Marketing Roadmaps

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Almost Live from New York, BlogHer Business

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I’m still catching up after a whirlwind 3 days in New York City at BlogHer Business, where I caught up with old friends, made some new ones and didn’t get nearly enough sleep.

As promised, I will be posting the HP Case Study as well as some observations from the Improve this Pitch panel — look for the posts mid-week —  but in the meantime, please check out the posts from the BlogHer live bloggers.

I was also interviewed by the Screengrab team from Weber Shandwick. They were doing a series of short interviews with participants. Here I am, almost live from New York, talking blogger relations:

The power trip

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Some of you may have seen my tweets yesterday about my broken iGo power supply. In which case you will know that the power trip to which I refer has little to do with my ego and everything to do with my journey to find something, anything that would power my laptop and my Blackberry.

Here is the woeful tale. On the train to NYC on Wednesday, my iGo power adapter cord broke. It being the ONLY power supply I have with me for my laptop and my Blackberry and my iPod, I was pretty well screwed. I called my husband from the train and asked him to call iGo customer support to find out where in NY, preferably near the hotel, I could get a replacement part. Luckily, I only bought it in late January and still had the box with the model number in my office.

God bless my husband and high marks for effort to the iGo support techs. They had to do multiple calls because they had to check with me twice with questions about the broken bits. The recommended solution was for me to pick up a replacement part here in NYC. The iGo support tech told David that Radio Shack and Best Buy stocked the part, so off I went to the Radio Shack in the Manhattan Mall right next to the hotel. Unfortunately, Radio Shack did not have the part, so the Radio Shack sales rep recommended a basic wall adapter. Ka-ching $40.00 Back to the hotel I go to charge my phone and get some work done.

Then we have the OOPS. The wall adapter does NOT work with the laptop tip, only the small device tips. Back I go to Radio Shack. Where I learn that you have to buy a full converter package to charge a laptop. Wondering why the Radio Shack sales rep earlier in the day didn’t know that, off I go to Best Buy (12 blocks away) to see if they have the replacement part.

Best Buy on 44th & 5th doesn’t stock ANY iGo accessories of ANY kind. And I’m getting desperate. So I buy a regular power supply. Ka-ching $90.00

If you are keeping track, I’ve now spent $130.00, and about 3 hours on my "power trip." On top of the time that David spent on the phone with the iGo support techs while I was on the train. Because a $130.00 product that I’ve had for about 2 months broke. If you are still keeping track, that’s $260.00 all in.

Now, iGo is sending the replacement part to the house, but really what the company should have done is fed-exed the replacement part to me here at the hotel. At their cost, not mine. From some of my husband’s comments, it sounds like he did discuss this possibility with the iGo tech, but the overnight shipping would have been at my cost, not iGo’s. Since all I needed to do was buy a replacement part, why spend the money…

Well, it didn’t work out that way. I think the iGo techs meant well, but the information was bad. And I wasted time and money.

Tuesday I wrote, once again, that companies don’t seem to be replying to bloggers’ unsolicited comments, and it doesn’t seem to matter whether the posts are negative or positive. The silence is generally deafening unless it is a very high profile blogger. I have no illusions about my  profile so it doesn’t surprise me that I’ve never heard from AAA, who I blasted in December, and Verizon Wireless, whose customer service I have complimented on more than one occasion both here and on Twitter.

Let’s see if iGo is paying attention to the the blogosphere beyond the A-list…

The really top marks for this whole mess go to my husband for trying to sort this out for me while I was on the train. If you see him, tell him I said so.

He doesn’t read my blog either.

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Blogger relations is customer relations

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Recently, I was explaining to someone why I wanted to shift the mix of my consulting business to include more blogger relations projects, both hands-on projects and strategic consulting to companies executing their projects themselves.

It’s simple. Nearly every organization, regardless of size, is going to have to engage in blogger relations. Because blogger relations is the evolution of customer relations.

I hear the objection … "But isn’t blogger relations just PR campaigns aimed at bloggers to get them to write about products and services? How can that be customer relations?"

Outbound blogger relations, or blogger outreach, is only one part of blogger relations. It’s also more, or at least should be more, than "just PR." Remember: the blogger is the customer. When companies engage with bloggers, they are strengthening, or weakening, their relationships with their customers.

For the moment, though, let’s step away from the outreach discussion and remember that an interaction can be initiated by either party in a relationship. 

It is equally likely that a blogger — the customer  — will effectively reach out to a company by offering an unsolicited opinion about the firm or its products on her blog. How a company handles this blogger-initiated interaction, whether it be kudos or complaint, is equally blogger relations.

