends to have more experience with social media, and Inbound attracting a more local audience looking to understand what it’s all about.
Event Details for the 5th Annual New Communications Forum
April 27th – 29th, 2009
Marriott Hotel
4th & Mission
San Francisco, CA
http://www.newcommforum.com/2009/
REGISTER NOW WITH DISCOUNT CODE SNCRFRIEND & SAVE $100. PARTICIPATE IN THE ENTIRE THREE-DAY CONFERENCE FOR JUST $695 OR JUST ONE DAY FOR JUST $395
About New Comm Forum
Now celebrating its fifth year, NewComm Forum is the premier conference that brings together thought leaders and decision makers to discuss the impact of social media and emerging communication tools, technologies, and models on PR and corporate communications, marketing and advertising, media and journalism, business, culture and society. The Forum provides an in-depth exploration of the future of communications. In its five year history, it has come to be known as one of the world’s leading conferences focusing on the latest trends in new emerging media and communications platforms.
Bloggers liable for statements about products? Maybe, says FTC.
According to several news reports, the Federal Trade Commission is currently reviewing its guidelines on endorsements and testimonials.
The expected revisions would hold companies responsible for the statements made by bloggers who received products or samples, and also make the bloggers themselves liable for their statements about the products.
Whoa Nelly! What happened to opinion? Freedom of speech?
As Linsey Krolik writes on Silicon Valley Moms Blog, will this have a chilling effect on bloggers’ ability to give honest reviews? Will it check the growing influence of bloggers on consumer opinion?
I am not a lawyer, but I have testified at the FTC and before a House sub-committee in a past life, so I have some inkling of how this all works 🙂
Here’s my take.
First and foremost, the expected revisions are just that — expected. Nevertheless, bloggers should still protect themselves NOW. Have a good disclaimer, especially if you review products. Linsey covers that nicely in her post. You should also be very clear about contests and giveaways. David Wescott (It’s Not a Lecture) and I (Marketing Roadmaps) did a pair of posts about that a couple years ago.
Second, we need to stay on top of the discussion of the new guidelines. Bloggers are consumers, albeit with voices, and we must make sure that our opinions are heard. We are WHO the FTC is supposed to protect, and we should remind them of that fact.
Two key issues in FTC regulation of Word-Of-Mouth
I think there will be two key issues:
- The extent to which the blogger is acting as an agent for the company. Is there compensation, especially beyond the value of the product reviewed? Is there direction on what or when to write?
- Whether the content is identified as opinion or stated as fact.
The sponsored post companies (like Izea), blog networks that offer sponsored posts, and the client companies are potentially the most affected by the FTC moves. Possible changes to their business model give them sufficient incentive to weigh in on the arguments. I would expect them to move vigorously to limit both the company’s and the blogger’s liability. BUT, bloggers should be aware that in a commercial transaction, the company is first and foremost going to protect itself. Not you. Act accordingly.
Break it down
The most defensible position, clearly, is when you offer an opinion about a product that you purchased. That is the opinion of a customer, and not subject to advertising guidelines. It starts to blur when we factor in blogger outreach. Companies provide bloggers with product information, including products for review, which they generally don’t expect back. In this case, I expect the FTC will look at how much direction the company gives the blogger and the total value received by the blogger.
Our job is to remind the FTC, and the companies, that firms have been providing product and product samples to customers for years. As long as the blogger is free to share his or her opinion, no restrictions, it is just that, consumer opinion. And last I looked, opinion was free speech.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. (First Amendment to the Constitution)
Sponsored posts ?
Sponsored posts, on the other hand, are going to look an awful lot like advertising to the FTC. Its job is to protect the consumer from potential abuses. I think they will consider:
- Is the blogger being directly compensated?
- If not direct, is there an indirect element as often seen with blog networks where the blogger gets the product, but the network gets the fee?
- How much direction is given to the blogger about when and what to post?
- Is the blogger stating an opinion or presenting a fact?
I’m going to dig some more into this issue. Any readers who have additional information on the FTC plans, please leave them in the comments or email me at sgetgood@getgood.com.
This is not the end of the world for blogger relations, social media outreach or viral marketing. It is however an important issue, and we shouldn’t ignore it, thinking someone else will handle it.
