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Round-up: Changing nature of blogs

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I’m working on some material about the changing nature of blogs as part of my preparation for a workshop I am leading at the University of Wisconsin next month. Here are some of the posts I’ve collected over the past few weeks that may be used in the session. As always, I’ll post a summary of the session here on the Roadmap.

In no particular order:

Three excellent posts from Newsome.org:  5 steps to good blogging, No comments: old school or playing hooky, and The politics of blogging

Guy Kawasaki’s How to suck up to a blogger

Stowe Boyd, Scoble on tips for joining the A-list

Foghound, Positioning and messaging is not an option

A WSJ article on blog ethics, chiefly around the issue of disclosing financial interest in companies you blog about, found on Media Guerilla, Blogger Disclosure Practices Tested

CorporatePR, When is a blog really a blog?

Web 2.0 malarkey from gaping void

The role of the roll, Shel Holtz

Technorati Favorites, opinions from Media Guerilla, Media Orchard

Micro Persuasion, How and When to Respond to Conversations, a summary of a discussion at the Word of Mouth Marketing conference in January

Cymfony’s new media Knowledge Center (seen on Micro Persuasion)

A post about the A-list "thing" that I missed in my earlier round-up, Why I hate the A-list mentality, Phil Gomes

Worker Bees, Does a blog without comments smell as sweet?

I also plan to talk about Dr. Myra, as an example of what NOT to do.

And Dell will get more than a passing mention, not just for the continuing saga of dis-satisfied customers in Dell Hell, but also for the news item I found on Threadwatch today. Apparently Dell is suing a website designer named Paul Dell for using the domain www.dellwebsites.com. Perhaps there’s more to the story than meets the eye, but it seems to me that Michael Dell can’t be the only Dell on the planet who is allowed to use his name in connection with a business endeavor. Hhmm? Just can’t shake the feeling — Dell is a company that just doesn’t "get it."

Bonus link (not for the workshop and your payback for wading through this post): Cheney’s Got a Gun (tip of the hat to John Wagner for the link)

Journalism & PR Student Blogs

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Jay Rosen (PressThink) announced an expansion to his blog yesterday: the Blue Plate Special. Written primarily by students in his blogging 101 class, the new feature will start later this month. He writes:

"Our intent in the debut is to execute well upon a basic form in journalism: the snapshot, or state-of-the-art report. The first one will be about blogging at American newspapers. Newspapers are definitely past the “let’s start some blogs” stage, but what stage are they at? Where’s the action, traction, and satisfaction in the growing world of newspaper blogs? NYU students and I, joined by a few special guests, pros and amateurs, will try to find out."

For me, this new blog will be an interesting counterpoint to Robert French’s (infOpinions) student PR blogs and the way French uses his own blog to teach his PR and media classes at Auburn University.

These NYU and Auburn students, on either side of the "media relations" coin, have some meaty issues on their plate, and I’m looking forward to their perpectives on the "BIG" questions that consume so many of our blogging hours.

Questions like:

What is the responsibility of a blogger to fact check? Is it different if the blogger is also a professional journalist? Just exactly what defines "professional" — getting paid? quality of writing? affiliations, whether paid or pro bono? Not always the same thing.

What is the role of PR in the new media mix? How is it evolving as the media themselves are changing… from pen and ink to bits and bytes? Is it? How should companies, and their PR people, engage with bloggers?

It’s nice to hear new voices, from people just beginning their professional journeys. Hopefully, in watching, and helping, them learn, we’ll learn a few things ourselves.

Tags: Media, Blogs, Blogging, PR, Public Relations, Journalism

Public Company PR: The issue of material disclosure

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One of the things that happens when you have a time-sensitive project like the HP Sundance blog …. You end up blogging there a lot, and “at home” not at all. And a lot of interesting stuff has been piling up in my bloglines for “when I get around to it.”

So here’s the first issue that caught my attention when I wasn’t perusing WireImage for pictures of Jennifer Aniston, Wilmer Valderrama, Amber Tamblyn and Josh Hartnett for posts about the stars in the celebrity auction.

Todd at Topaz Partners and Amy Gahran of Contentious have been discussing whether press releases (and the newswires) are really required to meet SEC disclosure requirements for public companies.

