On a path media

Help Stop PR Spam: Write a Blog Pitch Policy

2008-08-20T00:26:17Z

Last week I wrote five tips for PR/marketers pitching bloggers. I had two objectives for writing those tips. The first was completely selfish, I'd really like to see a decrease in the number of irrelevant, uninteresting pitches I receive. The second was more altruistic, I want to, in my small way, help ease the relationship (and potential relationship) between bloggers and marketers.

The relationship between bloggers and pr people is so new the boundaries, rules and codes of conduct aren't set yet. Some bloggers want to be pitched, some don't. Some think press releases and pitches are potentially interesting pieces of information they might want to pass onto their readers. Others think pr pitches are nothing more than spam.

I've had my share of bad pitches and even pr spam but as fun as it is just to complain about bad pitches and watch from the sidelines as bloggers and pr folks spar it doesn't really improve anything does it? While I'd very much agree that it is the responsibility of the PR industry not to spam bloggers it would benefit bloggers to be more proactive in helping the PR industry figure out what is and isn't spam, what is and isn't appropriate in terms of pitches, etc. I'm willing to bet if you lay out your ground rules for being pitched most in the PR industry will respect them.

So I encourage bloggers to implement Blog Pitch Policies and very much encourage PR folks to respect them.

Here is my very brief outline and the Consuming Louisville Blog Pitch Policy. Do with it as you will.
]]> 1. Do I want to receive PR or Marketing pitches?
If the answer is no then do not pass go, do not collect $200, do not send a pitch as this blogger does not want to be pitched.

2. Types of Pitches
If the answer is yes a brief explanation of the kind of pitches you do or do not want to receive.

3.Personal Responses
Detail what if any response PR/marketers can expect to receive from you.

4. Editorial Choices
Description and clarification of your editorial policies.

5. I'm a Person, You're a Person
Personal preferences for being contacted.

Pitching Consuming Louisville

Do I want to receive PR or Marketing pitches?
Yes.

Types of Pitches
I enjoy receiving press releases, email notices and tips that help make Consuming Louisville even more useful to its audience. If you or one of your clients has something cool going on in Louisville I would love to hear about it.

Consuming Louisville primarily focuses on independent Louisville businesses, artists and events. This doesn't mean that I never write about chain restaurants or corporate events but I do so very infrequently. If you or your client is a national chain and you have a Louisville specific event going on (say a special for Derby) then by all means let me know about it. But if you have an event or special that is happening in every city your chain has a location in then I probably won't post about it.

Personal Responses
I receive many press releases and email notices. I cannot possibly respond to every single one of them. So while I may not personally respond I think we can have enough faith in the email system to assume that I received your message. Sending the same message to me multiple times just increases the likelihood that I'll start ignoring all messages from you instead of paying more attention.

Editorial Choices
I do not write about every press release or event notice I receive. I'm the sole writer on Consuming Louisville and if I don't find think my audience would find something interesting or relevant I will not write about it. Just because you think I should write about something doesn't mean I will. If I have chosen not to write about something it is absolutely not up for debate.

I'm a Person, You're a Person
Emails that sound like press releases, press release attachments without actual email messages and other communication that could have just as easily been sent to and from a robot do not hold my attention. Since I'm a real person and you're a real person I'd encourage you to make our interaction person-to-person conversation instead of an email blast to a marketing list. I like people, I don't like email marketing blasts.

Five Tips for Pitching Bloggers (a little help for our PR friends)

2008-08-14T20:04:28Z

Social Media is a brand new world for many experienced pr and marketing world people. They can't count on all the old rules and procedures that have always been in place. Bloggers aren't newspaper writers, they aren't magazine editors. They are a new, unique entity all their own with different protocols and etiquette. It's rude not to mention inefficient to complain about bad pitches or bad pr people and not try to help them learn to be better when dealing with bloggers.

In the spirit of helpfulness here are five tips for marketers and pr staff to keep in mind when pitching bloggers.

