Open The Dialogue

I'm sure everyone who has devised and executed a social media campaign, particularly one involving outreach to writers of blogs and other sites, has been asked to provide some sort of metric to justify such efforts. Often what's asked for are pageviews or visitors or (gulp) impressions.

But here's the story I tell all the time when people ask about my personal site's reach: I get, on MMM, about 800 hits to the site a day. But a good amount of those come in, via searches, to posts I wrote months, if not years ago. So if you're including MMM in your blog outreach plans and you're basing its inclusion on that 800 +/- daily visits, you need to know that not all those 800 people are coming in through the front door.

That means some portion of that overall number of people are not seeing whatever you've just pitched me - yet - though some of them are. Unlike overall visitor numbers we can tell who's hitting the front page. That is one advantage of the web versus traditional metrics like overall circulation - we can see how people move around on a site.

The 1,000+ people who subscribe to my RSS feed, though, definitely are. That's because via the feed they're always seeing the most recent content and updates, and they're seeing them at a time of their choosing, whatever time they've blocked off to catch up on their reading. But I don't think RSS subscriber numbers is something that's often asked for or included when measuring success. This despite the fact that, based on my experience, far more publishers make their RSS subscriber numbers visible on their sites - largely through a FeedBurner chicklet - than make their site visit stats publicly viewable.

The same rings true here on OTD, where the number of people snagging the RSS feed vastly outstrip the number of hits to the site.

Considering there's such a demand for numbers as a means to justify online public relations efforts; and considering there seem to be more publishers who use that FeedBurner number on their sites; and considering that number translates into a higher percentage of the audience that's going to see the successful results of your outreach, I think it's past time to start factoring RSS numbers into the numbers agencies provide to clients.

Now I'll be the first to state that swapping one number for another does little or nothing to address the fact that influence in a particular vertical niche or community held by one person does not always correlate to certain numbers. But aside from anecdotal impressions given by those familiar with the online space there isn't much we can do to back that up. Numbers are always more reassuring since that's how traditional media has always been measured and that's what people are looking for.

So as long as it's numbers being asked for it's incumbent on those of us navigating the online space on behalf of our clients to provide the best ones available. Considering all the factors above it seems to me RSS subscribers is probably one of the better numbers we can provide.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 02:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The whole discussion of whether or not social media outlets can effectively be monetized isn't at all surprising to me. For as long as there has been advertising on blogs and other platforms there's been a conversation about what it's value is to the audience, to the advertiser and to the publisher. What does seem to be surprising, to me at least, is that the root cause of this conversation often goes unspoken.

There's so much hand-wringing over whether or not social media can be monetized because the online media world is the first time actual metrics were demanded to account for an ads success.

Traditional media touted its reach and sold ad inventory based on that reach. But online media had to wait to get paid for the most part until the ads it sold actually performed and then had to justify its methodology for counting visitors, clicks or whatever else it was providing to advertisers.

Even among the biggest, most savvy players, effectively making money on advertising against social media is a tricky proposition. Just look at Google's problems selling inventory on MySpace's search functionality, though that effort may be hampered by both the fact that Google caught that deal just as MySpace was beginning to lose it's luster and the fact that it's search function stinks (at least it always did for me).

Both Kami Huyse and David Armano have thoughts up on how advertising on social media channels is just as disruptive to the audience as on traditional channels and that's true. That's why, as Kami says, effective public relations efforts are more essential than ever. Part of that is through our efforts to position our clients as participants in the conversation, something that is as non-disruptive as possible and even has the potential (if they listen to our guidance and resist the urge to engage in outright marketing) to add value to that community's conversation.

That's especially likely true if they drop some of their guarded nature and engage in Jeremiah Owyang's three "impossible" conversations in an open and honest manner. After all there are a lot of lessons to be learned from the people who have the most problems with your company. If you're not listening to them and addressing their concerns then you're effectively writing off them as customers, and that's something not many companies can afford to do.

And if you or your clients are doing social media wrong or if there's some sort of inconsistency in efforts there will always be someone there to call you on it.

Yes, social media can be distracting, but that distraction is worth it when you consider that it also creates this sort of ongoing industry conference that everyone can attend because you don't have to travel and all you need is the ability to sign up at Wordpress.com. Social media turns the entire Internet into a help line, where colleagues can ping each other for advice, help noodling out an issue or just to make each other laugh, just like what often happens at conferences. We're all attendees and we're all presenters and all we can hope for is that we make the best impression possible because we respect the opinions of everyone who's listening to us.

Social media also turns the entire Internet into one big recommendation engine that can drive us to movies, music or other media that we had overlooked, discounted or never heard of. While sites like Netflix, iTunes and others all use our behavior and perceived interests as part of an algorithm, the opinions of those people we respect will always carry more weight because we're social animals, and we'll never be able to say "That was an awesome find, thanks for pointing me to it" to a computer and have it say "Glad you liked it!" back to us.

Social media can. It allows for feedback. Feedback for our recommendations, feedback for our ideas, feedback for our opinions and feedback for all our other efforts. Therein lies its power. Not to provide new advertising outlets, but to give us all a voice. The best social media marketers know that and act accordingly.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

What Mike Manuel has written here echoes the thinking of myself and others here that a true social media press release focuses on content and not on design. We all have different ideas of how things should be arranged and such, but those are design issues, relegating the discussion to one similar to what you’d have over works of art. The problem is that something that’s beautiful to one pair of eyes is ugly to the next. So there will never be a truly universal social media release format. Indeed even getting an entire internal team to agree on one that’s appropriate for all clients is going to be a significant task.

It’s what our clients say that’s remembered far more than how they said it. That’s why the focus needs to be on putting content on the release page that’s interesting and relevant, points that are easier to agree upon and which have much more value to the end audience.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Based on how I'm seeing my online friends who work in and cover the tech space react, it looks like public relations folks are hitting them up left and right about anything and everything in advance of CES next week.