The Topaz post that indexes a series of posts on the topic: Blog series: Press releases, public companies and blogs .

Amy’s post on same: Disclosure, Press Releases, and Life Support: Can We Pull that Plug After All?

So far, their conclusion is that yes, the wires are still probably the safest bet for a public company to guarantee compliance for material disclosures, but they seem to be moving to an argument that the form of the press release could change and the company would still be in compliance.

Here are some of my thoughts on the subject.

  • Navigating the material versus non-material question is not easy, especially for smaller public companies. Sure, the financials and major corporate changes are easy. Material. New reseller. Not material. Unless it’s a major new channel for you and then it might be.  New product. Probably material. Product upgrade. Not material. Or maybe it is….if it is likely to affect your results materially. And so forth.

    There are a lot of gray lines when you get going and that’s why corporate communication directors at public companies (a job I have had more than a few times) have a tendency to treat everything with the same process as material news. It is safer, and in the total scheme of things, the fee for a release on pr newswire or business wire is WAY cheaper than the fines and damage to reputation of the firm if you’re wrong. 

    So, in order to really explore new methods for the dissemination of non-material news, we need a bit more clarity here. Until then, public companies are a bit stuck.

  • I notice they are going to touch on audience in later posts. This is key, because one of the principal audiences for public company news is the financial markets. Financial analysts are trained, and I mean trained, to watch the wire. You have to go where the audience is, and deliver the info to them in a way they will understand. And they want to go to one place for every firm – not lots of different places for different companies. So, even though RSS delivers the info to them, if everyone isn’t using the same method, it’s more work for them.
  • The press release. Anyone who does corporate communications for more than two minutes learns that the press release is almost irrelevant to the ultimate dissemination of the news. It satisfies disclosure requirements, and as I’ve written before, it has a form that we can easily decipher.

    It is important that it be well written but as far as reaching the media, the word gets out because you contact the right people with the information with the right “pitch.” And because you provide access to newsmakers, fact sheets, photos and other back-up materials that flesh out the story.

    I think we are asking an awful lot if we jettison the press release, and begin subjecting media to multiple different formats that make it harder to understand what is going on. And for some things (financials), the format is pretty well defined. For good reason. Creative approaches are generally frowned upon when it comes to financial results.

    Bottom line: we need a standard format for organizing the news. The press release works okay for me so I am in no hurry to replace it. But that doesn’t mean that it is the only thing I do to reach media (and other audiences) for clients.

  • In this context, I look at the new media as simply another way to get the word out.  A blog can be very effective, but you still need your PR person, for a variety of reasons, not just to reach out to MSM. And you need your sales force or channel partners to reach out to end user customers. And so on.

    When an announcement is definitely NOT material, it makes sense to use a blog to start getting the word out. That’s exactly what we’ve been doing with the stars in the HP charity auction I’m working on right now.  A press release about the auction went out before Sundance started, and a PR person is doing her magic at Sundance. But we’re officially announcing each participant on the blog. Another press release won’t go out until the very end of the festival summarizing everything we’ve already announced on Backstage at Sundance.

    But the blog is not sufficient in and of itself. We’re still using regular PR outreach. And we still have to reach out to fans, which is a process of online research and individual emails to fan sites and blogs to let them know that their favorite celebrity’s signed photo is in the auction. And of course, remember when you reach out to bloggers and Web sites, you had better target your audience. Know that they’ll likely be interested in what you are sending, or it’s just spam.

    It is the sum of the activity, not any one activity, no matter how cool, that gets the result.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to more of their discussion. Check it out, and join in.

Tags: Blogs, Blogging, Charity, Sundance, PR, Public Relations, Marketing

A-list bloggers

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Okay, I admit, this A-list thing is like a scab that I just can’t stop picking at. I think the whole concept of having an A-list in the blogosphere — where barriers to entry were supposed to have flattened — is patently clue-less. And while I am trying really hard to ignore the whole thing, I just have to comment on the flap du jour.

