Marketing Roadmaps

Susan Getgood

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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Finding Hope in Photos: Children and Uganda

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cross-posted to Snapshot Chronicles

This spring, as I wrote in May, I did some blogger outreach to mom bloggers about HP’s Capture Your Ever After photo contest. This post is a direct result of that project.

The background: Part of friendship is to say thank you. We decided to thank the bloggers who wrote about the contest by making a donation of an HP digital camera, compact photo printer and some supplies to a charity of their choice.We also decided to send the gear directly to the women, so they could have the pleasure of donating it personally to their favorite local charities.

Because the donation aspect was not promoted in advance, it was a bit of a surprise to the bloggers when they got the email offering them the gear, but  none of them had any trouble thinking of a cause that meant something to them personally. They also all took the time to let us know what they planned to do with it, even though we didn’t make it a requirement that they do so.

Tracey Clark’s donation is going to war-torn Northern Uganda next month with Katie Gardner of San Diego.

Katie is part of a group connected with Children of the Nations. They will be spending three weeks working with children and families in the IDP (internally displaced people) camps.  Some of the folks going will be doing counseling, but Katie and small group of four or five others will be doing photo projects with the children.

She told me that working with third-world children, giving them a chance to use photography as a creative outlet has been a dream of hers ever since she saw the documentary Born into Brothels which documents the lives of children who live in Calcutta’s red-light district.

"When kids take pictures, they have a unique view. I’m really looking forward to helping these children experience the world in new ways through photography. I hope it gives them hope for the future."

Including the camera and compact printer donated by HP, Katie has two brand new digital cameras, two printers, a handful of used polaroid cameras and cash donations from friends and family to purchase supplies. They still need a scanner so they can scan in the polaroids and leave the originals with the children. If  you’d like to help, drop Katie a note at katieann10@gmail.com.

Katie thinks it’s important that we hear and see the smaller stories from Africa and other third world nations, not just the larger than life efforts of celebrities like Madonna and Bono so she is developing a blog to document her Uganda trip. You’ll also be reading more about Katie’s project on Snapshot Chronicles and on Tracey’s blog, Picture This.

Over the summer, Katie’s kids in Uganda, Tracey’s daughter Julia (age 9) in California,  my son Douglas (age 7) here in Massachusetts and two friends of Katie’s in San Diego, ages 7 and 9, will take pictures using some simple themes, including laughter, friends, sunshine and where I live. When Katie returns in August, we’ll do a series of posts showing their worlds through their eyes. It should be interesting to see the differences and similarities between the American and Ugandan children.

Katie says she hopes these pictures will help Americans better understand what is happening in Uganda:

"Not only do I want the kids in Uganda to have a creative outlet to think about their lives in a new way, I want people back home to be transformed by seeing the world though these kids’ eyes. And I want both sides to really see the potential for hope in places where people have been suffering for so many years. I want people back home to be moved to see how they can make a difference; and even if not in Africa, then how can we make a difference in our own backyard? I’m lucky enough to go overseas, but it’s so easy to be the catalyst for change in our own families and neighborhoods when we allow ourselves to open our eyes to what’s going on around the world."

Bon voyage, Katie.

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Check out Invisible Children, another group that helps the children of Uganda.

Update, 27 June: Tracey’s post Picture Hope

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Are we writing for people? Or for the machines?

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Of late I’ve noticed something quite alarming. Short blog posts with more tags tacked on at the bottom than actual words within the post.

Tags are fine. Helpful even.  But when there are more tags than there is content, I fear we’ve crossed over more than a chasm into an unpleasant valley where we are writing more for the machines — the search engines — than we are for the actual people who might read our deathless, or deadly, prose.

This dilemma echoes a criticism I have long had of business Web sites  — that they spend far too much time "optimizing" for search engines, and not nearly enough time just putting forward a simple value proposition for their customers.

My two cents? If you write compelling copy on your Web site that tells your current and prospective customers why they might want to do business with you, you will use the right keywords. If you’ve taken the time to understand, and develop, what your customers really need, the language will follow. If you haven’t, no amount of manipulation, or SEO fees, will work.

Sorry.

The same is true for blogs. This is a conversation. If your principal objective is to be discoverable in search engines… that’s talking to the machines, not to people. A few tags on a post is fine. 20 is stupid. Really. How can your post be about 20 things?

It’s not.

If you are writing for the machines, whether a Web site or a blog, I am pretty sure you will bore me to tears.

Sorry.

And if you are writing for the machines, don’t think we don’t know it.

We do.

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Following up: Vocus and CBS

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More on CBS. As I wrote last week, I think CBS is making some smart moves in the blogosphere. BusinessWeek columnist Jon Fine agrees. Not with me, of course. I doubt he knows who I am. But that they are doing some smart things. Check out his column in the June 25th BusinessWeek, Not Bad, for a TV Network.

Next week David Meerman Scott and I will be joining the folks at Vocus for a webinar, The Inside Scoop on Blogger Relations. I’m sure we’ll discuss the mis-steps some companies have made, but we’re planning to spend more time talking about good blogger relations — including some practical advice on how to do it well.

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PR/Marketing Links, 18 June

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This week I am going to be focusing on my Snapshot Chronicles blog, but wanted to share a few links from this month’s reading that just didn’t fit into any of my posts.

Brian Solis has written a very comprehensive Manifesto for Integrating Social Media into Marketing. It’s an excellent summary of the state of social media and marketing, but I recommend it with a caution. Do not share it with clients, bosses, staff or colleagues that haven’t at least taken a sip of the social media koolaid. Among other things, his 20+ item list of what you need to do will scare the shit out of someone who isn’t ready to take the plunge. Or at least dip more than a toe in the water.

Todd Defren ruminates on the one year anniversary of the social media press release with two posts.

Toby Bloomberg covers two new blogs from pharma companies, GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson. 

David Parmet on Why PR Still Works.

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