For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on the launch of BlogHer’s new consumer panel, Visionaries. I’m very excited about the possibilities we have with the panel to connect the BlogHer audience with brands.
Once or twice a month, we’ll be sending panel members a survey or perhaps even an offer to try a free product. The first trial offer is in the field — sign up for Visionaries now and get a full 12-ounce bottle of Dove® Body Wash with NutriumMoisture™.
Click here to join.
Over the past few years, I’ve written quite a bit about blogger relations, largely in the context of brands reaching out to bloggers. As I mentioned in my last post, lately I’ve started to think about it more in terms of influencer engagement.
The key to success in social media engagement is to forge strong relationships, deliver relevant content and most importantly, respect the writer and her readers. As a starting point for developing long term sustainable relationships between brands and social media influencers, here are some best practices for your consideration.
Focus on the people, not on your product. Pay it forward — give first, get second.
Effective influencer engagement starts with reaching out to people who will have a genuine and authentic interest in a company or product. That interest is what inspires them to create a story that connects with their (and their readers’) passions. That it also mentions a product or service in some context is only a part of the story; Not all the story nor simply a tack-on mention at the end. For a conversation to be effective for both the brand and the bloggers, the inclusion of the brand has to fit (much like Cinderella’s slipper), not be forced.
Social media leaders should be compensated for their efforts on behalf of brands, and the value should be balanced, with each party obtaining sufficient benefit. In other words, if the product the brand is offering the blogger is a car for a significant period of time, the blogger might consider that sufficient compensation — depending on what the brand is asking in exchange. A few boxes of cereal or tubes of hand cream? Not so much.
Brands are best served by a “clean, well-lighted” space, in which editorial is clearly distinguished from advertorial content, and brand-influencer relationships disclosed. There is no such thing as too much information, too much disclosure in the blogosphere. The FTC imposes requirements on brands and bloggers for both disclosure and accuracy, but those are simply the price of admission. Long-lasting trust demands even more than a simple disclosure statement. To gain, and retain, trust, brands, influencers and communities need to be upfront about their point of view as well as their relationships with other parties. It’s the only way the consumer has all the information she needs to evaluate whether the opinion in a blog post is from a peer, and thus relevant to her life. Or simply an endorsement from an interested party or an advertisement. Both have value in the awareness/adoption process just a different one.
Every conversation has multiple stakeholders – the influencers, the brands and the readers, and you have to keep all three in mind when creating a campaign. Is the content relevant to the readers’ interests? Is it interesting? How authentically does it integrate the messaging into the story without appearing forced or fake? What will the reader experience be? Develop programs that will be interesting for the social media influencers and their audiences – wherever they engage with her — not just an opportunity to get paid for a post, and that support the brand messaging, without being a product pitch.
A sponsored conversation can be just as engaging as a straight-up editorial post, update or Tweet, provided that the topic taps into the woman’s passions, not the product press release.
Less is often more. Reaching out to fewer influencers, but ones that have a genuine interest and desire to support the brand is usually more effective than a larger number of mildly interested folks. A few really good posts by influential women who are leaders in a community can have a stronger, more positive impact than a slew of perfunctory posts. It’s also important to consider how many influencers should be included in a program; a fatigue often sets in when multiple posts about the same thing all appear on the same day. Intended to have a positive impact, such volume actually can have negative impact on a community.
“Keep your friends close. And your enemies closer.” Embrace your critics instead of trying to silence them. This is a tough strategy to follow; it’s hard to invite your critics to take a seat at the table, especially when you know there are hundreds of fans who would be happy to have that seat.
Own your words. When you make a mistake, ‘fess up and apologize. A little humility goes a long way. Bottom line: nothing spreads faster than bad news. If you don’t do social media engagement right, you will face criticism. Better to do it right the first time!
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Cleaning out the inbox:
Since I joined BlogHer earlier this Fall, I have had a lot going on — traveling, speaking, digging into the new job, moving my family to the NY area — and this poor blog has been sorely neglected. So neglected in fact that my 6th blog anniversary passed earlier this month and I didn’t even notice.
Thinking about that milestone over this holiday weekend led me to think about some of the changes I’ve observed in the blogosphere.
In 2005, early adopters were dipping their toes into the blogging waters. The hot topic was the corporate blog, and the term “social media” wasn’t even being used yet — Facebook was in its infancy and Twitter wouldn’t even be invented for another year. Public relations agencies were just beginning to reach out to bloggers on behalf of brands, mostly high tech and consumer electronics. Online conversation often swirled around the mistakes agencies and companies made with poorly targeted “spray and pray” outreach.
Now, according to research conducted by the Center for Marketing Research at UMass Dartmouth, 23 percent of the Fortune 500 have public blogs, including four of the top five corporations (Wal-Mart, Exxon, Chevron and General Electric), 60 percent have corporate Twitter accounts and 56 percent have Facebook pages (The Fortune 500 and Social Media: A Longitudinal Study of Blogging and Twitter Usage by America’s Largest Companies).
The study, which was announced at the Annual Research Symposium and Awards Gala of the Society for New Communications Research, concludes:
“This [adoption of social media] clearly demonstrates the growing importance of social media in the business world. These large and leading companies drive the American economy and to a large extent the world economy. Their willingness to interact more transparently via these new technologies with their stakeholders is [a] clear. It will be interesting to watch as they expand their adoption of social media tools and connect with their constituents in dramatically new ways.”
Furthermore, according to research conducted by FedEx and Ketchum, and reported in eMarketer, 75 percent of companies worldwide participate in social media in some aspects of their communications and marketing strategy, with 10% actively leading in the space and 15% still mostly on the sidelines observing (Leveraging Best Practices for Social Media).
Another hot topic in the early days of this blog was whether the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would accept blogs as an outlet for material disclosure by public companies. The SEC began studying the issue in late 2006 and in 2008, announced that it would accept websites and blogs as outlets for material disclosure under certain circumstances.
The topic that has engaged me the most since I dove into the social media pool, however, is the relationship between brands and consumers. Initially, this activity was called blogger relations, a name that reflected its roots in public relations and a focus on blogs. Over the past year or two, the term blogger outreach became more prominent — in part I think in an effort to distance the work from public relations. At least that was my reason for the vocabulary shift.
The sphere of activity also has extended beyond blogs to embrace social networks like Facebook and microblogs like Twitter and Tumblr, and influence is just as important as blog real estate, prompting a shift to talk about “social media influencers” rather than just bloggers.
Going into the new year, I will be shifting my analysis of this topic to focus on influencer engagement. How well do we engage influencers across the range of social media channels? What can brands do to better engage the customer with the brand premise while retaining authenticity? What is the role of the influencer herself? What can she do to engage proactively with the brands she loves without “selling out?”
Bottom line, I am more interested in the two-way sustainable engagement, brand to influencer and influencer to brand, than I am in a one-way outreach or a single campaign.
Next week, I’ll kick this off with a brief summary of some best practices for influencer engagement.
