Marketing Roadmaps

Blogging

Books, blogs and Burma

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crossposted to Snapshot Chronicles

We interrupt our discussion of blogger relations, good and bad, to bring you some news from around the blogosphere from friends new and old.

First, from  my good friend Yvonne DiVita. In addition to being one of the leading experts on marketing to women online, Yvonne runs Windsor Media Enterprises, a  print-on-demand publishing company that guides authors through the self-publishing process. This fall, they are going to put on a conference called Books, Blogs and Beyond: Publishing 3.0, and they are asking for our  input to create a program truly relevant to the attendees’ needs. If you are an aspiring author, or even just interested in the impact of social media like blogs on the publishing process, please take their survey. Let Yvonne and her team know what you’d like to know.

Speaking of authors, this week the momosphere was alive with buzz about Sleep Is for the Weak, the upcoming collection of essays by parent bloggers edited by Rita Arens. Read the story of how Rita shepherded this project from her dream to a reality on her blog Surrender, Dorothy, and then immediately add the blog to your feed reader. She is an excellent writer, as are the many moms, and one dad, included in the book. I can’t wait to get my copy, already pre-ordered on Amazon.

One reason I am so excited about her book, apart from the fact that Rita is an awesome woman who deserves the success and accolades that are and will be coming her way as the result of the book, is that it will expose an even larger audience to the amazing writing on parent blogs. Major media always seems to focus on mom blogs as a market,  the privacy issue — that parents are writing about their kids, and dooce. What it misses is what a damn fine group of writers this is, and not just Heather Armstrong. I read many blogs. Some of the best writing BY FAR is on parenting blogs, and not just about their kids. Politics, culture, sex, travel, art, photography, philanthropy, the economy. Just some of the topics you’ll find on parenting blogs along with daycare, diapers and  disasters.

Finally, here’s a simple way to donate to the relief effort in Burma that won’t cost you a cent, just a comment. Leave a comment on this post at digTrends by May 31st, and Digital Influence Group will add $10.00 to its donation check to the US Campaign for Burma. They’ve capped the donation at $5,000 — that’s 500 comments on their post, and I hope they get there. Hat tip, Mack Collier on Twitter.

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Blogger relations tip: Check the blog before you press send

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In all the chatter this week about blacklists and the quality (or lackthereof) of media databases, a comment by Doug Haslam, both on Twitter and a post by John Cass and Jason Falls, reminded me of one of my personal cardinal rules of blogger relations.

No matter how well you know the blogger or love the blog, it’s next to impossible to read every day, every post. No one expects that you will. But, if you are going to pitch, you absolutely must check the blog before you press <send>.

For the most part, we don’t have visibility into the lives of the mainstream media journalists to whom we email our pitches. We can’t be expected to know that they are on vacation or the dog died or they just got out of hospital. In other words, that it is a bad time to send a pitch.

Well, we do have that visibility into the lives of bloggers. Especially those that write about their lives, but even business/professional bloggers leave clues.

There is no excuse for not checking first, sending second.

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Anatomy of a good pitch

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Far too many of my posts lately have been examples of lousy PR pitches. It’s beginning to wear on me, so I thought I would share a good pitch with you for a change. This is courtesy of Mir Kamin from Woulda Coulda Shoulda and WantNot.net, and is one of the examples we discussed at the Improve This Pitch panel at BlogHer Business last month.

One note: while I do black out the names and companies in the bad pitches, because this is not about beating people up, it’s about learning how to do it better, I have not done so with this screen shot. The client was Outback Steakhouse and the PR person who sent the pitch is Charlie Kondek of MS&L Digital. A little link love for doing a nice job.

This is a good pitch because:

  • Charlie has taken the time over a couple of years to get to know Mir. He regularly reads her blogs — "pretty pretty Mir" refers to a blog in-joke that Mir and her readers understand without explanation.
  • He doesn’t assume that "her readers will love this offer" or ask her to write about it. He simply presents it and suggests it might be a nice giveaway for one of her blogs. 
  • He gives a couple interesting facts and a link, not seven paragraphs, embedded photos and multiple attachments to clog up her inbox. 

Let’s review.

  • Relationship – check
  • Relevant, personal communication – check
  • Short – check
  • Respectful of the blogger, her time and blog purpose – check
  • Bonus points for use of humor, which he knows she’ll appreciate because, see point one, he has taken the time to get to know her.

I want to write more posts like this one. If you have examples of pitches you really liked, please email them to me at sgetgood@getgood.com

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The real PR problem (black list debate part 3)

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The real PR outreach problem we should be solving:

 

This email was sent to multiple parent bloggers today. All of whose names were not available.

This problem doesn’t get solved by talking about how to punish the transgressors. It gets solved by making the investments in training, technology and research that avoid mass blast emails sent to "Name Not Available." Pony up, PR agencies.

 It gets solved when clients start having realistic expectations of media and blogger outreach, and realize that the customer should be the focus, not them. Let your agency lead with something compelling and relevant for the customer. If the agency doesn’t suggest a more personal, more customer centric approach, get a new PR agency.

Count ’em: six references in the first graph to the specific brand/company (the black boxes) , three to the category, photo gifts, and only  two, if you stretch it, to the customer. We can’t in good conscience count Name Not Available as a reference to the customer.

We have got to start treating our customers right. Or suffer the consequences. Because as we’ve seen this week, there will be consequences.

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Black lists don’t work, part two

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In Stowe Boyd’s responses to the latest black list flap, he advocates a totally transparent model for what he terms microPR:

"So, this is an additional argument for MicroPR: forcing PR firms to approach us in the open, on open social flow apps like Twitter, and in the small, where they have to jettison all the claptrap of the old press release model. In the open, that can’t lie easily, or they will be caught on it. In the small, they have to junk the meaningless superlatives, the bogus quotes that no CEO ever mouthed, the run-on phrases, the disembodied third party mumbo jumbo, as if the press release were edited by God."

There is some merit to bringing the entire conversation out into the light, but I can’t see it happening any time soon. There are too many impediments, including, but not limited to, the inevitable control issues. Companies and their PR agencies still think that they can maintain control over the process by managing it in a certain fashion. Wishful thinking.

So while I don’t think every communication between company and blogger has to happen in public, I believe we ought to act, write and speak as though they were. We used say:  would you do it, say it if your actions would appear on the front page of the NY Times tomorrow? Well, now, they could spread even wider. Act accordingly. Expect that your pitch will be published in full on a blog. Or used as an example.

More important than where you have the conversation is what you talk about. We have to stop being product centric and start being customer centric. For real, not just lip service.

The blogger isn’t simply an intermediary. He or she is your customer. Instead of asking the question:  how can we get the blogger to write about our laundry soap or tech widget? companies, and their agencies, should be asking, How can I help my customer? What information from us would be truly valuable and useful in their daily lives? What can we do for them? I guarantee you, it isn’t that your juice has 25% less sugar than yesterday or you are now at version 2.4.5.x of your software.

Companies should be talking to their customers where they are. If they are on Twitter, and they, like Stowe Boyd, want to be Twit-pitched, great. But if not — if the place is Facebook or MySpace or some other community, that’s where the company employees and PR reps should hang out. Get to know the people, their interests. Let the people get to know them. And then make the customers, not the company, not the product, the center of the story. However you pitch it, public or one-to-one.

"But that’s so hard and takes so long," says traditional PR flack.

Hhmm. Yes. But isn’t talking with your customer worth a little time?

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