Marketing Roadmaps

Susan Getgood

Blogging Heroes

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Earlier this week, I ran across a new book called Blogging Heroes.

And no disrespect to any of the bloggers profiled or the author,  I am appalled at the title of the book.

In fact, disgusted.

What appalls me? The use of the term hero.

The book profiles 30 high-profile bloggers. Whether we need yet another book profiling a few top-ranked bloggers, I’ll leave to the market to decide.

But the bloggers profiled aren’t heroes. Blogging PEOPLE, in the sense of the gossip magazine, or Blogging Superstars? Sure. Those are already trivial terms and seem eminently suitable for this "literary" work.

But to call them heroes trivializes the term.

And that really offends me.

The folks profiled in the book have done a great job building and promoting their blogs. That makes them interesting, and perhaps good, examples. But they aren’t heroes.

Blogging heroes are people like Susan Niebur of Toddler Planet who has used her own diagnosis of inflammatory breast cancer, a very rare form of breast cancer that is not diagnosed from a lump in the breast, to spread the word about IBC. To the point of giving up her anonymity in the process. That’s a hero.

 

And not just Susan. Many, many people use their blogs to chronicle their battles against life-threatening and fatal diseases. To help others. Stricken with the disease or simply trying to support someone who is. They are heroes.

Milbloggers. Young men and women thrust into a war not of their making, but determined to serve their country. I don’t necessarily share their politics, but I have no doubt that bloggers like Chuck, who blogs at From my position on the way and who was seriously injured in Iraq last year protecting a fellow soldier, or Jean-Paul, now in his second tour as a Guardsman, are a lot closer to a hero than some business blogger.

Parents, lovers, partners, friends, children, siblings. There are examples all over the blogosphere of  people sharing their sadness at the loss of the loved one. And chronicling the process of healing. Sure, sharing their own pain may be in small measure cathartic, but to do it so publicly? That’s heroic.

And we haven’t even touched on the political. Dissidents in politically oppressive regimes who use the blogsphere to spread the word. At great personal risk. Native reporters in war-torn Iraq and Afghanistan who continue to dig for news, at great personal risk. Sometimes death. These are heroes.

Everyday, people put their hearts, souls and beliefs online. And not for link rank. For love. For a cause. That’s heroic. Because it just might help someone else. Whether it is someone the person knows, or someone she’s never met… it doesn’t matter.

So, count me offended at a book called Blogging Heroes. Because somehow, no matter how highly ranked, how popular, how famous…

They aren’t heroes.

At least not mine.

[Bonus Link: Scott Baradell is equally unimpressed.]

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Thanks-meme for Thanksgiving

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Kami Huyse tagged me in her Thanksgiving meme: "Who had a big influence on you and how did that affect the direction of your life or career?"

Like some of my fellow "taggees," a few of the major influences on my career weren’t terribly positive. Rather, it was my response to a negative or messy situation that moved me forward or helped me make an important decision.

Let’s get these out of the way first, shall we. No names. If you are reading this and think it might be you, it probably is.

Thanks to the editor in my first job out of college who told me I couldn’t write. Gave me the kick in the pants to evaluate what I really wanted to do. I got a new job and embarked on a career in marketing. And here I am writing. Nearly every day. Hmmm.

Thanks to the various managers in various corporate jobs who suffered from varying degrees of sexism and found it hard to promote me to the next level. No matter how good the performance or results. Especially the one who hired a super-duper idiot to take over a job I had been doing for years. Each and every time, I moved on to something better.

Now for the positive influences.

First and foremost my family, and most especially my mom Sandra Getgood. From her, I learned that there was nothing I couldn’t do if I set my mind to it.

I had lots of wonderful teachers in high school, college and my MBA program, but three stand out: Jean St. Pierre (Andover), Jill Morawski (Wesleyan) and Cornelia Eschborn (Rivier).

Thanks to all the printers, advertising, marketing and PR folk who shared their expertise with me as I learned on the job, especially in the early years of my career.

Thanks to everyone who has ever worked for me for the privilege of working with you, learning from you and hopefully teaching you a few things as well.

Thanks to Gene Mehr, now a client, who years ago recognized that I had some talent and treated me like an equal when I was just a twenty-something who thought she knew more than she did. I still have the four-star "marketing general" helmet.

Thanks to Scott Murray, former CFO at The Learning Company, for re-assigning me to the Cyber Patrol unit in January 1999. And thanks to Greg Bestick, who worked with me to sell the Cyber Patrol business in 2000 for nearly 10x what TLC had paid for it in 1997. Managing the business unit and my involvement in the whole sales process, from road show to due diligence, was one of the highlights of my career. Maybe I’ll do it again someday.