They will, and you might not like the outcome.
Spam, the law of averages & June Cleaver – more blogger relations
Even a spammer will get lucky and hit it right often enough to make it worthwhile. That’s why we all win so many lotteries and have so many obscure and recently deceased relations.
It’s also why we are able to fool ourselves that mass tactics work in public relations and blogger outreach. The law of averages (really the mathmetical law of large numbers) suggests that if we just contact enough people, someone will be interested.
We’ll get lucky.
Unfortunately, we then use that lucky hit to justify the future use of the tactic…
That’s exactly what happened last week with Log Cabin’s announcement that it was replacing high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) with sugar in its syrup line. The outreach was a fairly generic one-line email with an attached press release. Pretty unremarkable, and most bloggers who got it probably read and deleted the email pretty quickly.
But they got lucky.
Against all odds, the release caught Mom-101’s attention. Did they know she’d written about HFCS in January? Possibly, but it wasn’t mentioned in the pitch. Was the list targeted? Possibly, but other high-profile moms who had also written about HFCS didn’t get the pitch.
With this result — a great post in a top parent blog — the folks over at Log Cabin may not realize that they just got lucky. The release was relevant and Mom-101 was paying attention. As she noted in her post, she had just warned a group of marketers that HFCS was going to be the next big issue for the consumer product companies.
I don’t want to pick on Log Cabin. I think that removing HFCS from their products is a very good thing, although I have to admit a preference for actual maple syrup as opposed to maple tasting syrup. I just wish they had done a better job in positioning the issue for parents in their pitch, rather than relying on the bloggers to make the connection. To find the relevance.
A great hit obscures the core problem with mass, generic outreach. It doesn’t foster long-term relationships. It’s like the guy lookin’ for love at the local pick-up bar. Eventually someone will say yes.
He’ll get lucky.
Doesn’t mean a thing.
As I’ve said before, one person’s spam is another’s breakfast. But… it’s still spam.
—
Now I promised you some good pitches. I’ve got two for you today.
First a pitch for Netflix from Edelman Digital. This pitch works because:
- it’s short and to the point. The blogger who forwarded it to me said she got it at first glance;
- it refers to appropriate past content on the blog;
- it links to the press release (versus including as an attachment).
Second, this St. Patrick’s Day pitch from Coinstar. I usually don’t like holiday pitches. They generally don’t work. This is the rare exception. Why?
- Short. Short is always good;
- Clever Twitter name (@chching);
- Small contest with lots of winners. Often more effective than one BIG contest;
- The Twitter account was active all day March 17th.
The only thing I would have done differently? The Twitter account has gone a bit silent, and I would have liked to see it continue to follow, and respond, to people that followed it on Saint Paddy’s Day. It now seems to be doing some sort of promo with the HARO Report, a good thing, but still, more engagement with the community would be good.
—
A final word. This lady?
She doesn’t exist. She never did. She was a 50’s-sitcom writer’s vision of the ideal mom.
So, isn’t it time we retired her as the model of the modern mom? Please?
Personal brand?
There’s been a great deal of conversation online in recent months about the importance — or not — of the “personal brand.” While I admit to finding the concept of a personal brand, and all the posturing, positioning and posing that seems to go along with it, a bit noxious, I hadn’t found the exact words to express my opinion.
Until yesterday when I was asked to share my thoughts on the subject during an interview with the website Radical Parenting.
Rather than think of it as building a personal brand, I suggested that what we should really focus on is our personal reputation.
Brands are created. Reputations are earned.
Reputation embraces your ethics. Proponents of the personal brand will argue that it does as well. Maybe so, but the link is far less clear. Brand is a construct. There’s something inherently artificial in a brand. The notion of an artificial construct having ethics is a great plotline for a science fiction novel, but it just doesn’t work for me out here in the real world.
Moreover, the company doesn’t own the brand. It may think it does, but the brand is a shared construct. It is the combination of the image or story the company sets out to convey and how it is actually perceived by the customer. It shares its brand with its customer. On some level, then, the notion of a personal brand is an oxymoron.
My reputation, on the other hand? I earned it. I own it.
Bottom line, it’s not what you say. It’s what you do that matters.
Words to live by. I do.