Marketing Roadmaps

Blogging

Black lists don’t work

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This week, the idea of a black list to stop PR agencies from spamming bloggers and journalists reared its not terribly attractive head, this time from Gina Trapani of Lifehacker who published a list of domains that had sent unsolicited email to her personal email address.  In the not distant past, we had the same invocation from Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired.

They have a point, and I don’t dismiss the concern at all. More and more, PR pitches are poorly targeted, poorly written spam. Bad when sent to journalists. Inexcusable sent to bloggers.

But black lists don’t work. Not really. They didn’t work for Joseph McCarthy in the 50s and they aren’t going to stop bad blog pitching now.

Why? Because they trap the innocent, the naive, the well-intentioned as much as they trap the disingenuous, the guilty, the spammers. And since the truly guilty are playing a numbers game, a block here or there matters little to them.

Our collective attitude about PR is no different than our attitude toward advertising. It’s not that we don’t like ads. What we don’t like is bad advertising, poor direct mail and fundraising calls during dinner.

For the most part, we don’t want to block ALL email from PR and marketing agencies. Just that which is untargeted, irrelevant, impersonal.

So companies, and their agencies, need to get with the program and figure out how to reach out to their customers online in positive ways. Reactive and proactive.

How? It starts with understanding what interests your customer. Perhaps your product, but generally, campaigns built around products fall flat. You need to think beyond YOUR product and into your customer’s interests. Needs. Desires. Hopes. Aspirations.

That’s not so easy for your average cereal or soap marketer. And why so many campaigns end up in the bad pitch column. Even when they aren’t necessarily that bad.

And unfortunately, there is no magic formula. Anyone who tells you there is? Liar.

It’s a process. It starts with preparation, research and active participation with the bloggers that matter to you. And for whom you matter.

Then when you go to engage — to pitch — it means developing a program that is as much, or more, about them than it is about you.  A press release about your latest announcement does not qualify. Sorry.

Watch this space over the next few months for some examples of companies that seem to understand what this means and have done outreach programs that resonated with bloggers.

And, please, stop looking for the bogeyman. There isn’t one — not even at the stupidest, spammiest PR Agency . Focusing our energies on looking for one obscures the real issue.

How do we want to engage with our customers online?

Want some help? I don’t often promote my consulting business here on the Roadmap. I figure if you want to call, you will. But please don’t forget that helping companies meet their customers online is my business. If I can be of service to you, nothing would make me happier.

Especially if it reduced the number of bad pitches landing in our inboxes.

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A Mother of a Day: Mom bloggers on the Today Show and a bad-pitch-apalooza

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What a day!

It started with the C-string on the Today Show — that’s the team after Matt and Meredith, after Al and Ann, which apparently now features Kathie Lee Gifford along with Hoda Kotb. This is where Today decided to effectively bury its taped segment with mom bloggers Jill Asher, Kristen Chase and Mir Kamin as well as its live interview with Heather Armstrong (dooce). Jill, Kristen and Mir at least benefited from a reporter, Janet Shamlian, who actually listened to their answers, although I do wonder about the editing of the interview. As Christina mentions in her post, the women discussed far more topics, including the importance of community, than made the cut.  And amateurs on YouTube do a better job with chyrons than whoever edited the taped piece. Here’s just one example — below is a screen grab of Jill Asher from Silicon Valley Moms. Maria Bailey is later in the piece, without a chyron at all.

But it was a decent segment and also included mentions of BlogHer. Too bad the network showed it at a time when it has relatively few viewers. So few in fact that it the local affiliates run second and third tier advertising. And in my case, the weekly tests of the emergency broadcast system.

The interview with Heather Armstrong was … There are really no words other than to say that the decision to employ Kathie Lee Gifford shows how out of touch the network is with its audience. Gifford was absolutely awful. I wish I had video skilz because then I would create a mash-up of the segment with the discussion on Twitter running alongside. You would literally pee your pants at some of the very on-target comments. Just do a few searches on tweetscan and summize, on Today show and Kathie Lee (use various spellings and intials, no one was too fussed about spelling it right).

Let’s just say no one was too impressed with Kathie Lee, her attitude, her preparation for the interview or the way she stomped on Heather’s answers.

I ask again: why did NBC think hiring Kathie Lee was a good thing? Seriously, I’d rather watch an infomercial. At least they are honest. Gifford has the gall to judge mom bloggers for writing about their kids when we ALL remember how she pimped her own kids on Regis & Kathie Lee. Blecch.

