August 2008 Archives

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

1. 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.
   
   
2. 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.