And finally, thanks to you, the readers of Marketing Roadmaps, for reading, for commenting, for making me part of your online conversation. You inspire me to be better.

Kami didn’t specify how many others we were supposed to tag, so I’ll just wing it. I’m tagging David Wescott, Christina/A Mommy Story, Kelly/Mocha Momma, Julie Marsh, Tom Murphy and Katie Paine.

Happy Thanksgiving!

UPDATE:

David Wescott writes about campaigning for Steven Tolman for state rep nearly 20 years ago and how that influenced the way he approaches his work.

Julie Marsh says she "learned the most from those who played the part of supporters when
times were good, but were nowhere to be found when times were bad."

Katie Paine, back from Thanksgiving in Islamabad, writes about how she became a "genetically unemployable serial entrepreneur."

Kelly (Mocha Momma) tells us what led her down the path to becoming a high school dean.

Christina (A Mommy Story) tells about women who have been positive role models for her: her aunts, mother and grandmother.

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The Discipline of Social Media Marketing

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Over the past few weeks, a number of people have posted about where social marketing "fits" in the organizational structure of a company, what sort of outside service agency is best positioned to help companies with their social media marketing efforts and how do we define expertise in this new field. Among them, and apologies if I leave anyone off: Todd Defren, Dave Fleet, Susan Getgood (that’s me), Josh Hallet, Kami Huyse, Geoff Livingston, and Jeremy Pepper.

Is PR the rightful functional "owner" of social media? Or should it be marketing or advertising that gets the ball? Perhaps social media marketing is just a subset of word-of-mouth marketing? With everybody and his brother now hanging out their shingles as blogging experts and social media gurus, how does a company determine who has the expertise and experience to help it navigate these waters? 

My opinion:

The functional lines between our marketing disciplines of PR, direct marketing and advertising are blurring. Social media marketing requires a blending of marketing and PR/communications skills. BTW, this line is blurring everywhere but it is more readily and immediately apparent in the social media world than offline. But it is offline too. Remember that online social networks are reflections of the interests and affiliations we have "in real life." Computer networks simply speed up the effect.

The other line that is blurring beyond recognition is the line between seller and buyer, journalist and audience. Now more than ever, we have multiple roles, sometimes almost simultaneously. A mommy blogger is a customer of a consumer products company, but at the same time, she might be a mompreneur with her own small or medium sized business. Journalists are bloggers; bloggers are journalists. Again, a reflection of similar real-world shifts, amplified by the Internet. We all gets lots of spam.

Whether social media marketing is a new marketing discipline, or simply a tectonic shift in Marketing with a capital M, I do not know. What I do know is that in order for it to thrive, for companies to be able to detect the real experts from the sham, for individuals to develop their skills to meet the new imperatives, we need to understand that it is a discipline. Not a project. Not an extension of PR or advertising or web marketing. Not something you can learn in a week from reading Naked Conversations and Boing-Boing.

You need a solid grounding in marketing and public relations. The social media component isn’t separable from the marketing plan. Everything still needs to track back to the plan, the objectives, the business goals. It isn’t enough to know HOW to do something. You need to know WHY. Real experience in the field helps. Extensive coursework or an undergraduate degree in psychology or sociology is very useful. Some philosophy too. A soupcon of "renaissance person" such as a second language and familiarity with great literature doesn’t hurt.

Most of all, we need credibility for this new discipline. Provided in part surely by our ongoing practice. The good examples. But that alone isn’t enough.

We need the supporting academic research. That is what gives any discipline its "legs." Without it, social media marketing is tactics. Campaigns. Maybe strategies. But not a legitimate discipline or profession in the long term. 

Which is why I encourage you to support the Society for New Communications Research, and specifically the  upcoming Annual Gala and Research Symposium to be held in Boston December 5th and 6th.

As practitioners, we need the information and insights from the research that will be presented at the Symposium, and that is reason enough to attend.  More importantly, we need to support  research organizations like SNCR because they provide part of the academic base. Can’t attend, but wish you could? Send someone in your stead — a junior colleague, a friend. No one to send? Make a supplemental donation to SNCR in support of the Symposium.

It can’t happen without you.

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More on the Writers Strike

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The writers are doing a great job communicating their story on the Internet. I wish them luck, and will be doing what I can as a fan to support them. If you want a good summary of the issues, watch these two videos.

 

And check out these sites:

The issue is resonating particularly loudly in the fandoms I follow, chiefly the Whedonverse and Battlestar Galactica. Joss Whedon has posted on Whedonesque multiple times and Ron Moore of BSG just started his own, personal blog (versus the scifi.com one he sporadically posted to last year.) And of course writers Jane Espenson and Mark Verheiden, whose blogs I read on a regular basis anyway, have been covering the strike in their usual articulate fashion.

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