Blogger relations

Professional Blogging For Dummies (my book), bad pitches and news from Liberty Mutual’s Responsibility Project

July 15, 2010 by Susan Getgood

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.

From the inbox, for your amusement

July 8, 2010 by Susan Getgood

It’s hot here in the Northeast. But you knew that. Because that’s all any of us are talking about on Twitter and Facebook.

Well not entirely, but almost.

To ward off crankiness, I thought I’d share some gems from my inbox this morning. They are just so silly they made me laugh out loud.

Let’s start with this glimpse of my spam folder:

I’ve got to believe than one of the four is spamming them multiple times within the same hour.

Then there was the press release offering me:

Media Source Available to Discuss Social Media Use of Lebron James, Lindsay Lohan and Other Celebrities

[Name Redacted], a leading social media firm, provides information on trends and statistics for how social media tools like Facebook and Twitter impact the way celebrities communicate with the public.

Seriously, the “expert commenter media alert” is a very tired PR strategy. Honestly, if you are really an expert, you’d be talking about this stuff ON Facebook and Twitter, media would be following you, and contacting you. Note: it is particularly lame when you send the release to marketing people who specialize in social media. I’m pretty sure we can figure this out for ourselves.

And that was just this morning. This week, I’ve also gotten press releases about something to do with Miranda Cosgrove, a big home improvement chain and a few social media marketing books by people I’ve never heard of.

It is the silly season, my friends. Could be the heat. But I’m guessing it’s partially a timing thing. PR management software company Vocus holds its Users’ Conference in early June.

That’s about three weeks for new users to get the basics under their belt and they are ready to spam, spam, spam! It’s not the company’s fault, but man oh man, when will the “spray and pray” model of press release distribution die the death it richly deserves?

Rambling down my road: random-ish thoughts on blogger relations and expertise

May 29, 2010 by Susan Getgood

For the past few months, I’ve been head down working on Professional Blogging For Dummies, and there just hasn’t been a lot of time to write blog posts. A few things were just too important to let slide, like the FTC/Ann Taylor Loft story, but for the most part I’ve had to let many juicy stories go.

Like the pitch for an FDA approved douche sent to bloggers of both genders. Or the one for a snake repellent sent to mom bloggers in Manhattan. Seriously, outside of the zoo, how often do you see a snake of the reptilian variety in New York City?

Then there are the brand ambassador programs that seem to be multiplying like rabbits. For example, the Sears Outlet brand ambassador program with the laundry list of requirements for the bloggers but zero compensation.

Somehow, we’ve lost the distinction between public relations, which relies on a compelling story to “earn” the placement in the media outlet (hence the term “earned media,” more about that below), and promotion, which is a sales-related activity closely related to advertising. Many blogger programs are really about promotion, but they offer little or no compensation to the bloggers for what is essentially advertising space. Read Liz Gumbinner’s posts for more on this: Nothing is free, except it seems, a mommyblogger and In defense of PR.

And then there was last week’s dust-up between a blogger who took umbrage at, and posted about, a specific pitch, and a pretty strong response from the mentioned agency. I haven’t looked at the specifics of the post or program in question, but my immediate reaction reading the agency’s post was a certain amount of amazement that the author didn’t seem realize that the very questions she was raising in her post have been circling around the blogosphere for years. Read Julie Pippert’s The elephant in the room? Not so much for more about this specific post and its aftermath.

Earned media is a dinosaur
I participated in my first conference panel on blogger relations at BlogHer Business in 2007. More than 3 years later, I often feel like we haven’t moved forward at all. We’re still arguing about the same things — Are the pitches good, targeted and relevant? Are bloggers journalists? And so on. Blah Blah Blah.

This discussion is old and tired, and it’s not going anywhere except down a rathole. We need to move on. As Julie (@jpippert) and I discussed on Twitter after I read her post, earned media is a dinosaur. We need a new model.

One that understands that the blogger is also a customer, not just a reporter. That the old forms of engagement don’t work anymore. And that both sides — PR and bloggers — need to look at the relationship through a new lens. Companies and their PR agents aren’t doing bloggers “a favor” by including them in their programs. There’s an expected business benefit. And bloggers aren’t entitled to anything. If you want to participate in blogger relations or advertising programs, you’ve got to build a compelling blog that attracts an audience that the companies and advertisers want to reach.

The successful approach for reaching out to bloggers integrates public relations and advertising to achieve marketing objectives. If the story is compelling, PR outreach. If the company wants to control a message, advertising.

This flies in the face of the typical corporate organization and certainly agency alignments, and absolutely requires a change in the way we look at our marketing task. I’ve been writing about this changing model for some time now, and will continue to write about it here and at Shamable.com.

Expertise

True expertise is less about knowing how to do something than understanding why you’re doing it. Always start by asking Why? Then worry about How? Check out Toby Bloomberg’s e-book Social Media Marketing GPS for advice from 40 social media experts that truly understand the why and the how. I was doubly privileged with regard to this book — I was one of the people Toby interviewed on Twitter for the book and I was in Atlanta the day she launched, so I got to celebrate with her in person.

Also on my radar screen (and bound to be the topics of upcoming posts): more on measurement, including some thoughts on the importance of sentiment, and another look at Facebook after the privacy dilemmas of the past month. What are the implication for marketers and consumers?

Finally, thank you to the folks at Ignite Social Media for including Marketing Roadmaps (and me) on their list of 50 Women Bloggers You Should Be Reading. I’m not a terrific fan of lists, but feel privileged to be included in this company.