Marketing Roadmaps

Ethics

Bloggers aren’t journalists

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Robert Scoble posted late yesterday that "Great journalists call" in reference to the fact that some reporters actually called to confirm the rumour that he was leaving Microsoft while other bloggers simply went with the story as it unfurled its way through the blogosphere, without calling.

Journalists can be bloggers. Dan Gillmor. The folks at BusinessWeek. There’s no shortage of examples. And some bloggers are journalists, subscribing to  a code of ethics that demands balanced reporting, objectivity or at least fairness, verification of the facts, and, dare I say it,  Truth. I’ll leave you all to find your own examples here — anything I do will leave someone’s favorite out, and then everyone will focus on that rather than my point.

Just having a blog does not make someone a journalist. Even if they happen to break the news. 

And before the citizen journalist advocates get up in arms,  I *do* think citizens can be journalists. But not simply because they want to be or say they are. A citizen journalist has to do the same job we expect from a reporter from the daily paper. Fair and balanced reporting. Check the facts. Check your spelling or get a copy editor to do it for you.

Break the news right, you can call yourself a journalist. Spread a rumour? That’s gossip. Nothing wrong with doing that on your blog if you want to. It is your blog.

But reporting a rumour is not telling the story. Let’s not confuse the two.

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Technorati-Edelman joint project: It’s a good thing!

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Information may want to be free, but most often it isn’t. There is a cost to just about everything. In this exciting new media world, we tend to forget this. In particular we tend to forget that many (most?) of  the companies providing the goods and services that power the new world are for-profit endeavors.

Such as Technorati, which experienced a little PR blogger backlash today after the details of its joint project with Edelman were revealed. Folks were concerned about Technorati having such close ties with a PR agency. What would that mean for all the rest? Will the blogosphere be damaged somehow by this deal? To which I say, respectfully: Come on, folks.

It’s a business deal. I highly doubt whether anyone is in anyone’s pocket, now or ever. Each participant had a good business reason for doing the deal, both benefit, and lucky for the blogosphere, so do we.

Let’s start with the Edelman. This is one of a series of smart business moves by Richard Edelman. He is establishing his agency as the premier PR agency for social media. Doesn’t really matter yet whether they’ve delivered anything yet or that there was a flap over Wal-Mart or even whether there is a real competitive advantage in the short 6-8 month period that they’ll have an exclusive over the new localized stuff. The perception is that the agency has made a commitment to blogging and is willing to do what it takes. And it’s not just lip service or having a blog or recruiting well-known bloggers. With this deal, they’ve made an actual investment in the blogosphere. And that is one smart PR move.

Whatever competitive advantage this exclusive period gives them depends on their execution. And quite frankly I don’t think it really matters. Six-eight months is nothing. The real competitive advantage is owning the position of  "the" social media PR agency. Big company clients who want to look into "this stuff" will know where to go. Eventually, the agency will have to deliver on the perception, but from his speech at Syndicate last week, sounds to me like Richard Edelman is ready for the challenge. Is that hard for PR agencies to swallow? Probably. Bad for the blogosphere? No, because it seems we will get the localized Technorati far faster in this scenario.

Now to Technorati. I may be over-simplifying, but it just seems like a smart business move. After all, Technorati is a for-profit business, not a public service. Good for them that they’ve made the service so central to our blogging experience — at least if we speak English or Japanese. But… Technorati has a business problem — it needs to deliver  localized versions of its service FAST or risk losing first-mover advantage. However the deal materialized and whatever the terms, having a customer to fund the development makes everything a lot easier for Dave Sifry and team.

From what I’ve read, it also sounds to me like Edelman’s interest is in the monitoring of global blog conversation. I may be naive, but I didn’t get the sense that Edelman was involved IN the development, simply funding it and reaping the initial benefits. I wouldn’t call that a Technorati sell-out. I call it a business deal.

Technorati may be the most well known RSS search engine but it is by no means the only one. If some of the nefarious deeds speculated upon elsewhere did happen, it wouldn’t take long for the crime to be discovered.

I’m sure both companies weighed the potential blogstorm of their announcement, and determined that the benefits outweighed the negatives. The good news for us is that no matter how much Edelman and Technorati benefit (and no question, they will), in the end, we all benefit, because we will have these localized Technorati services next year. And that is indeed a very good thing.

Disclosures: None. I have absolutely no inside information. This is just my opinion.

Update: Andy Lark has a good post, updated with some additional info from Steve Rubel. 

Update 2: Stowe Boyd makes some good points.

