Marketing Roadmaps

PR

The press release is dead. NOT.

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The PR segment of the blogosphere has been having a field day with Steve Rubel’s assertion that blogs and RSS will eventually supplant the press release. Echoing Mark Twain, some posters have referred to his comments as the premature declaration of the "death of the press release." 

Now, in my short time as blogger, I have come to appreciate Steve’s style. For the most part, he provides links and information. From time to time, however, he takes a strong position on an issue. ‘Cause nothing works to build interest like a strong position. PR 101, my friends.

Before I get to my opinion, some selections from the bloggersation.

Shel Holtz on Messages and Channels — on the importance of professional communications in getting the story told

John Cass, with a suggestion that we should look for examples where blogs have been more effective than PR. Hard to measure this, John, unless you set the research task prior to the program, not afterward.

Tom Murphy (PR Opinions) —  with a rant and a round up of opinions, including his own. BL Ochman makes a similar point to Tom’s: blogs are tools, and won’t replace the press release. But, thank god, blogs are reducing the frequency of lame press releases 🙂

There was WAAAAY more than this, but Tom Murphy has links to much of the commentary in his posts, and if you REALLY want more, I am sure Technorati and Google can help you out.

What do I think?

The press release form has a tremendous value for both marketers and journalists. It is part of our "rules of engagement." A press release tells the reporter who what where when why and, okay, how. Some releases are better than others, but for the most part, press releases get this basic job done. Reporters rely on this. Parseing a blog would be way more painful.

And, Chicken Little and EPIC 2015 notwithstanding, the mainstream media is NOT going away tomorrow. So: companies need to engage with journalists in the time-honored ways. Should the press release feed be in RSS? You bet. Will RSS, a distribution mechanism, replace the press release, a form for communication? No way. Apples and Oranges.

But what about blogs? Those are forms of communication? Can’t they get the job done? Who needs a press release?

Can a corporate blog do the job of the press release? Maybe, but the form of its post is  going to be so damn close to the press release that I challenge you to tell the difference.

Shel and Tom cover this very nicely in their posts, but I want to stress one thing. Blogs are not about the rule of engagement. For the most part, bloggers don’t understand or care; they just want access. They won’t strive to address all the points, as a good reporter will. They will pick what they want and ignore the rest. Back to the rules of engagement: it is in all our interests that professional journalists and professional communicators tell the story. Because we want a story. Not just a few facts sprinkled with opinion.

Marketing and PR pros know the press release is just the tip of the iceberg; the outreach to the journalist is far deeper, with many more layers.  As a communications professional, you must develop a strategy for communicating with bloggers AND the regular media, which remains as, if not more, important. Bloggers have strong reference value with their core audience. Mainstream media’s influence extends far beyond its fans; even critics respect what the NY Times says.

Blogs are subective. MSM (except perhaps Fox News) is objective. Both have their place in reaching the audience. Make sure you include blogs, RSS and press releases in your forward communications plan.

The press release isn’t dead. it is just evolving.

Stuff and a question

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The stuff is just that — some interesting stuff I have been saving to post on, and haven’t had time to blog much lately. I should probably do a link blog, to make it easier to publish these links. Maybe later this summer when I have a minute to breathe.   

From Shel Holtz, two posts about RSS: a plain English guide to RSS and RS huh?

A guest post on Pro-Blogger by Toby Bloomberg on how blogs must earn their keep. (And an aside, it was great to meet Toby and a bunch of other folk at the marketing wonk after yesterday’s AMA blog seminar in Boston)

The question is about SEO techniques. I am revamping two, possibly three client websites (cross fingers), to make them SELL not just TELL, and I am curious about some SEO "things."  I am NOT an SEO expert and my clients know that. But I have had a lot of online marketing experience, which does qualify me to some degree to know what’s what. So here’s my question:

I believe that a well written website that sells not tells should do well in search engines. Yes, you should make the effort to understand the right keywords to incorporate in the copy, and there is no harm in submitting to the engines and the like, but that done: If your website sells your products AND you have a robust marketing program that drives qualified prospects to your site, what happens with the engines is additive, not the baseline of your marketing success. Agree? Disagree? What am I missing?  Bob Bly had a related question on his blog not long ago, but I don’t know that we reached closure 🙂 .

Multiple Choice Part Two: Why we did a blog

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My client Software Secure has a small but very satisfied client base of educators and educational technology specialists at schools and universities across North America that have adopted campus-wide laptop programs or made a significant investment in ed-tech, often in a CMS like WebCT or Blackboard.

The company wanted to find a way to give voice to these happy customers – let them share their experiences with others, and in the process, get the word out about Software Secure. More brand awareness combined with a great product equals more customers, more revenue.

In the “old days,” our marketing strategy probably would have been to develop case studies for the Web, collateral and PR, and try to obtain speaking engagements for our client evangelists.

Well, we will still do all that, but as we were doing our marketing research, we discovered that there weren’t many online resources that focus specifically on developing a secure learning and testing environment. There were lots of big general sites, with lots and lots of information. Sometimes too much information.

We also found lots of blogs by educators — from superintendents of schools to professors to instructional technology managers – that were already creating vibrant conversations in the educational community.

Since we knew that our customers had great stories to tell, which could start a great online conversation about the issues of online learning and testing, we decided to fill this information gap with a collaborative weblog written by our customers and other educational experts. 