The facts: Steve Rubel of the MicroPersuasion blog published a short post last week advising readers that it was pointless to send him email asking for links — he was just too busy. The best way to "talk" to him was to get the blogs he reads to link to you. Here’s his post:

"Like Scoble, lately I have been getting a lot of please “link to me” emails. I look at these, but as the volume increases I will not be able to scale. This is true for many of the more popular bloggers.

So, here’s a blog relations tip for you. One way to get coverage on a “top-tier” blog is by identifying who he/she reads regularly and then pitching those sites.

Here’s how to get this done. Start by going to the BlogPulse Profiles site. Enter the URL of your favorite blogger and click on the Sources tab and you will get a sense for their linking habits. For example, here’s Scoble’s. Use the smaller blogs as stepping stones that help you get “coverage” on the larger ones."

Now, I congratulate Rubel on his successful effort to become the super-ultra-A-list PR blogger (see my previous post, good on you, have fun at the top, watch out for exploding egos). If that’s your thing, and you’ve got the time to make it happen, fine. And I appreciated the reminder about BlogPulse.

But, posts like this are just plain ego, and I don’t think they have any place in the blogosphere. BTW I also have no time for people who don’t answer their email. You work your way to the top of the heap, great. Hire someone to help with your correspondence. The people you AREN’T replying to, or others like them, helped you get to the summit. Don’t forget them.

I digress.  Since I am trying to ignore all this crap, I was going to let it pass. Until I saw Media Orchard’s truly excellent post: the A-listers aren’t different from you and me. They call Steve on his premise, and remind us that the pr-news source-media relationship is symbiotic — we all need and feed off each other. The key is to make sure that what you "pitch" is really interesting to the one being pitched. And hope he has his listening ears on 🙂

Net net give "good news" and you should reap the benefits. Pitch crap, and that’s what you should expect, whether it is a magazine, a website or a blog.

Don’t skip the comments on the Media Orchard post –they are all pretty amusing, proving that no matter what, most of us seem to have retained a sense of humor.

The thing that irked me the most about the Rubel post was that it was effectively a conversation killer. In one fell swoop, he told thousands of people that he wasn’t really that interested in what they had to say, unless it got the stamp of approval from a blog or source he already liked/trusted. Doesn’t matter what you have to say. I just don’t have the time. And as the Media Orchard folks pointed out: the post basically said don’t bother me, bother them.

Now, I am sure that in practice that’s not really what he does or will do in future. I hope that if you have something really cool, and approach him with it, he’ll pay attention. But that’s not what he said on his blog, and in absence of evidence of what we do, what we say stands for  us. And in this case, I don’t think he comes off well at all. I truly hope he thinks twice about it, and that other marketing and PR bloggers don’t adopt the same clue-less policy. If we as PR and marketing professionals, who strive daily to get notice for our companies, causes and products, won’t stay open to communication, who the hell will?

A note: you can find Steve’s post by by googling it or just going to his blog (which is in my blogroll). I believe this post was antithetical to the spirit of blogging, and it is not going to get any "link-love" from me. I realize that this won’t make a bit of difference (my blog is pretty much the pimple on the ass of the elephant) but it satisfies my perverse sense of justice.

My last words on this (at least for now): I have only ever asked other bloggers for a link once, when I was working on spreading the word about a charity auction for Hewlett Packard last fall. Usually I have the time to build a short list of blogger-influencers for my clients, reach out to introduce the company and ask permission to send them our news and ONLY then start including them in our announcements.

In the case of this project, I had no time. So I asked a very small number of bloggers to help me spread the word quickly.

I wasn’t too surprised when none of very few "A-list" folks I sent it to thought it was worth mentioning. They don’t really know me. I was, however, pleased and thankful for all the marketing and business bloggers I reached out who did respond and mention the charity effort on their blogs. They are MY A-list.

UPDATE 1/16/06: gapingvoid has the top ten reasons nobody reads your blog. Funny in its own right, but his post also includes links to additional material that I found both interesting and useful: a 2003 article by Clay Shirky on power law distributions (also known as the 80/20 rule) and a post by Kent Newsome, Why it’s impossible to build a new blog in 2006.

