Blogging

Best practices for influencer engagement

November 30, 2010 by Susan Getgood

Over the past few years, I’ve written quite a bit about blogger relations, largely in the context of brands reaching out to bloggers. As I mentioned in my last post, lately I’ve started to think about it more in terms of influencer engagement.

The key to success in social media engagement is to forge strong relationships, deliver relevant content and most importantly, respect the writer and her readers. As a starting point for developing long term sustainable relationships between brands and social media influencers, here are some best practices for your consideration.

Focus on the people, not on your product. Pay it forward — give first, get second.

Effective influencer engagement starts with reaching out to people who will have a genuine and authentic interest in a company or product. That interest is what inspires them to create a story that connects with their (and their readers’) passions. That it also mentions a product or service in some context is only a part of the story; Not all the story nor simply a tack-on mention at the end. For a conversation to be effective for both the brand and the bloggers, the inclusion of the brand has to fit (much like Cinderella’s slipper), not be forced.

Social media leaders should be compensated for their efforts on behalf of brands, and the value should be balanced, with each party obtaining sufficient benefit. In other words, if the product the brand is offering the blogger is a car for a significant period of time, the blogger might consider that sufficient compensation — depending on what the brand is asking in exchange. A few boxes of cereal or tubes of hand cream? Not so much.

Brands are best served by a “clean, well-lighted” space, in which editorial is clearly distinguished from advertorial content, and brand-influencer relationships disclosed. There is no such thing as too much information, too much disclosure in the blogosphere. The FTC imposes requirements on brands and bloggers for both disclosure and accuracy, but those are simply the price of admission. Long-lasting trust demands even more than a simple disclosure statement. To gain, and retain, trust, brands, influencers and communities need to be upfront about their point of view as well as their relationships with other parties. It’s the only way the consumer has all the information she needs to evaluate whether the opinion in a blog post is from a peer, and thus relevant to her life. Or simply an endorsement from an interested party or an advertisement. Both have value in the awareness/adoption process just a different one.

Every conversation has multiple stakeholders – the influencers, the brands and the readers, and you have to keep all three in mind when creating a campaign. Is the content relevant to the readers’ interests? Is it interesting? How authentically does it integrate the messaging into the story without appearing forced or fake? What will the reader experience be? Develop programs that will be interesting for the social media influencers and their audiences – wherever they engage with her — not just an opportunity to get paid for a post, and that support the brand messaging, without being a product pitch.

A sponsored conversation can be just as engaging as a straight-up editorial post, update or Tweet, provided that the topic taps into the woman’s passions, not the product press release.

Less is often more. Reaching out to fewer influencers, but ones that have a genuine interest and desire to support the brand is usually more effective than a larger number of mildly interested folks. A few really good posts by influential women who are leaders in a community can have a stronger, more positive impact than a slew of perfunctory posts. It’s also important to consider how many influencers should be included in a program; a fatigue often sets in when multiple posts about the same thing all appear on the same day. Intended to have a positive impact, such volume actually can have negative impact on a community.

“Keep your friends close. And your enemies closer.” Embrace your critics instead of trying to silence them. This is a tough strategy to follow; it’s hard to invite your critics to take a seat at the table, especially when you know there are hundreds of fans who would be happy to have that seat.

Own your words. When you make a mistake, ‘fess up and apologize. A little humility goes a long way. Bottom line: nothing spreads faster than bad news. If you don’t do social media engagement right, you will face criticism. Better to do it right the first time!

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Cleaning out the inbox:

Check out Blog Marketing to Moms Is About More Than Parenting, an eMarketer study about the momosphere. Full disclosure: I was interviewed for the piece.
On December 9th, I’ll be speaking at the Massachusetts Conference for Women at the Boston Convention Center. I’ll be doing a session on using social media to build your brand and professional reputation. The session was originally framed as an intro-level session, but feedback from the previous two conferences — in Pittsburgh and Houston — has confirmed that the audience wants more advanced content, so in Boston, I’ll be adding content on building a blog strategy. I’ll also be signing Professional Blogging For Dummies in the bookstore.