1. Know why you're pitching a specific blogger
Read the blog. I don't mean read the three most recent articles, I mean spend some time in the archives, subscribe to the feed, become familiar with the writer's style and her subject matter. Don't just pitch her because she's a woman and your company or client wants to sell products to women. If you can't figure out a specific reason to pitch this blogger other than she fits into a certain demographic box then don't pitch her. And I'm talking a real reason here. If someone writes about Apple products almost exclusively then she isn't a generic tech blogger and doesn't want to hear about your new software for Vista. If he's a vegetarian food blogger interested in the slow food movement he probably doesn't want to hear about your client's new line of frozen dinners.
]]> 2. Never Pitch a Blogger Who Doesn't Want to Be Pitched
Blogger pitch policies are still few and far between (look for an example from me early next week) but make sure the blogger you're pitching doesn't have one in place. It might be as simple as Merlin Mann's note on the contact page for 43 Folders:

Merlin never requests or accepts promotional materials, so please don't send 'em, okay? Thanks. You rule.

Also look for hints in the blogger's writing (because you are reading the blog right? See number 1) that he isn't interested in pr pitches in general or specific industry pitches.

3. Know Who You Are Pitching
Read the about page. Know the blogger's name and use it. Don't say "Dear Blogger." Don't say "To whom it may concern." Don't reference dogs if the blogger loves cats, don't reference kids if the blogger doesn't have any. If you can't figure out the name of the blogger you're pitching and a few details about him or her then don't pitch the blogger.

4. Never, ever send a press release or other attachment without a message accompanying it
This is a personal pet peeve of mine. I get many pitches for Consuming Louisville that are nothing more than a blank email message with a press release attached. This is like putting a box inside my front door with no address label on it and no note or any other indication of why I should a) trust that it's not malicious and b) be interested in seeing what is inside. Most press releases that are attached to blank email messages get deleted immediately. If you don't have time to write a message to the blogger you're pitching then you don't have time to pitch the blogger.

5. Make your message personalized
You're talking to one person who blogs not a machine, not a corporation. You yourself are one person, not a machine, not a corporation. Have a human conversation. Explain who you are why you're writing, why you think he might be interested in what you're writing. Don't make up a reason and don't feel like you have to praise the blogger excessively. Everyone loves compliments but being over complimentary when you're pitching. If you can give the blogger the information you want him to have without actually sending a press release then you've done a good job.

OK I couldn't leave it at just those five. So the bonus:

6. Clearly provide an option for opting out of all content from you.
Make absolutely certain the option is easy to read and easy to complete. And for the love of all that is holy respect the opt out! If a blogger indicated she doesn't want to receive material from you that means your company, your client, your assistant and everyone else on your team. If she's opting out, she's opting out.

Two Differences Between Mainstream Media and Blogs

2008-08-14T19:01:36Z

Difference number 1: Most Bloggers Want to Hear from You (Barriers to Feedback and Communication)
While I'm sure a blogger would probably never get the name of Social Media Club Louisville wrong, as a Business First story about SMC Louisville's next meeting did, with no serious barriers to comment and communicate the author would have been quickly made aware of such a mistake and fixed it.

I wanted to leave a comment on the story to nudge Business First toward correcting Social Media Club's name in their article. To do that however I had to register for an account.
]]>
Difference number 2: Bloggers Actually Get This Whole "Internet Thing" (Online Tools for Online Users)
The Biz First registration form actually had one more barrier to registering in place: by registering you agree to the Business First privacy policy. That policy includes the following gem:

Unless otherwise specified on the Website, Service Provider may sell or share personally identifying information with our affiliates and with carefully selected companies who we think can offer you services and products of interest to you. If you do not wish to have your personally identifying information shared, write to us at the street address set forth at the end of this document.