• Eliot has taken a novel approach in CES coverage, posting his Gmail bucket for this stuff on Flickr
• Andru Edwards is wondering what the heck is up with his email box.
• Jeremy Pepper, who's not going to CES, is asking people to not use last year's list.

I know we all want to do a great job for our clients at events like this, but working off canned lists these days isn't exactly the smartest move, no?

Posted by Tom Biro at 05:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Before we continue on with the news of the day and other good stuff, wanted to give a big shout-out to Josh Hallett, who just announced he will be joining the team at Voce Communications. Josh, I'm sure, will be a great addition to the Voce team and it will be exciting to see the stuff that comes out of there in the future, with him joining such an all-star team Voce already has in place.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Tom Biro at 12:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you don't happen to live in one of the markets where JetBlue's apology letter ran as a full-page advertisement, and aren't on the airline's mailing list as a customer or member of its frequent traveler program, then you'd have missed the following thoughts that just landed in my inbox, and which I've attached in a PDF here:

Dear JetBlue Customers,

We are sorry and embarrassed. But most of all, we are deeply sorry.

Last week was the worst operational week in JetBlue's seven year history. Following the severe winter ice storm in the Northeast, we subjected our customers to unacceptable delays, flight cancellations, lost baggage, and other major inconveniences. The storm disrupted the movement of aircraft, and, more importantly, disrupted the movement of JetBlue's pilot and inflight crewmembers who were depending on those planes to get them to the airports where they were scheduled to serve you. With the busy President's Day weekend upon us, rebooking opportunities were scarce and hold times at 1-800-JETBLUE were unacceptably long or not even available, further hindering our recovery efforts.

Words cannot express how truly sorry we are for the anxiety, frustration and inconvenience that we caused. This is especially saddening because JetBlue was founded on the promise of bringing humanity back to air travel and making the experience of flying happier and easier for everyone who chooses to fly with us. We know we failed to deliver on this promise last week.

We are committed to you, our valued customers, and are taking immediate corrective steps to regain your confidence in us. We have begun putting a comprehensive plan in place to provide better and more timely information to you, more tools and resources for our crewmembers and improved procedures for handling operational difficulties in the future. We are confident, as a result of these actions, that JetBlue will emerge as a more reliable and even more customer responsive airline than ever before.

Most importantly, we have published the JetBlue Airways Customer Bill of Rights—our official commitment to you of how we will handle operational interruptions going forward—including details of compensation. I have a video message to share with you about this industry leading action.

You deserved better—a lot better—from us last week. Nothing is more important than regaining your trust and all of us here hope you will give us the opportunity to welcome you onboard again soon and provide you the positive JetBlue Experience you have come to expect from us.

Sincerely,

David Neeleman
Founder and CEO
JetBlue Airways

I'm actually really pleased that JetBlue chose to use the words "we subjected our customers to unacceptable delays" here, rather than try and place blame elsewhere. Additionally, I think the fact that JetBlue chose to set up its Customer Bill of Rights before any legislation was put down on the airlines (and I'll be surprised if it doesn't), and utilize YouTube for a video address from JetBlue CEO David Neeleman was very smart. No, not that they published it on YouTube and simply walked away, but that they were smart enough to publish the YouTube video on their own site to make it available to the public.

Irrelevant of what people are saying about how this airline or that airline don't ever have problems, I think what JetBlue has done here, like it's done with its legroom and other in-flight amenities (that includes attitude and service, by the way), has set itself apart from the pack. As a lot of you already know, JetBlue has had a lot of positive commentary by "fans" of the airline who pretty much swear by it. I, for one, am not convenient enough to JFK to take it as regularly as I'd like, but do so whenever it's worthwhile for me for time and destination convenience. It's one of the easier airlines to deal with, from booking to boarding, and I think it will continue to be as such. What'll be so important here is whether or not we all "forget" about this, including the company, and they end up resting back on its laurels, or if the company's staff truly takes care of business as the CEO has proclaimed. As Ben Popken mentioned yesterday on Consumerist, we'd fly JetBlue again, too.

Posted by Tom Biro at 05:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This morning, I'd posted an update to this post about how the Vimeo version of the Bank of America / MBNA "One" video had been taken down, and that I'd reached out to Vimeo to find out what happened.

When asked if the company had asked Vimeo to remove the video from its site, Zach Klein, GM at Vimeo, responded affirmatively, saying that "they asked us to take it down citing copyright protection since they produced the clip internally for company-use only." Additionally, he mentioned that Vimeo allows its users to download the original version of the file that was uploaded [ahem, YouTube (thanks, Chris!)], so that's most likely how the high res version has made its way around, including to E!'s The Soup.

Posted by Tom Biro at 01:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Unfortunately, neither Tom or I were able to make it, due to prior commitments, to the Second Life launch of crayon, the new agency founded by Joe Jaffe, Shel Holtz, Neville Hobson and CC Chapman. But that doesn't mean others weren't there. From the reports that Neville and Joe have put up it was quite an event.

Thankfully these guys are as good at promoting themselves through new media as they will be at promoting their clients through new media. They've setup an agency blog and a Flickr set documenting the launch event. They even announced the creation of crayon in a very new media friendly press release that's complete with links, pictures to download and other goodies that make blogging the release that much easier.

The emphasis of crayon is on conversation, the reality that marketing is no longer a one way street.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 05:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the things I keep noticing as I navigate the murky waters of the PR world (would that make it Waterworld? I hope not.) is that it seems to be dominated by women. I first realized this in college when the classes and the PRSSA chapter I belonged to was something like 75 percent made up of women.

The reason I bring this up is this podcast interview with Sharon Barclay of Blanc & Otis. While her specific focus is on tech PR, the points she makes are also applicable (and applied by her) to the larger industry as well. Her contention – and it’s backed up by some research – is that women gravitate toward PR for a couple of reasons:

1) It’s one of the few areas of practice where women have the potential to join C-level management. The other being Human Resources.

2) Women have more “white matter” in their brains that give them the ability to be better liars or at least make people more comfortable with the stories they spin.