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It’s not about blogs

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“I sent the club a wire stating, PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON’T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER.” – Groucho Marx

Okay, here goes nothing. I think Daniel Bernstein from Bite PR is a good writer. It’s swell that he included me with Jeremy Pepper and Steve Rubel in his post. Yeah he called us  “fanatical” — but maybe it was a compliment, so I am taking it as such. Hey, I’ve been called worse things this week, by far lesser “people.”

But… the idea that any group, no matter how it is constructed, should take over “management” of the PR blogosphere is wrong. So wrong.

Here’s why.

It’s not about blogs. Or link rank. Or any other rating system you can dig up. The reason blogs have traction is that they deliver on the promise of the World Wide Web. Everybody *can* be a publisher. That completely changes the equation — the “printing press” is no longer scarce, limited to those with deep pockets. Companies really have to give a shit about their customer.

Is that killing PR? Some think so. I don’t. Or at least, it is not killing PR as I know and practice it. PR is about telling the story. Yes to the media, but also to other publics. And no matter what, it has to be a good story. Bloggers like a good story as much as, if not more than, anyone.

The mushroom mentality (keep ’em in the dark and cover them with shit) doesn’t work anymore. About time.

If you want to succeed in the new world, it really is all about the customer. And not lip service. Really about the customer. As a marketer, that is a state of affairs I have strived for most of my career. Blogs facilitate this, but truly, it doesn’t matter if a company EVER does a blog. If it engages more fully with its customers, we’ve got a win.

Tell the truth. If it ain’t pretty, fix it. If you can’t fix it, do something else.

So, I don’t want to regulate anything. It is the Wild Wild West, and that is as it should be. At least for a little while longer. Command and control. No way. Engage and educate. Ethics. You bet. PR and marketing practitioners that take that approach will be successful.

But let’s not repeat our mistakes.

Try to stuff the genie back in the bottle.Um. No.

Try to impose old style agency models. Um. No.

Identify the leaders and tell everyone else they are in charge. Um. Really No.

Focus on helping our clients (and ourselves) figure this all out and do the level best we can in this new world. You bet. Will we get it right every time? Probably not. But that is okay.

Is blogging the “killer app?” Some say yes. I say not really. The “killer app” isn’t the tool we use. It is the change in attitude that blogging represents. We no longer tell the customer the story. We let him be part of it, for good or ill. Whether he or she does that through a blog or a podcast or a wiki or even a regular old Web site, it doesn’t matter. The killer app is the customer.

And blogs give her a voice whether the company ever blogs a word. Yup.

Now, some measure success by the Fortune 500 and what they adopt. More power to you. I do not, because that isn’t where change starts. In fact, it takes a good long while. Big companies are slow to move and risk averse.

Change usually happens in small to mid-size companies. And guess what, there are way more of those than there are big guys.

And I do see change. Companies (large and small) are looking at social media as part of the marketing mix. Customers are valued, not just counted. And you know, even some of the Fortune 500 are paying attention. Bonus points.

But it’s not just about blogs, folks, so expand your vision.

It’s about people.

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The power of language

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I’ve been thinking quite a bit about words lately — and please read until the end, there will be some choice ones. Promise.

A few things kicked off this rumination. First, Mack Collier and Nellie Lide  posted some thoughts about the word "consumer." And then my son asked me about the International Association of Nobodies— he was initially concerned about being one 🙂 and I had to explain why being one was a good thing.

That got me started on words. What do they mean, really? Isn’t the meaning delivered by your context and your own filters? For example, the word consumer. For me, it is nothing more than a word to distinguish people as individuals versus people in their business roles. Ie business media, consumer media. It is the aggregrate. I appreciate Mack and Nellie’s comments about the word consumer, but I wonder — isn’t the real problem HOW we market, not the label we use, whether it be consumer or customer or whatever. Changing the label doesn’t change the behavior, much as we wish it might. If you are a change agent, and I do consider myself one, you need to focus on the behaviors first. Don’t worry so much about the words. Make the customer the focus, and he won’t give a damn WHAT you call him 🙂

Which brings me to nobodies. I was on vacation last week, so apparently missed the bulk of the contretemps (thank god, my testosterone meter clearly would have gotten a workout). But nonetheless, it is worth revisiting. For me, the whole point of the nobodies wasn’t the insult to any one person; it was a collective reaction to "rankism." The idea that one has to be a SOMEBODY for one’s opinion to matter.

I have always believed that everybody’s opinion has value. When you stop learning from others, you stop living. The wonder of blogs is that they give so many the opportunity to speak. Even if only to one other. As I posted in a nobody’s blog comment, everybody is a somebody to someone. All you need is one reader to make a difference.