The people who really know the scoop are the ones on the front lines. Their experiences and stories are far more valuable, and interesting, to other educators than anything we could write. And preaching to the choir here on the Roadmap, but we chose the form of a blog because it offers two-way communication, which makes it a meeting place for educators tackling security issues, versus a static resource page.

Educators speaking directly to educators. About issues faced by educators when integrating technology in the learning and testing environment – technology evaluations, practical advice on holding faculty workshops, information about new tools that might be useful etc. etc. Not just information about Software Secure.

And so you have Multiple Choice:

Multiple Choice brings together educators who are leading the way in building secure online learning and testing environments at schools and universities across North America

Our sponsor is Software Secure, developer of technology that secures the computing environment from cheating and digital distractions.

The sponsorship is clear, the bloggers will be posting directly to the blog (no company review) and they can write about whatever they like within the topic of secure online testing and learning. I certainly hope they will mention the company once in a while but even if the educators NEVER DO, it will be fine.

The company will post from time to time, mostly news roundups and company news, and just by being there, more people will learn about Software Secure and its products.

Once I get the word out, that is. Which is the stage we are at now. Our contributors will all be starting next week, all the infrastructure stuff is done (for now), so there’s nothing left but to get the word out about Multiple Choice.

Like in this post J  I do hope my Roadmaps readers will check it out and let me know what they think. And of course, please do tell your friends and family in the educational community all about it!

Character blogs, collaborative blogs

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A good friend of mine refers to the type of conversation we are having about character blogs as "inside baseball." It’s the kind of conversation where those inside it are very engaged and those outside of it can’t follow it, don’t want to follow it, and if they do manage to figure it out, think it is pretty silly. That said, I just can’t seem to let it go, so "batter up."

Rok Hrastnik posted an essay about character blogs, and used as an example the Buffyverse. In his example, he cites different types of blogs that the creators of the two television shows that comprise the Buffyverse [Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel] could create to entertain the fans of these two dearly-departed shows.

The reason I think character blogs have potential is that pretty much all the examples he cites have already sprung up, albeit in unauthorized fashion, in the online fandom already.

Fan fiction. WHEDONesque, a fan blog where Whedon posts from time to time. Spoiler sites. Bulletin boards. Role plays in which people take on the characters and create a collaborative story (often using livejournal). There is an obvious hunger to interact with these shows and these characters as well as the real people behind them. And the interactions among the fans are pretty real — friendships and flamewars alike.

Rok’s example resonated with me because I am a fan of the Buffyverse. If Joss Whedon, the creator of the two shows, decided to build a character blog as the next installment in the story, and brought his talents, his great writers and perhaps even some of the actors to occasionally give voice or visual to the new story, I would subscribe. I’d even pay 🙂 I would not be alone, not by a longshot. Are you listening, Joss?

This would be a character blog for which I AM the audience, and only then would I judge its content. As I have said before, we have to separate the form, the character blog, from the content.

BTW trust me, I know "Spike" is just a character. I still really love the lifesize cardboard figure of him that my mom gave me for Christmas. To my husband’s chagrin, it is still in the living room.

Neville Hobson also posted on character blogs today: Just because you could doesn’t mean you should. He’s got a nice definition of the difference between character and fake blogs, and also provides a bit of a recap of yesterday’s Hobson and Holtz Report discussion on the topic.

Okay, enough about character blogs. Intellectually, I think they deserve a shot, and that’s why I have been so vocal on the topic.

Personally, however, I think the blog form that holds the most promise for companies is the collaborative weblog. As I mentioned a while ago, I am working on one for a client. We are just about to start promoting it, so I should be able to post more details by the end of the week. To whet your appetite, here’s a preview.

We went with a blog for two key reasons: it fit with the overall marketing strategy and it gives voice to our customers.

The company is in the education market, which is particularly fertile ground for collaborative and online communications. The company has happy, loyal, articulate customers and we wanted to find a way to include them in our marketing efforts. We believe that their experiences, both with our products and in general, would be far more useful to our prospects than any brochure we could develop. In the past, we might have posted a bunch of case studies on our website. The collaborative weblog offers a much richer communications environment.

Initially, our bloggers will be drawn from our customer base; hopefully, over time, other educators will join us, first on the blog and then as customers.

Our goal is to create a rich community resource about topics that are at the intersection of the company’s and the customers’ interests. We will post company information from time to time, but the intent is for the bulk of the content to be community created. The combination of the blog content and our sponsorship of it should drive interest in our products without "lame marketing posts." In other words, we do good by doing good.

More later this week.

Roadmaps Round-up

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Just a bunch of good stuff. Have a great weekend!

Fusion Brand: Great post on Brand vs. Customer Architecture: Which is More Effective?

How to Blog for Fun and Profit has a short post about a Cnet comparison  of Typepad and Blogger 

Quite some time ago, Steve Rubel (and others) blogged about InfoWorld’s special report on blogs and wikis. I have been intending to include it in a link round-up for weeks, so here is the link to Steve’s post. 

Another great resource post that I have been sitting on is from NevOn: Tips for successful media relations  This post Introduced me to David Tebbut’s Teblog.

Yahoo is offering free 5-page websites to small US businesses, to be hosted in Yahoo! Local. Thanks to Nick W at Threadwatch for the info.