In my personal experience, companies rarely engage with bloggers under these circumstances. I’ve mentioned a number of different companies here, both positively and negatively, over the past three years. So far, only one company has left a comment on the relevant post. Other bloggers report similar results. The question is, why? 

Are the companies not paying attention, or do they just not know what to say?

It’s probably a bit of both. That’s the opportunity for companies willing to step up and really start talking with their customers. Wherever the conversation may be.

It starts with monitoring what people are saying about the company — on blogs, microblogs like Twitter, social networks like Facebook, Forums, your customer service or support lines — wherever customers talk about you, whatever else comes along. But it can’t end there, or even with solid outreach programs that offer relevant information to the appropriate people.

You have got to be willing to respond. To answer the question, acknowledge the comment, accept the compliment and address the concerns. Publicly.

That’s the challenge for blogger relations. Engaging with your customers on their terms as well as yours, on their turf as well as yours. Consistently and for mutual benefit.

Ready, set, go.

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I’m off to BlogHer Business tomorrow morning, so blogging will be light for the rest of the week, although I will be on Twitter. I will try to get my posts up about the sessions on the train ride home Saturday. While you are waiting, check out:

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An excellent read adventure

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Average Jane was kind enough to include Marketing Roadmaps on her list of most excellent reads in the meme started by Kayla at Project Mommy. The terms and conditions of the award, as with most memes, are pretty simple: pass it on and link back to the originator. You can repeat blogs that have already been awarded, but I think it is a cop-out to include ones that are on the same list as you, which is why you won’t see my list below repeating a good chunk of Average Jane’s even though I regularly read many of these same blogs and consider them most excellent.

Rules say award at least 10 Excellent Blog Awards, so here are 10 (out of the 500+ feeds in my feed reader) that will give you an excellent reading adventure. In alphabetical order by blog name:

  1. Communication Overtones
  2. Galactica Sitrep
  3. It’s Not A Lecture
  4. Mary Schmidt
  5. Mom-101
  6. mothergoosemouse
  7. Motherhood Uncensored
  8. Murphy’s Law
  9. Occam’s Razr
  10. PR-Squared

And if you’ve got a few extra minutes, please check out three blogs that I recently brought online for clients:

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Can this pitch be saved?

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Next week, Liz Gumbinner (Mom-101 and CoolMomPicks), Mir Kamin (Woulda Coulda Shoulda and WantNot.net), Maria Niles (ConsumerPop and BlogHer Contributing Editor) and I will be presenting a session called Improve This Pitch, first as a teleseminar for the Women Who Tech telesummit on Monday afternoon at 4 pm EDT and then as a panel at BlogHer Business in NYC on Friday afternoon at 1:15 pm.

As the title implies, we will be talking blogger relations, and specifically what marketers should do to improve their pitches. I’ll do a more comprehensive write-up of the session after we’ve given it at BlogHer — after all, the attendees should get first look at our collective brilliance — but I decided to share a few thoughts as a sort of sneak preview.

Some pitches cannot be saved. There is so much wrong with them that the only kind thing to do is put them out of their misery. There’s no good reason to send a 900-word email pitch about breakfast cereal. Or a pitch that talks down to the blogger.We’ll share a few specific examples and tell you what we would have advised the company.

Some products just shouldn’t be pitched to bloggers. That doesn’t mean the company can’t reach out to bloggers. Or that the blogger might not buy the product.  It does mean that the company has to find some other connection point with the blogger. We’ll share some ideas on what marketing people can do if they are tasked with reaching out to bloggers about products like bleach and bathroom cleanser.

Read the blog and address the blogger by name. You’ve read that here before, and you will again. This does not mean  "personalize" the email by mail-merging  the names of a mom blogger and her children into a generic pitch. Added demerits if the pitch is bad as well.

Another tip I’ve mentioned here before is to give bloggers exclusive access to information. But it has to be exclusive access to something that the blogger will find interesting. Odds are, that’s not going to be a scripted conference call with a company exec. There are a few general exceptions to this rule, including highly anticipated product launches and extending access to financial results calls to the public, not just the financial media and analysts, but not many. We’ll talk about what sort of exclusives do appeal to bloggers, and how you should go about inviting participants. Generic email blasts addressed to BLOGGERS are not it. 

If you will be attending Women Who Tech or BlogHer Business and have an example you’d like us to discuss, either yours or one you received, we encourage you to share it. You can send it in advance to me at sgetgood@getgood.com and I’ll forward to my co-panelists, or just bring it with you for the Q&A.

UPDATED, 3/31/08: PDF version of my Custom Scoop article: Some Advice for Reaching out to Mommybloggers.

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