Blogging

Are we writing for people? Or for the machines?

June 25, 2007 by Susan Getgood

Of late I’ve noticed something quite alarming. Short blog posts with more tags tacked on at the bottom than actual words within the post.

Tags are fine. Helpful even. But when there are more tags than there is content, I fear we’ve crossed over more than a chasm into an unpleasant valley where we are writing more for the machines — the search engines — than we are for the actual people who might read our deathless, or deadly, prose.

This dilemma echoes a criticism I have long had of business Web sites — that they spend far too much time "optimizing" for search engines, and not nearly enough time just putting forward a simple value proposition for their customers.

My two cents? If you write compelling copy on your Web site that tells your current and prospective customers why they might want to do business with you, you will use the right keywords. If you’ve taken the time to understand, and develop, what your customers really need, the language will follow. If you haven’t, no amount of manipulation, or SEO fees, will work.

Sorry.

The same is true for blogs. This is a conversation. If your principal objective is to be discoverable in search engines… that’s talking to the machines, not to people. A few tags on a post is fine. 20 is stupid. Really. How can your post be about 20 things?

It’s not.

If you are writing for the machines, whether a Web site or a blog, I am pretty sure you will bore me to tears.

Sorry.

And if you are writing for the machines, don’t think we don’t know it.

We do.

Tags: SEO, tagging, search engine optimization, corporate blogging, blogging, B2B, B2C

Defining Social Media Success: The New Adventures of CBS

June 14, 2007 by Susan Getgood

In the comments to my post about defining social media success, David Wescott pointed out, correctly, that we don’t know whether a program like the CBS blogger outreach for the program The New Adventures of Old Christine is really a success unless we know what the objectives were. We can guess, but the measure of success is whether the outreach accomplished what CBS hoped.

So I decided to find out. Last week, I spoke with Beth Feldman, the CBS communications VP who spearheaded the effort. Thanks, Liz, for making the connection.

Beth is a mom blogger herself, and recently co-wrote a book Peeing In Peace: Tales & Tips for Type A Moms. As a result, she has gotten to know a number of other parenting bloggers. The New Adventures of Old Christine was about to get a new day and time, and she thought outreach to parent bloggers was a perfect fit.

The goal was quite simply to get the word out about the show.

"We treated the bloggers just as we would reporters," she says. "There was a press conference with the entire cast including star Julia Louis-Dreyfus and series creator and executive producer Kari Lizer. Each blogger got to ask a question of the cast and they also observed part of a rehearsal. Afterwards, the bloggers went out for coffee with the show publicists and a programming exec."

"For me, the coffee was one of the best parts of the whole day. As Liz told you, we didn’t fly anyone out for it, but some did fly out at their own expense because they wanted to participate. Many of these bloggers had never had a chance to meet in person. Even though they knew each other through their blogs and email, this day gave them an opportunity to connect in person. It was great to be part of that."

Beth was quite clear. She says that this outreach was most definitely a success for CBS, and overall, a step in the right social media direction for the network. But she doesn’t feel she had to achieve "more" with this project.

"I’m a publicist. My goal was to reach out to bloggers just as we would entertainment reporters. We wanted them to have a fun positive experience, and hopefully write about the show and the visit. Which they did. If I were a development executive trying to make decisions about programming, my goals, and tactics, would have been different."

Ironically, Beth told me that usually CBS would provide a gift bag on a set visit. This time, Beth was too busy. The DVDs the moms received? CBS sent them a few episodes in advance so they’d be acquainted with the show. They’d do the same for a traditional reporter.

The network did create a custom package of video coverage of the visit for each blogger, with an intro and outro recorded by the blogger. Some of the bloggers used it on their sites. Others did not. Which was fine with Beth. They were going to film the visit anyway. It didn’t cost much to make the special DVDs for the moms. My opinion? What a nice and well targeted extra touch. You wouldn’t do this for a print reporter because they’d have no place to use it. And TV or radio would record their own stuff. But it’s perfect content for a blog: multimedia, exclusive to each blogger, featuring the blogger.