Got that? By registering to comment you grant them permission to distribute and sell all of your personal information (email address, first and last name, gender, zip code) as they see fit. So in exchange for commenting on a Business First story you have to agree to be spammed by anyone Business First might feel like selling your data to. If you disagree with that, if you "do not wish to have your personally identifying information shared", you have to send them snail mail to say so. Snail mail. You have to send an actual letter through the U.S. Postal Service to request that your email address and other personally identifying information is not sold.

Online works fine for commenting and registering but to request not to be spammed you must pull out your quill and parchment, draft a treatise on why you don't want your info sold and then send it out with the postman.

Of course the real takeaway here is that Business First knows 1) people don't read privacy policies or user agreements, they just click through and 2) even if people do read the privacy policy and object only a very, very small percentage will go through the trouble of mailing a letter to request that their email address and other info not be sold. If they provided an email or online form option nearly everyone would opt out of having their data sold. That's why I should probably reassess and say that the number 2 difference between Mainstream Media and Blogs is that bloggers don't actually hate their users and try to squeeze them for every single penny theoretically possible.

Who is Simon Blint and What Can He Teach You About Customer Service

2008-08-12T00:20:54Z

Simon Blint is the Director of Visitor Relations for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He is also a man who until last week had a very small online footprint. Until last week if you Googled Mr. Blint you might have found his Facebook profile and little more. That exercise now will bring you many, many results all discussing his alteracation with a photographer in the museum. Very few, if any, of these discussions put Mr. Blint in a positive light. IN fact most of them make Mr. Blint appear petty, controlling and absolutely not someone you'd want as the director of visitor relations. I say these conversations make Mr. Blint "appear" because neither Mr. Blint or the SF Moma is talking. He might have a perfectly logical explanation for kicking a photographer who was following the letter of the museum's photography policy but since he isn't saying anything we don't know that.
]]> encouraged others to talk about it and share their opinions on the event. They're sharing alright and almost universally folks online have decided that Mr. Blint is a jerk. From a customer service perspective a whole lot of potential visitors thinking your Director of Visitor Relations is a major jerk isn't a good thing. A worse thing is both the musuem and Blint staying silent when people are salivating for some kind of response. People want to know why Mr. Blint seemingly ignored his employer's stated policies and threw a patron out. People are in fact begging for some kind of response. On a completely non-related post of the museum's blog people are leaving comments wanting to talk about the incident. The resident blogger has asked folks to stop commenting on the Blint incident and instead keep comments "on-topic." The rub of course as commenter torgeuax eloquently points out that the museum hasn't provided a place where the Blint incident is on-topic.

"Where is the topic for us to post questions about the incident we're interested in? you say keep it on topic, and I agree, but where do we discuss the topic in question? Your blog seems to have just one topic, clearly unrelated to the Simon Blint foolishness, but how doe we, the public, address this issue to you, the Museum? This blog seems like the right place, but how?"

So what can this whole mess teach you about customer service and social media? It can teach us a great deal in three areas.

Personal Branding, Corporate Branding and the Power of Social Media
As I mentioned Simon Blint had a small online footprint. The information available online about him before the Thomas Hawk incident was innocuous. Now should a potential future employer (or even date) check him out online the most prominent and most frequent information that will be returned all label Mr. Blint as a jerk, a control freak or worse. Mr. Blint's personal brand online has taken a sharp and dramatic nosedive. If you are in a position of any kind of prominence you should ask "when" not "if" your behavior and performance will be discussed and critiqued in very public forums. If you act like a jerk or throw a tantrum or are mean to someone in a public place it's very likely going to be blogged or otherwise written about online. This is the world we live in. Protect your personal brand; in other words act like someone is watching and writing it down, or you know, just be nice.

The SFMoma is a large, respected institution. It will naturally be able to survive any hit its repurtation this situation causes but it will take a hit. A completly and totally avoidable hit. If you google SFMoma Photography, like someone interested in photography and modern art might do, only the first two current results actually point to SFMoma's site. The rest, as you can imagine, point to blogs and news sources talking about Simon Blint and Thomas Hawk.