Six years of blogging – perspectives on social media

November 27, 2010 by Susan Getgood

Since I joined BlogHer earlier this Fall, I have had a lot going on — traveling, speaking, digging into the new job, moving my family to the NY area — and this poor blog has been sorely neglected. So neglected in fact that my 6th blog anniversary passed earlier this month and I didn’t even notice.

Thinking about that milestone over this holiday weekend led me to think about some of the changes I’ve observed in the blogosphere.

In 2005, early adopters were dipping their toes into the blogging waters. The hot topic was the corporate blog, and the term “social media” wasn’t even being used yet — Facebook was in its infancy and Twitter wouldn’t even be invented for another year. Public relations agencies were just beginning to reach out to bloggers on behalf of brands, mostly high tech and consumer electronics. Online conversation often swirled around the mistakes agencies and companies made with poorly targeted “spray and pray” outreach.

Now, according to research conducted by the Center for Marketing Research at UMass Dartmouth, 23 percent of the Fortune 500 have public blogs, including four of the top five corporations (Wal-Mart, Exxon, Chevron and General Electric), 60 percent have corporate Twitter accounts and 56 percent have Facebook pages (The Fortune 500 and Social Media: A Longitudinal Study of Blogging and Twitter Usage by America’s Largest Companies).

The study, which was announced at the Annual Research Symposium and Awards Gala of the Society for New Communications Research, concludes:

“This [adoption of social media] clearly demonstrates the growing importance of social media in the business world. These large and leading companies drive the American economy and to a large extent the world economy. Their willingness to interact more transparently via these new technologies with their stakeholders is [a] clear. It will be interesting to watch as they expand their adoption of social media tools and connect with their constituents in dramatically new ways.”

Furthermore, according to research conducted by FedEx and Ketchum, and reported in eMarketer, 75 percent of companies worldwide participate in social media in some aspects of their communications and marketing strategy, with 10% actively leading in the space and 15% still mostly on the sidelines observing (Leveraging Best Practices for Social Media).

Another hot topic in the early days of this blog was whether the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would accept blogs as an outlet for material disclosure by public companies. The SEC began studying the issue in late 2006 and in 2008, announced that it would accept websites and blogs as outlets for material disclosure under certain circumstances.

The topic that has engaged me the most since I dove into the social media pool, however, is the relationship between brands and consumers. Initially, this activity was called blogger relations, a name that reflected its roots in public relations and a focus on blogs. Over the past year or two, the term blogger outreach became more prominent — in part I think in an effort to distance the work from public relations. At least that was my reason for the vocabulary shift.

The sphere of activity also has extended beyond blogs to embrace social networks like Facebook and microblogs like Twitter and Tumblr, and influence is just as important as blog real estate, prompting a shift to talk about “social media influencers” rather than just bloggers.

Going into the new year, I will be shifting my analysis of this topic to focus on influencer engagement. How well do we engage influencers across the range of social media channels? What can brands do to better engage the customer with the brand premise while retaining authenticity? What is the role of the influencer herself? What can she do to engage proactively with the brands she loves without “selling out?”

Bottom line, I am more interested in the two-way sustainable engagement, brand to influencer and influencer to brand, than I am in a one-way outreach or a single campaign.

Next week, I’ll kick this off with a brief summary of some best practices for influencer engagement.

How the Pennsylvania Governor’s Conference For Women reminded me why I love what I do for a living

October 15, 2010 by Susan Getgood

This past Thursday, I delivered my workshop on using social media and blogs to build your brand and professional profile at the Pennsylvania Governor’s Conference For Women. I was honored — pleased — amazed — gratified — excited by the reception given to the workshop, both at the event and afterward.

Quite simply, it reminded me why I love what I do for a living.

