Blogging

Insanity is often defined as "doing the same things over again but expecting a different outcome."

Using that definition, we, marketing and PR professionals, are most definitely insane. F*****g nuts.

While I’ve written about a few blogger relations SNAFUs in the past week,  this rant is not about them. In fact, having spoken or emailed with many of the players on both sides of those blogstorms, I have no doubt that everyone in those specific examples was sincerely trying to make a contribution, do a good thing, build relationships, offer constructive criticism, etc. No bad guys. Not the companies. Not the bloggers.

No. We — the collective we — are nuts because we keep trying to impose mass media models on online social networks. In some cases,  like the media outreach numbers game —  throw as much at the wall as you can and see what  sticks — the models are badly broken and dysfunctional in their natural environment. They just suck more when applied to bloggers.

Advertising messages that are just a little "off," or even mildly offensive, are at best amusing in their badness, but easily ignored regardless. We stop watching, We don’t buy. We make fun of them on our blogs.

Other mass market tools, like demographics and pychographics and "targeting" and models of consumer behavior are useful but not sufficient in themselves. Think about it. Engaging in online social networks is more like making friends than anything else. Do we make friends based on their demographic profile? I sure as hell hope not. If you are, please return to a previous century immediately.  Don’t get me wrong — there is nothing wrong with using these tools in your marketing efforts. But they are simply a place to start. If you go no further, please, go no further in social media because we don’t need any more insanity. Just keep using direct mail and infomercials or whatever else puts your controlled message in front of your target audience.

Because we don’t need blogstorms. They are scary. Think about it. You are a marketer who developed a blogger outreach program with the very best  intentions, but made some errors along the way — perhaps a few design flaws in the program or a junior staffer doing outreach who didn’t handle an objection properly or maybe just bad assumptions. All of a sudden, your program blows up. And not just one or two unhappy customers. All over the blogs, all over the ‘Net. And more often than not, it’s a case of simple mistakes. I can only imagine how it feels (and intend to keep it that way) but it must be an awful feeling. It must be so hard to understand why people are so upset when it is often an easily fixed issue or simple misunderstanding.

Here’s why. It’s a cumulative effect. Yours isn’t the only pitch a blogger receives or hears about in a given day. A mommyblogger might get 10 or 20 in a single day. If every single one of those is just a bit off — poor targeting, poorly written pitch, addressed to the wrong person or the name of the blog instead of a person — it’s like an escalating bad day.

You know, the kind of day when you oversleep and the kids miss the bus and you forgot to give them lunch money and then you are late for work. And once you get there, the day just spirals downward. Or if you work out of the house, the dog pukes on the carpet and email doesn’t work and Twitter is flaky. Then the kids come home and everybody is in and out of the family room, which just happens to be your office. Some telemarketer from a political campaign calls, but it’s for your spouse’s insanely conservative party not yours. And then in all of this, your partner or one of your kids says something perhaps a little clueless. Maybe not the worst thing ever, but just enough. You go ballistic. Nuclear even.

That’s why blogstorms happen. It’s not just your pitch. It’s your pitch in context of everything else, of an ongoing problem of marketers applying mass models to social networks.

Remember, a blog is not a media vehicle. Even if it looks like one, with advertising and everything. A blog is a personal publishing platform, and is driven by the passions of the blogger(s), not products and promotions. This is true even in the case of group or company blogs; without people and passion, they never get off the ground.

When you reach out to a blogger, he or she is also part of a social network, of which the blog is one piece. Everybody emails everyone else. They are also on microblogging platforms like Twitter and social nets like Facebook and Utterz and ooVoo and God knows what else. People are talking,  the shot really is heard ’round the world in a matter of minutes and nothing snowballs faster than bad news. Trust me. It’s what I do for a living.  It takes twice as much effort to spread good news as bad.

Recently I lost a piece of business that I really wanted. In part because I didn’t do enough self-promotion, which I am working to correct. And in part because I didn’t give easy answers. In the interviewing process, one of the questions asked was what small business bloggers would I reach out to on behalf of this potential client. I told the truth, which was that I didn’t know yet, because we needed to match the client’s messages with the bloggers who covered small business. The competition provided a list of bloggers and forums.

Now I suppose I could have sent them a list of SMB sites and bloggers. I have one, and it wouldn’t have taken long to "puff" it up. But I am absolutely convinced that the mass media numbers game is not the right approach for the long haul. The social media payoff for anyone, for any company,  is in doing the upfront research to figure out who you want to know, who wants to know you. It’s about building relationships with your customers over time, not overnight.

Repeat after me. Mass consumer models do not work in the blogosphere. We aren’t going to get a different outcome the next time. Thinking we will is insane.

Stop the insanity.

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Some additional resources:

• Marketing Roadmaps posts on Blogger Relations. There are TONS so rather than list them all, I’ve linked the category search.
• Some Advice on Reaching Out to Mommybloggers. An article I wrote for Media Bullseye earlier this year. BTW in case anyone cares, I asked them to donate my fee to charity.
• Stop pushing start pulling, from Geoff Livingston at Now Is Gone
• SNCR Blogger Relations Tip Sheet (free to members, $25. donation, non-members)
• State of Blog Relations (APCO and Council of PR Firms)

Tags: blogger relations, marketing, mommybloggers

Lori Dolginoff of Johnson & Johnson has had better days. She started today on jury duty and ended it in a blogstorm around Johnson’s upcoming Camp Baby event.