I can see the first one. While we can debate the workplace prejudice that makes this an easily defendable statement till the cows come home, it does seem to be at least as true as any other vague, general statement you could make about one gender’s experience in the entirety of the business world. The second one seems like a pretty cynical way to say something I’ve thought ever since I saw the 10 to 1 female/male ratio in my classes, that women are better communicators. That wasn’t so hard, was it?

Where her argument starts to lose validity is where she says that jocks and less-than-stellar students also are attracted to communications and PR because it’s an easy course of study and doesn’t require much actual talent. Personally I think that’s an affront to all the incredibly bright people I’ve met in this industry. I’m sure she meant to say something a tad different than that but that’s how it came out. I don’t think it needs to be commented on further, so let’s just move on.

I think Barclay is good for questioning why PR is an industry that lends itself to such a un-paucity of women and looking for the reasons that lead to the women to choose PR over other careers. Unfortunately there seems to be too much reliance on stereotyping and too little attention paid to individuals.

[Thanks to Sean for passing this on.]

Posted by Chris Thilk at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today, a co-worker of mine pinged me with a link to this column by Jon Fine from BusinessWeek about companies pulling a pay for play ... err, write ... in the blogosphere. While the first reaction that this type of article / item typically creates is one of complete and utter shock on the faces of those who believe our world is altruistic, it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, really.

The Bad News

Let's start with the ugliness. Blogs, while they play check-and-balance for each other, don't necessarily have the internal controls that the "big media" we're all used to getting our daily dirt from have. When that kind of situation exists (not that any big mediafolk haven't written tit-for-tat in reality), you're bound to have some apples leaning towards the "bad" variety as far as journalism goes. But herein lies the argument of "is blogging journalism?" To which the response is, as it should be, "it all depends." Some bloggers may be journalists, some blogs may contain journalism, some journalists may partake in non-journalism on blogs, and whatever other combinations you can come up with, but you can't take everything you see on any blog as truth, just as we've learned that not everything we see in our newspapers or on the television as complete and utter fact. It's that some of our other media have a much higher "success" rate when it comes to reality.

So, we're faced with a loophole of sorts on the 'net, one with about 40 million sites that may or may not be on the take. Are they all on the take? Nope. Are some. Sure. What's most important is the title that Fine's item came with, that he (or his editor) added - "Polluting the Blogosphere." Which is where we get to move to the good part.

The Good News

As the title says, what was going on in this particular case is "pollution." Sure, pollution has been known to cause larger problems than just some trash on the corner, but it's not "annihiliation" by any means. The reason these business models exist is because people have seen that blog postings - especially permanent ones - have a much better long-term effect than advertising probably does, even effective text ads, at being a part of overall conversation and getting influentials to pay attention. Is this going to potentially have a negative effect on what bloggers are thinking when they read blogs where people are overly glowing of a product or service? Probably. What we should be worrying more about, probably, are the *negative* blog postings that people could potentially create to do a similar thing. Don't think a company would be slick enough to trash a competitor, because negative comments wouldn't necessarily appear as blatant?

Let's consider that the power-in-numbers situation is more than in effect here. Bloggers who appear to be on the take regularly won't be taken seriously in the long haul by "serious" bloggers and blog readers. Disclosing that you were paid to write about something (which is completely different from saying you were reached out to by the company that thought you might be interested in the product / service) purely makes it look like a textual advertisement written by the blogger in question. People *not* disclosing what they are doing are obviously "free" to do so (that whole capitalism thing and all), but it doesn't mean we will believe everything they say. The value here is more of the mention of the product / service, not necessarily what the review says. Think of what you read on most blogs as how you should consider Wikipedia - a good starting point, not necessarily THE definitive answer-giver.

Most of the bigger blogging groups / companies / teams have decent policies against such things happening, and just making sure your writers - many of whom may have never had a professional writing gig in their lives - know what the "rules" are, ethically and internally, is what makes the difference. On any given day, I'm not one to think that TechCrunch's Mike Arrington or Marshall Kirkpatrick are "on the take" and are being paid to blog about things because they've earned my trust, just as my local newspaper has. Can I say the same thing about some random blog that just appeared on the scene and is randomly writing about some restaurant chain, glowingly, here and there? Probably not, because I don't know much about who's behind it.

This is probably more of a search engine issue than it is anything else as far as ethics goes, which also leads back to the "pollution" concept. A commenter, "Jim Durbin," in the BW item seems to agree, saying that "These companies are paying for link traffic..."

In my eyes, three important things are in play here. The companies involved in this pay-for-write situation are described as "Advertisers," without the quotes, by Fine, and presumably Ted Murphy's PayPerPost.com. When the money quote in an article is "it's up to [bloggers] to be their own morality police," that tells me that everyone involved probably knows that what's going on is wrong. Or at least shady. Most importantly - this isn't just that cash is actually changing hands for people to write "about" a product or service, it's much more specific, seemingly looking for positive only (or close) or you don't get paid. If all of a sudden 50 blogs are going "You've got to do XYZ with ABC" and there's no apparent rhyme or reason for it, someone *will* start looking for answers.

This is a tough situation for public relations professionals, especially those in the "2.0" world, to be forced to contend with. A popular, and for the most part, effective, way of doing things is to reach out to a number of blog writers that you believe to have some interest or relevance regarding a product or service a client offers, and let those in the marketplace sample or have access to said product or service. Should this be considered close to the same situation? It all depends. Some bloggers who consider themselves close to the world of journalism would decline any offering of this type, but others would welcome the opportunity, similar to how those participating in a focus group or test kitchen might have access to a product, service, or activity months before others have, and they are giving their feedback in a closed situation. Here, companies are spinning the wheel, and allowing those individuals to have their say - or say nothing - on their blogs and in their circles of influence. I would argue that this will more closely reach a point of consignment, such as what much of the tech industry does with review journalists, with key members of the blogosphere. This is absolutely happening today, especially in the tech space, but there is a good chance it will widen as the need for different types of feedback or an interest in getting "buzz" out there in a timely and effective manner grows.