The 500 or so women in the audience were very engaged. I had about 6 or 8 questions at the end, and I’m sure there would have been more had I not gotten “the hook” from my timekeeper, because I was mobbed at the podium at the end. The best part was afterward, though, when folks stopped me in the exhibit hall or came to my book signing to talk more about the topic or get my advice on a more personal level.

And my book! I don’t know how many copies of Professional Blogging For Dummies the conference bookstore had on hand, but I do know that the Pennsylvania ladies wiped it out. My book was sold out by 2pm.

What do I do for a living? I help:

connect brands and bloggers in win-win relationships
companies integrate social media into their marketing and customer service strategy
people find their social media and blogging sweet spot through my book and workshops

But really, what I do is help people and brands tell their stories. And so many of the women at the conference had wonderful stories to tell. I truly hope they start blogs because I want to hear from and about them.

That’s why the very best thing was the thank-you note I got on Facebook today from someone who attended my session and bought the book. She wrote that I inspired her to get moving on her business and a blog.

That makes all the difference.

Because I know that I made a difference.

I love what I do.

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If you are in Houston or Boston, don’t miss the upcoming conferences in these states. I’ll be doing the social media workshop at both, and look forward to meeting you there. In fact, I am giving away a pass to each. All you have to do is leave a comment on my September 25th post for your chance to win.

Good friend Morra Aarons-Mele’s company Women Online is a sponsor of the conferences, in good company with firms like Citizens Bank and State Farm Insurance.

FTC Update: Reverb, Green and Behavioral Targeting

October 6, 2010 by Susan Getgood

: Image via Wikipedia

I haven’t written about the FTC endorsement guidelines in quite a while but some things have crossed the transom over the past month that I wanted to share with you.

First, the FTC announced the resolution of its first completed investigation in which the social media aspects of the guidelines applied – Reverb.

Short story: Reverb was accused of “astroturfing” — employees of the PR firm left glowing comments on video game message boards as though they were satisfied customers of products. No fines were assessed, but the consent decree imposes some pretty stringent requirements on the firm and its principal. Read the consent decree for the details.

Two important things about Reverb:

The deceptive advertising laws existed – and applied to online and social media – well before the revised guidelines were issued last year. Deceptive advertising is deceptive advertising, full stop. The revised guidelines help us – advertisers and consumers – understand how the FTC intends to enforce the law. The guidelines were and are not targeted specifically at blogs.
The FTC focused on the company and its principal, not the individuals hired to leave the comments. It was the agency providing the direction that was held accountable for the deception. This is consistent with the agency’s statements that it intends to focus on advertisers, not on individual bloggers participating in social media campaigns.

In other FTC news: the agency is going to turn its attention to Green claims. Not surprising given the greenwashing of the past few years. According to Ad Age:

“The guides are expected to tighten standards for packaging claims such as “recyclable” or “biodegradable”; regulate how marketers use such terms as “carbon neutral”; and how quickly and close to the source of carbon output “carbon offsets” must be executed, among other things.”

Another term expected to come in for scrutiny is “sustainability.”

This reminds me of the organic/natural debate. Organic is specific. Products need to comply with very specific requirements to be labeled organic. Natural on the other hand has relatively little meaning, and certainly doesn’t mean something is “good for you.” There are many things in nature that are most definitely not good for humans to breathe or consume. Carbon monoxide. Tobacco. Poison. You get the idea.

And on Monday, I read an item in Ad Week about the major US advertising associations collaborating on a mechanism for consumers to opt-out of online ads that use behavioral targeting. A move designed to forestall formal FTC action on the issue.

According to Ad Week

“Ads targeted using past Internet browsing history will carry the small logo. Clicking it will bring notice of the targeting used and direct people to a page with options for blocking behavioral targeting.”

Behavioral targeting increases the relevance of the ads to a viewer’s interests, and in that respect, benefits both marketers and consumers. On the other hand, there are legitimate privacy concerns. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. What do you think?