Beth also mentioned that CBS’s "narrowcast" outreach to the small group of mom bloggers was followed by a "broader" cast effort to reach the same core group. About a month after the set visit, and a bit closer to the actual change of time for the show, Lisa Stone of BlogHer hosted a live Webcast with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Kari Lizer that also was posted on CBS.com. They also fed an electronic press kit about the mom blogger set visit to CBS affiliates.

So, was the CBS blogger outreach for the New Adventures of Old Christine a success? The bloggers invited certainly thought, and said, so. Independent observers think so. The network says so.

And since we are still talking about it months after the fact, I don’t think there’s any question. How often does a blurb in Entertainment Weekly or TV Guide show a similar lifespan?

I for one certainly plan on watching New Adventures, at least once, when it returns in mid-season next year. Unless it is on at the same time as Battlestar Galactica….

Tags: blogger relations, CBS, New Adventures of Old Christine

Ghostwriting, Warren and Yippee

June 7, 2007 by Susan Getgood

As I wrote last month, I strongly believe that ghostwriting is not appropriate for blogs. Others disagree, and while I was out of pocket the past week or so, the conversation took flight again

Let’s be crystal clear: ghostwriting is when someone writes for another person and the item is published under the other person’s name. In books, you might see it as "By Very Famous Person, with Known Ghostwriter," although you may also see the "By, with" construct with co-authors when one is more well-known or made a greater contribution than the other. In blogs, you are not likely to see the ghostwriter’s name at all; the item is posted by the "author."

While ghostwriting is a legitimate approach to communications vehicles like the CEO letter in the annual report, magazine article or a speech, it is not a good approach for blogging. As Shel Holtz points out, blogging is a new communications channel that is supposed to remove barriers, not create new ones:

[But] a blog by an identified senior executive is different. By blogging, the executive is specifically saying, “This is me engaged in a conversation with you.” While everyone knows that the quotes in the press release are fabricated, and that the speech was penned by a speechwriter, there is an expectation when someone reads and comments on Jonathan Schwartz’s blog that he’s engaged directly with Sun Microsystem’s CEO, not some anonymous proxy. When people learn that somebody other than the CEO is the blog’s true author, it will serve only to deepen the distrust and cynicism that characterizes most peoples’ existing perceptions of business.

That doesn’t mean that if your CEO can’t or won’t write, you can’t have a company blog or participate on blogs. You just need to take a different approach. Shel mentions some possibilities in his post. Here are a few others.

Hire a writer specifically for the blog. It can be a staff person or an outside consultant. Depending on the "editorial mission" you pick for the blog, she can post as a more impersonal "Company Name" or under her own name. If you choose "Company Name" you should disclose the approach and contributors somewhere on the blog. That readers can actually find. When I blog for clients, I prefer to write under my own name, but will do the "company name" approach if that suits the blog better.
Look around. See if there is a good blog on your company’s topic already in existence, and consider sponsoring it. It can be written by a customer or expert. Maybe even an employee writing on his own time But remember: becoming a sponsor doesn’t mean you now own it. The blogger should retain her independence. Note: this could be slightly different if the blog were written by an employee. In this case, you might want to acquire it outright and make it part of the employee’s job.
Develop a group blog, with an editor responsible for the editorial calendar. Much like a magazine. Contributors can be employees, customers, outside experts, etc. etc. This can be a challenging task but well worth it. The group brings diversity of opinion and distributes the posting burden among a larger number. That generally means more posts and ultimately more visibility. It’s no accident that the top blogs are group blogs. Your editor can be internal or external, and post under his own name or the company’s.

All these approaches are legitimate ways to engage with blogs without resorting to the artificiality of ghostwriting.

***********

Two shout outs

To Grace Davis for her post "Enjoy Every Sandwich" A little Warren was just what I needed today, thanks for the reminder.

To Mary Schmidt for her Yippees and Yawns. Excellent advice for anyone embarking on a Web site project. Or wondering why no one ever visits their site 🙂

Tags: ghostwriting, corporate blogging, CEO blogging