At the end of the day, Murphy's "per post" payola situation is one of a number of similar concepts that have been floating around the blogosphere for some time now. Whether or not they have made any headway is probably more subjective than anything. If they measure success by 1,000 more visitors to an advertiser's site, then fine. If they define success by actual sales or conversions, then that's another. In either case, we know that spam works, and we all hate that, right? This is the scheme of the moment, and while it might "pollute" some of our spaces, it's not going to be responsible for the downfall of a good thing.

Posted by Tom Biro at 05:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Late last week, I went out to dinner with two other people to a pretty well-known restaurant chain that has locations across the U.S., and had a kind of curious experience. Now, first off, I've got to say that I go out to eat quite a bit, to a variety of places. In doing so, you come across quite a bit of various dishes being out of stock, or quirky things happening in a restaurant. That's all well and good, but this experience kind of opened my eyes to the new world we live in when it comes to potential public relations and customer service nightmares.

So, after one of our dishes was 86'd only moments before we were to receive dinner, the three of us had something to eat, with the 86'd dinner landing a free appetizer for diner #3. The staff was super super polite, and the manager was the one who came out to apologize for the vanishing dish. This is actually very important when it came to what would happen next. A few minutes later, as we're all well into our meals, a strange object was seen atop one of the plates - not mine. Looking from my seat, I wasn't sure what it was, but shiny, squared-off objects aren't usually part of a chicken-filled salad, so I had to take a closer look. As it turned out, it was a few inch long razor blade.

Thankfully, no bites of a metallic nature had been taken, and the blade was hidden underneath the sprouts. (Aren't they always!?) After retrieving the manager (she must have been happy to see us again), we were treated very well and with a lot of respect as a customer. She did everything she should have to ask us if there was anything else she could get us, assured us that we would not be paying for our meal, and pretty much offered us the run of the place. That was great. When we re-ordered the same dish (but without razor blades), it was quickly delivered within five minutes by the chef of the restaurant, who had done a little digging in the kitchen and determined just what the problem was. As it turned out, the blade was part of a device used to slice tomatoes and other vegetables into long, thin strands, and do multiple slices at once - it was one of about eight blades on the piece. One apparently dropped loose, and fell into the dish, and was unseen by those doing the preparation. Quality control aside, I can totally see how something quirky like this could happen. That doesn't mean it *should* have happened, just that it's not outside of the realm of possibilities.

While sitting there in the moments before the manager arrived, I was torn as to whether to use one of the two cameraphones I was carrying in my pockets (we had four at the table total), and what to do with it if I did. Now there was no injury here, so I wasn't as concerned about that sort of thing, but something struck me at that exact moment - that any of us can hold a lot of cards in situations like that, these days, if we're into the tools of the trade. That doesn't mean you have to be a professional blogger or photographer or anything like that. Let's just say I had shot a photo, sent it to Flickr from my phone, and then texted a few of my friends to check it out. They'd not only know where I was, but they would see the plate. Surely, someone could have blogged it or at the least sent it out to friends on instant messaging platforms, or hell, posted it to a MySpace account. It's a quick and dirty nightmare for the restaurant, a potential lawsuit coming back my way (even if it had no merit), and a bunch of ugliness as people everywhere who might have been heading to this restaurant hear about what is going on. And hey, what about the manufacturer of the kitchen tool?

Not to harp on this forever, but what I wanted to make clear that these kinds of things happen every day, and have for years. The difference today is that everyone - not just the multimillion dollar companies who buy ad time - has a voice, potentially a large one, and probably one that isn't fast forwarded through, either. People listen to each other a lot more often than they do a spokesperson or talking head on the news. Let's just say I was part of a table of teenagers (hey, I was one once) - would I have thought twice about taking the photo and emailing it across the planet from my cellphone? Probably not. That's what we're all up against, all the time.

This isn't about fixing business practices at all - mistakes and errors happen - it's about knowing how to pay attention and be aware of things like this as they happen, or at least within a reasonable time afterwards. This restaurant hearing about this four or five days later (when I'm writing this blog post) wouldn't have cut it. There could have been hundreds, if not thousands, of people talking about this, forwarding it along, blogging on it, or whatever. Just as companies are prepared for crisis communications in a traditional sense, this isn't about waiting until the story is "mainstream" enough to make the evening news and get a formal press conference. Showing that you're on top of this stuff and can incorporate a response from a disaster that may not have begun because someone called the police or their local news station is what is going to separate firms from the pack. Not that we want to see these crises happen, but we know that they are out there and can come about very quickly, perhaps faster than they ever have, even in our 24-hours television news world.

Some people talking about the blogosphere being like the "Wild, Wild West." Typically I disagree, but when comparing instances like this to that concept, it fits right in. You never know where the next gunshot is going to come from.

Posted by Tom Biro at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This week, Keith O'Brien's "What goes online" column in PRWeek discusses how the expectations that public relations firms would die off at the same rate that media outlets did (or somewhere therabouts) is off base, and that adaptation and re-focusing would keep many firms is on point. I won't comment too much, as this piece stands alone, but to say that the ship has definitely sailed when you have an executive of a Fortune 500 company say to O'Brien that agencies "don't have to maintain their own blog, but if I say, 'Technorati,' and they don't know what I'm talking about, the interview is over." Wow. In a way, I'm not surprised, and pleased to hear that at least one person out there has this kind of knowledge and knows how to utilize it to his or her company's benefit when assessing the abilities of a public relations firm.

Earlier in the piece, O'Brien says:

First of all, the PR spend is miniscule compared to ad buys. True, public relations has traditionally experienced difficulties with measurement, but technology is changing that. CEOs have begun moving communications professionals to the C-suite at such a rate that PRWeek have the words "newly-created position" as a keyboard shortcut. And yet, communications expertise is still currently undervalued. Marketing budget-conscious Fortune 500 would be foolish to slash PR budgets in half (from high seven-figures to low seven-figures) while keeping a $40 million ad spend. The marketing shave, if any, will come from traditional advertising.