For those that don’t know the story, here’s the Cliff Notes version. Johnson and Johnson invites lots of mommybloggers to a 2-day all expenses paid event in early April. Mommybloggers looked forward to seeing their friends, making new ones, lots of conversation ensues in the back channels. Then within the last few days, two well-read moms, Julie Marsh and Stefania Pomponi Butler, were "disinvited." Read their posts (if you haven’t already) for the full stories. Short version: both women were late RSVPs, for different reasons, but both were confirmed for the event. But when each introduced a variable unexpected by Johnson’s —  Julie needed to bring her 9 week old son; Stefania couldn’t stay for the whole thing — both were "disinvited."

Now, as I’ve written here recently, I’m participating in a panel at BlogHer Business in two weeks called Improve This Pitch, and this sure sounded like one that could stand a bit. I also thought the whole affair would make a great blogger relations case study for Marketing Roadmaps. To do it justice, however, I would need the company perspective as well as the bloggers’, and it really couldn’t be done until after the event.

In light of the swirling blogstorm, however, I emailed the marcom agency doing the outreach asking to speak to someone from Johnson’s. About the disinvitations and for the later case study.

Imagine my surprise when Lori Dolginoff, Director of Communications for the Johnson’s brand, and the architect of the Camp Baby event, called within hours of my email. On some level, I suppose she was glad to hear from someone about this who she could call — my phone numbers are in my email signature —  but still, it was a good sign.

Johnson’s made some critical execution errors in this outreach, which I will dissect shortly, but I want to state clearly that I was impressed by Lori’s wlllingness to take responsibility for the mess, and her genuine desire to mend the broken fences and learn from the mistakes. After speaking with her, I do believe that their intentions were good. They wanted to do something nice for the moms as well as promote their products. Give them a getaway from their kids and families. They also clearly understood the importance of transparency, which is no small matter.

We’ll talk more about the actual content of the event in my post-event post. Right now, let’s focus on the outreach.

Where did it fall down? Errors of execution.

They didn’t really understand the mom’s point of view. Lori told me that they thought it was understood that this was an adults-only event with no child care. Well, yes, it was. Part of the disconnect was that J&J thought that meant no children or babies whatsoever. Mommybloggers, however, likely interpreted it simply as no child care.

What J&J didn’t understand was that a mom with a very young nursing baby might expect something called Camp Baby to accommodate her and her infant since the whole point of bringing such a young baby was that the mother couldn’t be separated. In other words, she didn’t need child care. Remember: no one was looking to bring older babies, toddlers or children to the event, at least as far as I know. We’re talking young, breast-feeding infants. If Johnson’s wanted no children of any age for any reason, it should have been explicit. If it was, I doubt Julie Marsh would have given it a second thought.

Now of course, it probably should have had some child care options. Doesn’t mean it had to pay for air tickets for children. Doesn’t even mean it had to pay for the child care, although the spirit of all expenses paid implies all expenses. I know personally that arranging child care can be tough. I’m lucky that my husband doesn’t like to travel except on family vacations; he used to live on the road so he now prefers to stay home. But for many mommy bloggers, child care does make a tremendous difference in their ability to participate in an event or not. But no matter. The mistake was in not being explicit about the policy. Not in whether or not there was child care

Hype & lack of knowledge about the bloggers. Spaces are filling fast. RSVP today. Read Stefania’s post. They were really pushing her to say yes. So she did. And then once there was a wrinkle, it all fell apart. Now, as someone who both follows and participates in the momosphere, I absolutely understand why you would want Stefania at your event. She’s a smart articulate Asian-American woman who writes for multiple blogs. She has lots of readers. So,why, once you get her to say yes, would you f*** it up??? Particularly since she has written on more than one occasion about poor blogger relations. Do a little bit of homework on her blog. Just click the PR category. Takes a second. 

Same for Julie. She announced Oliver’s birth on the blog. There is really no excuse for not knowing that she’s a new mom. She even told the person organizing the event that she just had a baby. I suspect that the fact that the agency person didn’t understand the possible ramifications of this is due to a common blogger outreach problem: the folks sending the emails are often junior staffers without much experience. Clearly, in this case, no kids.

Clarity & expectations. If space was limited and preference to be given to women who could attend both days, it should have been stated upfront. Women who couldn’t commit to the full timeframe wouldn’t have replied. Or tried to arrange childcare as Stefania did. It is all about expectations. Set the right ones, and you’ll be successful. Confuse people? Blogstorm.

Final point. In recent months, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend toward big programs/events. It’s understandable and entirely consistent with a "big brand" approach but not necessarily consistent with establishing long term relationships with bloggers. Or your customer. Because that’s what a blogger is. Your customer. Don’t forget it. It’s about the relationship over time, not overnight. So, think about it. Do you want a one-night stand? Or a commitment?

I gave Lori some advice, which she seemed to appreciate, and will be watching closely to see what the company does now. The most important things to to do, IMNSHO:   

• reach out to the women who were not accommodated, starting, but not ending, with Julie and Stefania;   
• address the whole mess head on at the event in two weeks. The women there already know about it. Deal with it;   
• put on a good event;   
• do it better next time.

I’ll be watching, and I know for sure, I’m not alone 🙂

Tags: Johnson & Johnson, Camp Baby, blogger relations