Translation: you are f***** the minute you start believing your own press 😉 It is really about what you do. With your words, with your life, with whatever influence you have. Not about how many stripes you perceive you have on your sleeve. Not about what you write or your Technorati ranking. Not about whether you have the status conveyed by the print press.

Whoever you are, make your words matter.

Utopian. Probably. Oh well. C’est dingue mais on y va.

Which brings me to the promised choice words. I made the decision yesterday to leave a comment on Shel Holtz’s blog relative to a nasty comment made by a blog troll about Shel. I made the comments knowing that said troll would probably use them to insult me again. Yes, l’il old me has been a target of this troll’s bile more than once. And predictably, (she he it) disparages me once again in the comments on Shel’s post.

Why am I bothering to mention it again? Not because I think it will make a bit of difference to this troll, hiding under her (?) bridge, sniping and spewing venom at the PR industry. She’ll probably show up in my comments with the usual bile, since I will not link to her. Or not. Catch-22.

The reason I commented, and the reason I am posting this now, is that this troll is just about the worst example of  elitism that I have ever seen. Obnoxious. Condescending. Insulting. Devoid of any positive contribution — in fact, I sense a real ax to grind. The troll’s blog ain’t about making PR better, it’s about spewing bile and venom. And with bad spelling to boot.

The list goes on. I really don’t care what (she he it) has to say. The words don’t matter.

J’en ai marre. Nous en avons marre. Allez-vous en.

Doesn’t it sound nicer en francais?

UPDATE 4:30pm EDT: I’ve been told that the online translation services have a bit of trouble with slang, so here’s the rough meaning (not literal translation) of the phrases I used above.

C’est dingue mais on y va –  It’s crazy but we’ll do it anyway. Also the name of a French comedy released in 1979.

J’en ai marre. Nous en avons marre – I’ve had it. We’ve had it.

Allez-vous en – Go away permanently, get lost, drop dead are all reasonable approximations.

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By Anonymous. By a Character.

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After the recent spate of character blogs in the PR space, I started thinking about character and anonymous blogs. Which are not that terribly different, in concept and in execution.

There are good reasons to use both forms. And both can be abused, to the overall detriment of blogging.

Let’s start with the good reasons. Anonymity. If you are in real danger.. for your life. If your company discourages blogging of any sort, on or off the clock (boo hiss), but you have something to say. Not about your company but maybe your life or your hobbies or your politics. Doesn’t matter. When attribution is dangerous, anonymity makes sense.

It also makes establishing credibility a bit harder. WHO are you and why should I trust you? More on that in a minute.

Character blogs are not that terribly different from anonymous blogs (and vice versa). Someone creates a character as the blog voice. Or they leverage an existing popular character as the voice. The writer isn’t "real."  [To some degree, all of  us create a blogging persona, but the more closely aligned your true self is to your blog self, the better off you will be in the long run. ]

I digress.

A character blog is extremely hard to do well. The blogosphere is conditioned to expect a real voice, and when it is a created persona, it reacts. Sometimes belatedly, but in the end, characters with unclear attribution are not well accepted. Bloggers want to know who you are. Are you credible? Do you have real authority in your blog-space, or is your authority as imaginary as you are?

 Now, in my opinion, character blogs can work, although we haven’t seen that many examples. Yet.

But they have to be honest. At a minimum, they have to be up front that this is a CHARACTER. And clear about the objectives. The best example is Manolo the Shoe Blogger. Manolo is all about the shoes. Yes, there are gossipy type posts, but everybody who reads this blog knows: it is about selling shoes. Full stop.

So anonymity and characters can work. They can also fail spectacularly.

Anonymity and characters fail when they are used as a screen for venom and bile. When the writer uses the form to deliver criticism without credibility. Absent being in danger for their life, when someone criticizes something, we want to know who they are, and what gives them the right.

That’s why companies typically frown on anonymity, even in internal blogs. A student in one of my recent workshops shared that her company actively encouraged internal employee blogging but would not permit anonymous blogging. Employees had to have the courage of their convictions.

By far, the worst evil is the character blog that does not admit it is a character nor provide us with information about the people behind the character.

When a blog is anonymous, we evaluate the content and make an assessment about credibility. When someone starts a character blog, and tells you upfront that it is a character, we make a decision about information and entertainment value.

But a blog that pretends to be written by a real person. Clouded in pretense and falsity? A fake persona?  Crystally clearly false, and definitely far from  honest and transparent. 

So, blog anonymously or as a character if that is your best or only choice. But if you can, speak up as yourself, or at least as the author of your character. And don’t use your blog to advance a vendetta, settle a score or just to stir things up. Try to contribute a positive voice to the conversation.

Truly, it is just as much fun.

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