This definitely echoes some of the sentiments I had heard while attending an Association of National Advertisers (ANA) event last summer. Ad spend is down for some companies, or at least is shifting from traditional (read: broadcast and print) to interactive / online / mobile opportunities. It was stated by more than one executive speaking at the event that outreach and relationships were a necessity in today's world, which is where, for the most part, public relators (actually a word!) and corporate communicators will come in.

Posted by Tom Biro at 05:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

First off, let me say that I've been sitting on this for a bit now, and have been trying to come up with the best way to discuss this subject, as it's awful touchy - and chose to do so tonight. Something that I think frustrates the blogging community about public relations is how bloggers are approached and treated by agencies and staffers. While I think that most firms talk a good game, not too many of them have executed so successfully on "pitching" bloggers on a regular basis. Additionally, one of the things that bloggers enjoy doing most is fact checking, to the extent that "fact check your ass" became a phrase that got pretty popular with many of them. That's why I thought it wise to comment on this item from sometime in Q1/Q2 of 2005 by Weber Shandwick's Mike Spataro. [Also of interest - this article was, at least as of a week or two ago, found here - or at least that's the URL I had bookmarked to finalize this blog entry.]

I'm sure you're already rolling your eyes at this, but part of the reason I'm doing this is that some of it leaves a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to how PRfolk are perceived by the world of bloggers. And I was a blogger before I was working in public relations. Now I don't know Mike personally, but I have had occasion to speak with him last fall, and this is by no means personal. Plus, Weber Shandwick is another firm within the IPG family, just like MWW Group.

So without further ado....

Blogs (let's go with blogs here, not weblogs, Web logs, or any other form) are not exclusively ""websites written by one person," nor do they have "no advertisers to please," across the board. In fact, I'd venture a guess that while "pleasing" Google for its AdSense product is about as easy as a) not setting up a spam blog and b) not telling people to click on your links, it's still something to think about. Many a blog is probably carrying some form of advertising, contextual or otherwise. And just because some bloggers (even a majority of those in that survey) have said that they blog "as a form of self-therapy" doesn't mean that the concept of making money - even a little bit - doesn't cross their minds, or the minds of many others who ramble and comment on everything under the sun on their personal blogs. The mere fact that Google's Blogger product allows for easy monetization of a blog*spot hosted (Blogger's free hosting site) blog tells me that there is demand for some form of advertising. To clarify, the hitch here is that advertisers, most likely, need the blogger's real estate far more than the blogger needs the revenues from the advertiser in order to survive. But that doesn't mean that bloggers don't worry about their content when it comes to whether or not advertisers will drop some coin in their pockets.

Also, what hits me the hardest here is when I read the "rules of the road" that are included in the piece. Now don't get me wrong - they're all spot on. Knowing what bloggers write about on a regular basis, figuring out whether or not they are receptive to hearing about you, following protocols that make sense and provide the blogger with something they actually want, not something you want them to have (there IS a difference) are all excellent suggestions. However, I can say with absolute sincerity that saying that you have "a comprehensive database of the most popular blogs broken down by industry category and contact and how they like to interact with PR professionals" and having one that is used properly by your staff are, in fact, two different things.

In mid-December, the folks at Gawker made an example of a PR staffer from Weber Shandwick who had been persistent at pitching that blog about the "Ultimate KFC Fan Contest," something that was, to be honest, totally irrelevant to the readers of Gawker. But as Jeremy Pepper noted over at Media Orchard about two months ago, "he likely was told to go with the list and pitched." Now obviously none of us knows *for sure* what happened inside W/S in this case, but does this seem like something where a seriously vetted database was used to pick blogs to reach out to? Not in my eyes. Sure, Gawker is an extremely popular blog, and even a snarky, obnoxious mention of your client or event would probably have good results should you get "chosen" to have something show up there, but who actually thought that Gawker (or its readers) really needed to be getting information about a contest about being KFC's biggest fan? For me, this is a big strike one as to saying one thing and doing another.

The second one, and this is where I have personal experience in the situation, is with regard to another pitch that was received at a blog I do some writing for, AdJab, that covers advertising and marketing. On September 22 of 2005, we landed a tip from someone at this same firm, who was working on this same client, letting us know all about KFC's new "Choose Your Sauce" interactive site. While I will give the pitch about a 5/10 for its overall creativity, the fact of the matter was that AdJab had already covered the story. 15 days earlier. A cursory search of the site for "choose your sauce" would have shown this. In my opinion, I wouldn't consider that "knowledgeable outreach." It felt to me like "AdJab is a blog. It covers advertising and marketing. This is an advertising and marketing story, I'll send it to them." and not much more than that. Am I going out on a limb for saying that? Perhaps. But when my polite response to the firm stating that we had covered it two weeks earlier, with a link to the coverage, was responded to with nothing that seemed like what I had said had sunk in, I didn't have a good impression as someone trying to assess whether a firm was trying to provide the blog's readers with good content rather than just blasting off semi-rewritten press releases that were made to look playful. If anything, I really took home the fact that the way this account was being monitored across the blogosphere was incomplete.

So if we're to add anything to the list of "do's and don'ts," it's that the last thing you should do before firing off that "pitchy" email to a blog is making a last-minute check of whether or not the bloggers have already covered the story - because the one thing that's ultimately telling when people say "we've been reading your blog and thought you might be interested in xyz" is when you've already covered xyz. If our firm's executives are out doing one thing while our staff is never being trained or at the very least given some realistic "direction" to follow when clients and firms are trying out how to contact bloggers, then all we're doing is talking in front of the class (and to our clients) about how 2 + 2 = 4, meanwhile we're just yelling "It's 4, 4 I tell you" when no one is looking, without knowing how to get there.