During the incident Hawk told Blint that he'd be blogging about it all. "I'm blogging this" can be a threat, a t-shirt, a joke or a promise. Most of the time people who say "I'm blogging this" probably won't have the audience to do much damage to the person or institution they're blogging about. Every now and then though a blogger will have that power. The Hawk/Blint affair was picked up by a tech blog for the British newspaper The Guardian. This is probably not what the SFMoma wanted our friends across the pond to be talking about when mentioning the museum. Social Media users have power, sometimes individually but always collectively. If Hawk's blog post hadn't been dugg, reposted and commented on so many times it would have been one cranky guy screaming at the gods. Instead it's a virtual army of disgruntled folks spreaking negatively about SFMoma and its staff.

Know What You've Told Your Customers Online
If you've published rules or guidelines somewhere online assume that a customer will repeat them to you verbatim at some point. They're going to know them so you better. Hawk verified where and how he was allowed to shoot in the museum before he went. He seemingly knew the museum's stated policy much better than the Director of Customer Relations did.

Everything You Do is Customer Service
Every single interaction you have with a customer and the general public is an opportunity to do good customer service work, even asking a customer to stop a behavior or asking him to leave is an opportunity to do good customer service. This situation has escalated so much larger than it ever would have had Blint been a bit more customer service oriented in his approach, even if Hawk was doing something wrong.

To distiIl this down: the vast majority of people writing about this week about SFMoma and Simon Blint probably never wrote about either of those topics before, now they're writing about them exactly in the ways you wouldn't want your company to be written about.

"Bloggers are Killing the Message" Thank Goodness

2008-08-11T14:46:28Z

New Media and Politics: Bloggers are Killing the Message is the presentation for our local IABC branch's August luncheon. I haven't seen the presentation yet so I'll refrain from criticizing too harshly. I'll just say that if in fact bloggers are killing "the message" then good riddance and thank you bloggers.

Again, I haven't seen the presentation yet but I'm assuming that by "message" the presenter means a carefully crafted campaign of very limited information that flows only one way. Simply put the marketer tells the audience what he wants us to know and we're supposed to be happy to get it. Our only response to the message should be to either buy the product or vote for the politician the message is telling us to. Bloggers don't play that game. Bloggers dig (and digg) deeper than the press releases or news articles they've been handed. Bloggers say when they disagree with political or business decisions. Bloggers say what they think but more importantly blog readers get to say what they think as well. A blogger posts, commenters respond and many people are participating in a two-way conversation.

The fundamental truth that people complaining about blogs killing the message don't want to hear is this: We don't want the message. We want real information, real conversation, real discussion, real communication with actual humans. Press releases and carefully crafted "messages" from nameless, faceless drones will never inspire the same impact and interest that blog posts and other social media channels provide. The audience knows that. Bloggers aren't killing the message they're giving the audience a choice they've never had before. And when the choice is between your message and information combined with human voices and opinions, well, your message is going to lose every time. No matter what your message is, we've seen it before, and we don't want it again.

Does the World Need Another Social Media Consultant? Maybe Just One More

2008-08-09T16:46:38Z

Subtitle: Why I've hung out a shingle as a Social Media Educator and Consultant

Social Media Consultant is a popular job title these days. So popular in fact I'm hesitant to use the phrase to describe myself. I'm hesitant because I see consultants charging exorbitant rates for social media projects without actually sharing much social media knowledge or contributing to the greater good. I'm hesitant because social media is a constantly evolving field still in its infancy and no one can honestly call herself an expert. I'm hesitant because in some minds a social media consultant is the modern day equivalent of a snake oil salesman.

Social Media Consultant is an appropriate title for work I do though so I'm pitching hesitancy aside and laying claim. I'm laying claim to the title because I'm passionate about the work not only because it's creative and engaging but also because I feel I can provide solid benefits to clients and do actual good with this work. Doing good in my business life is as important to me as doing good in my personal life. That is to say it is of utmost importance to me.