Moving on to the bad-pitch-apalooza. Apparently Mother’s Day brings out the best in bad pitches… Does that even make sense? Today, two duds crossed my desk, shared with me by mom blogger friends. Names have been removed to protect the innocent and guilty. Here are the first paragraphs from both.

and

Where, oh where, do I start? I know. How about:

  • Grammatical English. Moms, not Mom’s
  • Learn the tools, people. The parenthetical comment in the first is just embarassing. For those PR folks that still don’t get how bad this crap is, read it. And weep. The pitch was awful too, but it almost doesn’t matter. Nobody read past the parens.
  • As for the second. Sent to mom bloggers? Uhm, last I checked, they weren’t going to prom. For most of us, our kids don’t even have all their adult teeth, forget about zits. I did an informal and completely unscientific survey on Twitter and many moms I know personally received this mass emailed pitch. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Especially given the analysis Johnson’s  recently experienced.

There’s no excuse for this sort of error. It is absolutely crystal clear that no one is doing any homework here.

Compare and contrast with this pitch I received today:

Now, that’s refreshing. A PR person who actually understands that sending me a pitch is risky business. A calculated risk on the sender’s part that I would appreciate this approach, but if you read my blog, you’d be smart and take the chance. As she did. Sure, I’m critical, but always in the interest of doing it better, getting it right.

I also feel strongly about helping junior people get it right. My friend Liz Gumbinner (Mom-101 and Cool Mom Picks) regularly replies back to PR folks  for the same reason. We know they are young kids, thrown in the deep end, without enough help or training. "Just send these emails."

In this case, the pitch, for a market research report, was on target but way too long. No one would read it. I certainly didn’t. I also do not recommend asking bloggers to write. If the pitch is good, you don’t need to ask.  I gave her some input and asked for the report, and was pleased to receive, along with the report, her grateful reply that she was re-writing her email pitch based on my feedback.

Amen. And thanks.

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New Comm Forum, blog move, Star-Ledger on Camp Baby

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Just a few quick updates.

First, I will eventually get the slides from the Alumni panel at New Comm Forum up on the conference wiki, but for now, I’ve linked them here (PDF 2M). Thanks again to Jen McCLure, executive director of the Society for New Communications Research for supporting the panel and giving it such a nice slot on the program, and to the four alumni who shared their stories: Wendy Harman, Bob Siller, Doug Bardwell and Chris Turner.

Don’t miss the Star-Ledger’s story on Johnson’s Camp Baby. No news in it for readers of this blog, but nice to see mainstream media do such a balanced blogging story.

Finally, Marketing Roadmaps will be moving to Word Press sometime this summer, but I promise to give plenty of warning and will run in parallel for at least a month. Thanks to everyone for their advice and words of encouragement.


SOCAP Social Media 101 Workshop

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On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of giving a social media & blogging 101 workshop at the SOCAP (Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals in Business) International Symposium here in Boston.

Here are the slides for those attendees that want to download them. If you have trouble downloading just shoot me an email at sgetgood@getgood.com and I will email them to you.

If you are interested in the workshop for your organization, it lasts about two-hours, and focuses on the application of new media tools like blogs and Twitter to customer service and consumer affairs. Email me to discuss in more detail.

Download Blogging101_SOCAP.pdf (2396.7K)

Will you follow me?

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Friends and long-time readers, will you follow me if I move this blog off Typepad, which is driving me progressively crazy, over to a new address?

Here’s my problem. This blog has a custom design. Which means I cannot easily use ANY of the Typepad widgets to add functionality. Everything has to be done by hand.

And some things don’t work too well. Like the weird narrow delicious linkroll. Why is it so narrow? Who knows. I’ve messed around for a bit and it just gets narrower. I finally had to move my Blogroll to a separate page because it became one word per line and I HAVE NO IDEA WHY. Admittedly, I did not set up my design. But still… When I mess around with my WordPress blogs, I can usually figure out what is going on. Here, not so much.

So I am contemplating switching over to WordPress. I would leave the old Typepad blog up as an archive — a single user Typepad account is not that expensive — and just move forward on the new site from a cut-over date. With the flexibility of WordPress, I think we could even have a search into the old content if you wanted it.

I am well aware that this move would put my rankings into the toilet, but since I don’t really care about that, the more germane issue is: Will you come with me when I move? You I care about.

Should I do it or just continue to suck up the irritation that Typepad is becoming?