This is why I was definitely happy to see that Weber Shandwick had hired Jeremy Pepper, who most would recognize for his POP! PR Jots blog and his ability to stay on top of what's going on in the PR / blog world. Sure, it means some fun, "internal" competition between Interpublic firms when it comes to the world of online media, but at the end of the day it's an improvement to PR as a whole. As our "new" world continues embracing "new" media, it's important that there are people who bring a blend of common sense, PR-ability, and knowledge of how today's opinionated souls think and work to the table on a daily basis. It's something we try and incorporate into our everything here at MWW, and I would expect that other PR agencies who haven't reached this conclusion yet are probably in for a rude awakening.

[update 2/13] Also, check out Jeremy Pepper's post on ethics and PR blogging, which mentions this post. Jeremy makes some excellent following points to my own, and poses a sort of "call to action" that the rest of us should probably pay attention to. No wiki necessary.

Posted by Tom Biro at 03:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (1)

A few weeks ago, I spoke with PR Week's Keith O'Brien about tagging and social search for an article that showed up in the January 23 edition of the magazine, "Marketers: Start your search engines." During our conversation, we spoke about a variety of topics, and a few quotes of mine ended up in the piece (believe me, this isn't an ego-driven post). However, one of the things we discussed more that wasn't included was what the inclusion of tagging in the enterprise would be. One example cropped up a bit ago, with the use of the Outlook Tasks feature in the popular email software by way of tagging.

This afternoon, a little birdie dropped something else I hadn't seen before in my inbox, and it's something pretty cool when it comes to tagging and social bookmarking. Take a look at this press release from PR Newswire, and see if you notice anything new and interesting. Then, see what's after the jump.

Continue reading "I got your enterprise application for tagging right here" »

Posted by Tom Biro at 04:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

Back on the 19th, I wrote about Keith O'Brien's new column at PRWeek, "What goes online," and suggested it would be semi-required reading for PR folk, and I definitely agree after article two. This week, Keith (I'm going first name this week, sue me) tackles how public relations pros can't (and shouldn't) try to put out every single fire (read: blog posting) when it comes to people trashing a product or service. Of course, the example he provides, one that I've discussed here, in Kryptonite locks, is one that shows when it is (obviously) necessary to make an attempt to staunch the flow - though you're never going to make it all disappear. The only thing you can do in a case like that is mitigate, not dissipate. It's still going to be ringing true in the ears of those customers and persons who were around for it. And Keith is right - "all the blogging in the world would not have prevented it happening" - and yes, the product was the issue. But that doesn't mean that we can't disagree with the way the situation was handled. I mean, the fact that pretty much everyone was convinced (some still are) that the company was sitting on its hands for a few days means either every single blogger (A-list or not) is super gullible, or there is a public relations miscue at hand.

[cue Michael Hutchence cue cards / "Mediate" here]

[/cue]

My open question for the day here is whether or not PRWeek should do a little bit of open-door relationship building, sorta like what the Wall Street Journal started a bit back (I think it was just a year ago) when they began mailing out "free features" every night to bloggers and other influencers. Obviously it didn't cure the ail they had - no links from blogs (some might say that was a blessing) - but it did get people talking about the Journal's articles a bit more, since they were now linkable and not hidden behind a paid wall or sitting in your physical inbox. Ultimately, the WSJ set up an RSS feed (found here) for its free features that anyone could now snag.

Many of us who are in this sort of business would suggest that there is a whole generation of people who are going to have a serious lack of actual newspaper / print reading experience (of course, these are the lucky ones who wouldn't get ink on their hands all along) - especially with papers that aren't online for free. A way to attract those people to you, perhaps making them realize the value of a subscription (gasp!), is to show them what you've got. So let's say once a week we get to see Keith's column, and one or two other things, that are linkable and there for the reading - would that get PRWeek a bit more buzz and maybe a subscription or two?

That's my open question for you this week.

Posted by Tom Biro at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the things people ask about when talking about starting a blog is whether or not journalists read blogs or search them for information. The answer is that not *all* of them do, but quite a few keep an eye on what's happening in blogs and new media and utilize it either as a starting point for a story idea, a place to get quotes, or a reference area for readers of the finished piece. Another benefit of having a blog or Web presence is the possibility of getting quoted elsewhere. Sometimes a news site, such as News.com, will pick up on what bloggers are saying about a particular topic and quote / link to them right from the article, and sometimes they follow up directly to get some answers. On occasion, it leads to an interview or chat, giving you just a tad bit more publicity than you could drive yourself through blogs and new media outlets.

As a for instance, I'll throw out the example of my pal David Singer, who runs the hockeyfights.com site. Hockeyfights has quite a few members who are excited about hockey and the fighting aspect, but are true enthusiasts of the game as a whole. If you want to find a fight video in the last few years, this is a site to go check out. This morning, 1380 ESPN Radio in St. Louis had David on for a few minutes to talk about the site and what his opinions were on who the best fighters are right now, which teams are the toughest, and more. Right before he made it on the air, there was a great promo for him and the site done by the host, Andy Strickland, who handles the Blues Brunch show on that station. (The St. Louis Blues are the hockey team in the market, if you're not familiar with the NHL) You can listen to the clips on David's site.

So let alone the exposure of anyone listening to the promo during an interview with player Doug Weight heading over to the site, David got to be on the air and share his knowledge about the game and the fight within the game. He has, over quite a few years of working this project together, positioned himself as a great (if not THE) place to go for chat about last night's brawl and to see what it's all about. His site has attracted advertising from HDNet, which is running NHL games in HD this season on television, and has a loyal membership. We don't even need to discuss the bump in traffic that he might get from this appearance, it's the fact that the media is looking for content like this - and by going out and creating a community around a particular topic, David can effectively "own" a significant portion of the fan base for this particular aspect of the game - which is huge. What are you doing right now that you'd like to "own" a part of the market of, or be able to influence the discussion about?

Posted by Tom Biro at 03:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Just so you know, those pitches that are a bit clueless, off topic, or just horrid may just end up at one centralized database on the 'net - the Bad Pitch Blog. Don't worry, you get three "strikes" before showing up with your name and all, but it should be pretty big news that this is out there.