Update 8 October: The FTC released the proposed new green guidelines on the 6th. The public comment period ends December 10th. The agency also forestalled the game of “social media telephone” like the one that occurred last year about the endorsement guidelines (there was more misinformation and disinformation circulating at one point than actual information) by releasing a nice summary PDF of the proposed changes.

Two levels of getting it right with blogger relations

September 17, 2010 by Susan Getgood

: Image by marymactavish via Flickr

Recently I was interviewed by Chief Marketer about how brands are reaching out to women through social media. The reporter was interested in how brands were and were not “getting it right.”

As I wrote here last month (OMG, that long), it’s become increasingly clear to me that the brands that are doing excellent work using social media tools to reach their customers generally have done and do a good job in traditional media. Sure, even the best companies make the occasional mistake with a campaign, product or program but for the most part, their marketing communications are sharp (often clever) and do not patronize the consumer.

These companies already understand that it’s important to respect your customer. In all that you do. They just have to figure out how to translate that imperative using the social media toolset in a way that is authentic to the brand and relevant to the customer.

It’s more than just getting the mechanics right. That’s the price of entry into social media engagement with your customer. I’ve been saying it for years, and I’ll keep on saying it: there is NO excuse for misaddressed e-mail – for example, the “Dear XXX” pitch about toys (children’s toys) that many parent bloggers got last week – or grammar errors – like “conscious” for “conscience,” also from last week’s in-box.

As Marketing Mommy said on Twitter:

@sgetgood My reply to him: “Despite my efforts to break into the porn star business, I’ve yet to use the moniker XXX.”

The poor interns come in for a lot of flack when we talk about these often humorous mechanical mistakes, but really, it is management’s job to create a system with the proper checks and balances.

If you MUST mass e-mail bloggers (and I wish you wouldn’t), invest in a decent CRM system and assign your interns to getting the data entered properly. Not on cutting and pasting pitches. Buy everyone who drafts, edits or sends customer facing emails a dictionary and make it a requirement that it be displayed on their desks. Why? Because it will be a constant visual reminder to check not just the spelling of words, but their meaning. Spell check and online dictionaries can’t do that.

The mechanics are the first, most basic level of getting blogger outreach right. We can do it. I know we can.

Your message is the second, more important level of “getting it right.” My favorite fantasy is that next year, even more companies and their agencies will see the light and understand that what they should be doing is sharing compelling ideas and stories with their customers. Exciting things that will make them want to write about the brand.

Instead of trotting out formulaic pitches and recycling the same product launch templates from project to project, client to client, brand to brand.

Be careful though.This requires more than just identifying the blogger’s passion that drives interest in your product and inserting the message point in an otherwise bland pitch. That’s a start (I guess), but it’s not enough. There is honestly still far too much of this sort of pitch circulating in the ether.

Really getting it right requires that you connect with that passion. To do that, you need to know the bloggers you are reaching out to. It still comes back to the 3 R’s as coined by good friend and colleague David Wescott in 2007 – respect your customer, be relevant and build a relationship over time.

Good blogger relations is still (and always will be) a commitment, not a one night stand.

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Pennsylvania Governor’s Conference for Women ticket giveaway – Stay tuned: I will pick a winner this weekend from the comments on this post. I also have one ticket each for the Texas Conference for Women in November and the Massachusetts Conference for Women in December. Watch for a post next week about the conferences and details on how I plan to give away those passes. More than likely it will be on Twitter, not here on the blog as finding time to write is a bit problematic for the next two weeks due to my schedule.

Next week, I will be in NYC most of the week, digging in to my second week on the job as VP Sales Marketing for BlogHer and speaking at a PRSA event on Friday. The following week, I travel to Orlando to present a social media workshop at AARP’s Orlando@50+ conference.

In between all of that we are trying to find a place to live for 3 people, 3 dogs and 2 cats. Fun times! We need a rental within about an hour’s commute to Manhattan by train until we sell our house in Massachusetts. If you’ve got leads, let me know. We’re leaning toward western Connecticut but open to all suggestions.