I've been doing social media consulting projects for quite a while now but always interspersed with my other primary projects, never as my main focus. I could have kept on in that routine but I decided to make a change. Let me share a couple examples of the good work and potential good work that inspired me to take this step of "branding" myself as a social media consultant and to start focusing on more social media projects.

I recently gave an RSS 101 presentation to a group of business communicators. These were PR and marketing folks who I assumed would have a deeper grasp of social media concepts than they did. It was incredible to see light bulbs go off for audience members as they started to grasp how RSS feeds could streamline how they received information. Teaching people how to use tools that can simplify their job or make them more efficient is good work.

After this presentation my own light bulb went off. It had been silly of me to assume the audience members would know more than they did because who would have taught them these concepts? Who would have taught them about these tools? Only a relatively small number of non-web focused companies have social media staff thus far so the knowledge wouldn't have come from in-house training. So if social media educators and consultants aren't out there making their services available how are people entrenched in their respective businesses going to learn? It was an inspiring lesson to me.
I recently received a pitch, directed toward my blog Consuming Louisville, from an advertising agency representing a very well know national not-for-profit organization. The pitch, in a word, was awful. It was abundantly clear from the email I received that the agency representative didn't understand what a blog was much less how pitching bloggers is far different from pitching newspaper reporters or magazine editors. Truthfully, I was embarrassed for the agency. I responded as kindly and as helpfully as I could about why the pitch they'd sent would most certainly not result in the coverage they were looking for. My fear was (and is) that they'd pitched other bloggers the same way and that some of those bloggers would blog about the bad pitch. In other words I was afraid that both the ad agency and the non-profit (one that actually does really good work) would be publicly shamed. Teaching this agency to better understand social media including how to better pitch bloggers as well as when not to pitch bloggers would be good work. It would help the agency better represent the non-profit and in turn help the non-profit do more good work.

I firmly believe that social media represents a monumental change in the way we communicate with each other and get information. I also believe that there is no going back from this shift. This shift impacts many aspects of society including business. I don't think this is a bad thing, in fact I think it's a really good thing. Sharing information where people are gathering and conversing is a good thing. Understanding why sharing information is far more important than "staying on message" is an even better thing. Companies and non-profits who don't learn and understand this are going to be left behind.

I'm focusing my consulting efforts on Louisville businesses and non-profits* because as anyone who knows me can attest I love Louisville and want to help the Louisville community as much as possible. Recently my friend Shawn Morton, a very smart and funny man left Louisville to join the Corporate Internet Marketing team at Nationwide. His title is Sr. Consultant, Social Media. Nationwide is a large company that not only "gets" social media but wants to be a leader in the space. They're well on their way to doing that by hiring a talented guy like Shawn. Though I'm happy for Shawn my first thought upon hearing the news was "why isn't a Louisville company hiring him?" We're the home base for similar companies who have similar social media needs (even if they don't know it yet). So Louisville is seeing a brain drain and Columbus, Ohio is getting some of our local talent. Not only is Columbus getting Louisville talent but some Louisville company has missed their shot at hiring a really great local social media mind. I want to fight both the brain drain element and the Louisville businesses missing out element. I don't want Louisville to be left behind in any area particularly an area that I have something to offer.

So. All that is a really long winded way of saying On a path media is now open for business.

*I'm not opposed to regional and national projects now that I've hung out a formal shingle but Louisville is my home base and I'd be happy to work on a full slate of Louisville based projects.

New design launched using Movable Type

2008-06-29T15:06:14Z

Our web site is sporting a new look and feel thanks to Movable Type and the Universal Template Set. The Universal Template Set makes it possible for just about anyone to get up and running with a new web site using Movable Type. It is literally as easy as just a few clicks. Just pick a new for your web site, select the Universal Template Set and publish. Then viola! a new web site. Thank you Movable Type!

I've been a Movable Type user since 2002 and highly endorse it as a blogging and content management platform.