[via Blogspotting]

Posted by Tom Biro at 03:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

If you happen to be in (now snowy) Chicago today or this evening, and are interested in hearing some cool things about marketing in an unconventional sense, then feel free to drop by Northwestern University's Chicago Campus, at Wieboldt Hall on E. Superior Street for The Managers' Program Marketing Club's event, featuring Chuck Porter from Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, among others.

I'll be on a panel with James Bloom, VP of Marketing for Intersport, Chris Henger, SVP of Marketing / Product Development for DoubleClick's Performics division, Chris Miller, Element79's Digital marketing business builder, and William Rosen, Chief Creative Officer for Arc Worldwide. Chuck Porter will be offering the keynote presentation before the panel. The whole event starts at 5:30pm, and more information can be found here.

Posted by Tom Biro at 04:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

About a week ago, PR Week's Keith O'Brien published the first entry in a new column, "What goes online," for the publication. Keith focused his initial effort on how public relations firms have reached out to bloggers and have not always gotten the responses they expected. This new column will cover, in the magazine's words, "how technology is changing how companies interact with – and position their wares to – consumers." And it's about damn time, if you ask me.

We've heard tons of things from the market, PR pros who know (and don't know) what they're talking about, bloggers, and others involved in this equation, but this marks one of the first solid efforts I've seen from a dead tree publication (sorry, force of habit) to put two and two together on a regular basis, and not have the random column or op-ed here and there from someone who's handling the merger between tech and PR on a regular basis. If anything, this item and its follow up to come should probably be part of the welcome package to all new PR firm staffers - even if just to show the pitfalls in not paying attention to what you're doing when pitching blogs. We should all hope that we're not becoming so reliant on media lists that we think we can just pitch people without developing any sort of relationship when it's warranted - because that's most certainly happening in the blog world. Firms are finding out about the Technoratis, Instapundits, and Google Blogsearches of the world and going to town, thinking they have now harnessed the blogosphere. Hear that bell ringing in the background? It's your wakeup call - go address it, and don't hit the snooze button. If you do, it's going to affect your firm - and your clients (see: KFC / Gawker - here and here) - and recovering won't be as easy as you'd like.

Tip of the day: Individual blog pages are called permalinks because of one thing - they're permanent.

Posted by Tom Biro at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over at the Bacon's Blog this morning, Chris Thilk wrote up how we were both involved in a pretty nifty move by the folks at GoDaddy.com on Thursday. I won't steal too much of Chris' thunder, but the gist is like this - we both write at an advertising blog, AdJab, and were both interested in the company's plans for advertising during this year's Super Bowl on ABC. Turns out the company was set to have a press conference yesterday, but there wasn't a way to participate virtually. So after a phone call to Dan Siegel, GoDaddy PR guy, we heard back that a conference bridge was set up that we could call in and listen in on the conference. We got the news up shortly thereafter, and it is, as far as I can tell, the first pickup of what went down in the presser - at least through Google News it seems so.

This isn't to say that every single blog or outlet should (or can) be extended this level of extra effort in every single instance, and we don't know for sure that GoDaddy didn't end up giving the bridge number out to others who were interested in participating. But what Chris and I wanted to highlight is that without even batting an eye, Dan Siegel took it upon himself to figure out a way to accommodate us here, and hopefully our post was worth his efforts in extending the reach of his story - and that was pretty cool.

Posted by Tom Biro at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Very recently, there have been a few mentions of what *really* happened behind the scenes at Kryptonite Lock Company, notably at Dave Taylor's and Debbie Weil's blogs. Taylor has the "real story" of what went down when a Kryptonite lock was found to be "pickable" by using the body of a pen, a story that many of us in the PR biz have used as a case study of how the actions (or inactions) of businesses towards forum readers/posters and bloggers positions a brand going forward.

The reason I'm pointing these blogs out today is to further clarify what really happened. While Kryptonite didn't directly respond to the buying public immediately, it did speak with the press on the matter. The company's spokesperson, Donna Tocci, is right on to point out that Kryptonite was aware of the discussions going on on blogs, forums, etc., but that doesn't mean that the best decision was not to respond. Tocci says the following in the interview with Taylor:

Five business days after the post, Kryptonite announced an outline of a plan for a lock exchange program noting that three business days after that the full plan would be in place. Eight business days after the first post, Kryptonite announced its full, free Lock Exchange Program and began taking registrations that day. We began the first exchanges a few weeks later.

Sounds reasonable, right? Also clarifies that the firm was immediately looking for a way to make good with its customers, and the general public. But while Tocci makes it clear that the company was working hard from zero-hour in order to get a proper plan in place, which is what any good crisis management or PR pro would recommend, that doesn't mean that the company should have made no announcements - on its own volition, not through press inquiries - for a few days. A few grafs later, Tocci states:

Companies absolutely need to keep track of the blogosphere. I agree with that. However, I think it is only a segment of what companies should look at for their marketing and publicity plans. There are millions of blogs, but what are the audiences of these blogs? We know that lots of teens and college students have blogs and mainly use them to communicate with friends and family. These are our customers, but are they going to corporate blogs? Not so sure about that.

This is mostly true - not every single customer of Kryptonite's (or any company, for that matter) will subscribe to a corporate blog - but that doesn't mean that having a blog, or at the least an easily editable Website that carries a priority message about a particular topic can't be set up already. For reasons we don't need to explain here, it should be noted that not only do many blogs (corporate or otherwise) gain significant favor through search engines, but bloggers who get much of their information from other blogs would end up finding Kryptonite's direct response on its blog through a search tool like Technorati or on a site such as Tech.memeorandum.com were it published that way. People (teenagers, college students) that Tocci is describing ARE reading things online, which is how this whole story spread. If Kryptonite had set up its own presence to address this matter, there wouldn't be disinformation floating around to this very day about the situation. Heck, it would be well worth it for Kryptonite to buy all of the darn Google AdWords relevant to the issue and direct people to its own Website where a message could have been set up to address it.