ANOTHER UPDATE 1/16/06: Here’s another great post on the whole Rubel flapdoodle from infOpinions: FInding a path to blog PR bliss….Goose and Gander Extremely well said, especially the end:

"For me, I really don’t go to Rubel’s blog – unless I am sent a link or see it referenced in some other blog and it seems interesting.  It has lost value for me.  Heck, anyone can do RSS searches, Google Alerts, Yahoo! Alerts and any number of other RSS feed scanning practices.  I find all the things Rubel posts about, but in the other blogs I read.  And, I find something more.  I find the thoughts of those bloggers and what they think of these new ideas, tools, tactics and more.  They add to the conversation, not echo it.  That, my friends, is content worth reading.  They may not be A-List bloggers, but they are the true Kings and Queens – the royalty – of blogs.

I hope Rubel enjoys being there – in his blog.  Chance the Gardener has a new crop of squash. As in, squash the lil’ guys. He doesn’t have time for anything but the really big vegetables."

PR Measurement

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Up until last year when I started my marketing consultancy, I was always on the client side of the PR-agency equation, either as internal corp comm or marketing. I have always had measurement at the top of my list. Still do.

Sure, the measurements change, as it is important to choose a relevant measure for the task at hand. But we always understood the importance of being able to justify our PR results quantitatively as well as qualitatively. Didn’t always LIKE having to do it, but that’s life.

You have to measure, and it doesn’t have to be a big deal. But whether your campaign is for a product or for an idea, you do need to know if the audience "bought it." Gut feel just isn’t enough, and it definitely doesn’t give you the ammunition to defend your work in the boardroom or a competitive situation. More on that in a minute.

For some campaigns — let’s call them awareness campaigns, even though my readers know I really don’t believe in awareness-only objectives 🙂 —  it is still perfectly fine to count clips, look at reach and do a little evaluation of website traffic around the campaign. If your budget permits, do some baseline and post campaign surveying.

BUT the best measurements are tied to sales results — that is after all why most companies are in business 🙂 Yes I know it is hard, and yes I know it isn’t going to be perfect, but to the extent possible you should tie PR campaigns to sales objectives. Now, it doesn’t have to be revenue. After all, there are a lot of steps between a PR hit and a sale. But for B2B in particular, looking for PR to deliver some number of sales leads is not unreasonable. After all, in may cases (tech in particular), the PR budget comes from the old ad budget because we believed in a correspondingly higher value of the PR hit versus an ad.

Now that I am a marketing consultant who handles PR for some of her clients, I still want measurement. Why? Because I know the qualitative is vulnerable to attack. Another agency can easily come in, tell a good story, foster doubt in the client’s mind and lead to agency review.

A steady diet of good quantitative results is a bit harder to beat.

The key is to understand what is important to your client. Then measure your effort in that context, show how PR contributed to the results. The measurements may change over time, as objectives change over time. But there’s always a desired outcome, and if you look hard enough, you CAN find a way to demonstrate quantitatively (as well as qualitatively) the PR impact on results. It may take a while to convince your client to give you access to the information you need, and that is a whole other story. Willingness to measure without the means can be frustrating, but if you work at it long enough, even the most recalcitrant can be won over.

So, in the current PR measurement conversation (see Shel Holtz’s most recent post for the summary) you can put me squarely in the "FOR MEASUREMENT" column.

UPDATE: John Wagner has some more in his blog about his opinion. There’s more than the one post, I’m just linking to the latest as of this writing, the response to the Shel Holtz post linked above. 

Here’s the thing — I don’t think any of us disagree that PR needs to find ways to demonstrably prove its value in order to defend its place in the budget. So does advertising, so does direct mail.  Some believe that metrics is the way to go, others prefer more instinctive approaches (measurements?).

Both are right — the key is to find and understand the measurement that is of value to the client, and I assure you (as someone who has spent a large part of her professional life on the client side), clients care about impact on sales. Show that your efforts generated new prospects. Look at average downloads of your software before and after a major PR campaign. That’s a measurement that is just as valid as any system.

And the systems have their place too. I expect particularly in the B2C realm where companies generally don’t track leads the way we obsessively do in B2B.

It doesn’t matter what measure you pick — just make sure you have one.

Filed Under: PR