Tocci also says "If we'd announced what we wanted to do before we had the back end in place and couldn't back it up, that would have been the bigger PR nightmare, right?" - and to some extent she's correct. But what's so wrong with coming out and saying something to the effect of "Kryptonite is aware of the problems with product xyz, and is currently setting up an online forum / return process / exchange arrangement, which will be announced shortly. For regular updates, please sign up for our issue specific mailing list here." and offer an opportunity for people to put in an email so they would know what Kryptonite was up to immediately when it happened, not when the customer just happened to have time to come back to the Website. It's proactive, even if the company hadn't set up the fulfillment houses and other backend items. Not saying anything to the public - irrelevant of what the press 'knew" at the time - looks like inaction in this case, and in most cases. Additionally, the statement that "no bloggers called the company" is probably right on, but it should be pointed out that from a blogger's perspective, not all companies are interested in dealing with unaffiliated writers like them, and will not always answer questions pointed to them by a blogger - though that's certainly changed since this happened a bit more than a year ago. Certainly part of the onus is on bloggers for not following up on this story, and perhaps this is the "gap" between journalism and blogging, and where the two partially meet, but not really. But that doesn't mean we can just sit here, shrug our shoulders, and say "no one really knew that this was the situation because no bloggers called us."

To me, just looking at the chart that Debbie Weil has included in the middle of her posting is evidence enough that the lack of clarification on issues for a few days definitely affected the issue in question, but perhaps that it purely my perception. This isn't about making crisis communications plans that solve the problem within hours (if not minutes) - this is about using the tools available to communicate to your customers, prospects, constituents, or interested parties, on your grounds, and not letting the ill-informed "own" the conversation on its own.

It's true that you can't answer every single blog and forum post on every single topic or problem. But that doesn't mean you can't work the space to enter the conversation on your own. Why not take the "most influential blogs" Tocci discusses that were writing about the situation and choose to comment there. The whole "we'll talk to you when you come to us" idea is over. It's yesterday's (last year's?) news. I don't think that every blogger is expecting to hear from a company when s/he writes about it, but you'd be surprised at the reactions bloggers have made to companies a) noticing that the blog exists and b) actually writing something in non-corporate gobbledygook in response to the posting. Crisis communications isn't about waiting for a customer to come to you with an exploding cellphone battery or whatever, it's about knowing that people are talking about it, and defusing, or mitigating (trust me, you're not erasing it, unless it's factually wrong) the situation.

You don't own your brand.

The faster that everyone realizes that, and grasps the fact that public perception isn't something that is only driven by what marketing slogans come out and what advertisements are on television and who is a spokesperson for what brand, the better off we'll all be. It's about participating in the conversation, and attempting to get your goals fulfilled. Wouldn't you rather try and satisfy your customers and build on that public perception than let the fur fly, try and pick it up later, and then expect that everything will be okay? I don't know about you, but I most certainly don't feel that public perception is where it should be when it comes to Kryptonite, even knowing all the facts that the company's spokesperson has put on the table. This might have been the right thing five years ago (heck, two years ago probably), but the Internet - forums and blogs included - are a completely different animal. And when the fur flies, it's not coming off with the lint brush sitting on your dresser (read: the old way of doing things).

Posted by Tom Biro at 03:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Over the weekend, Scoble was discussing return on investment for the number of people reading RSS as opposed to another medium. No need to rehash most of it, really, but I wanted to echo one sentiment. He mentioned a number of readers on his blog, or of his RSS feed, and how they matter in the long term. I have the same thoughts he does - it doesn't matter if you have 500 reader or 50,000 - obviously 50,000 is "more" readership, but if those 500 persons are just the right 500 decision makers, influencers, or people of importance within the industry or space that you're interested in reaching into, then nothing else matters.

Yesterday, I spoke with a number of newsroom staffers at a major newspaper here in New Jersey, and made a similar statement, and compared it to their newspaper - that the people who are reading most blogs, especially after one has "matured" and been in the market for some time, are the persons who need to be reading it. It's like splitting up the sections of the newspaper - some people read the sports and front page, some people like the obits and classifieds, others might read the whole thing. Think of a blog, especially a niche or topical one, as one of those smaller divisions within the publication.

For the public relations industry, this is great in comparing what we can do in comparison to advertising - as an advertiser, you take a chance that your ad might not make it in front of your target audience, especially if you buy a ROP (run of paper) advertisement. On the other hand, one would hope that the public relations firm working with a client would be dealing with the right reporter who has his or her stories placed in the section of the paper that is most likely to be read by those same interested parties. This works the same way for blogs - if we're all out here sending press releases to 500 blogs that "might" want to hear what a client has to say, then we're wasting our time. Why not spend some more time finding the blogs and influencers that are relevant to those spaces, develop relationships, and work with those writers to find out what they want to hear, and how we can help them get their jobs - as bloggers - done. And yes, that means getting *our* jobs as public relations professionals done, too, but it's important to realize that you're not just placing the seed, you're helping the "economy" of media grow. Plus, if you reach out to just the right blogger, then others will probably link their way, further expanding the reach of your original story.

Posted by Tom Biro at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So, I'm looking to bring on some talent to work as an intern - preferably full time - here at MWW Group on New Media projects that I'm currently handling. I figured this, along with the usual ways of attracting newcomers, would be a welcome change in the recruiting efforts, so here goes. Specifically, I'm looking for someone with knowledge of search engine functionality, blogs, podcasting, wiki, and other technologies. S/he should have general Web development knowledge, presentation/organizational skills, and should be comfortable working on multiple projects at the same time. The formal posting is below the fold. Oh, and this assignment would be to work in our East Rutherford, NJ, offices. I think this internship would be a great opportunity to do something that a candidate really enjoys, all while getting experience of working at a public relations firm.

If this is something of interest to you, please drop us an email with your resume and cover letter to hrjobs (at) mww.com.

Continue reading "So you want to work in PR?" »

Posted by Tom Biro at 05:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)