One of the major challenges facing anyone venturing into the social media PR world is that of how to capture the attention of a critical mass of bloggers. To date, the most effective way to get a blogger to write about a particular product was to offer them an experience of the product by sending them free samples of software, product, music, books or just about anything else not-necessarily-in-exchange for unbiased reviews on those targeted blogs.

For the most part, bloggers strive to keep the process transparent, and usually make it a point to include a disclosure line when talking about a product that they had been given for free.  It seems like a perfectly innocuous way to spread word-of-mouth, but how does this practice, regardless of its transparency, affect public perception of those bloggers, and more importantly, of bloggers in general?

Recently, Microsoft flew a handful of bloggers to Seattle for a preview of the new Zune MP3 player.  Coolfer, a blog about music and the music industry maintained by Glenn Peoples,

was one of those bloggers.

In standard blog form, he was sure to spell out that Microsoft had paid for his trip.  His review, for the most part was positive, but pointed out a number of imperfections that could be changed.  Having obviously never seen the Zune before, it seemed a fair and balanced review of the product – and chances are, it probably was.

What really made me think about this was when I read one of the comments on the blog from someone named Andrew which read:

It’s a sad day when bloggers become shills in exchange for a free trip to Seattle.

It’s pretty well accepted throughout the “true believers” in the social media PR space that offers from companies should come with few strings attached in terms of the tone of the article – in other words, a free sample can’t come with the caveat that they have to write about how great it is.  But for the general public, who doesn’t spend its time thinking about how social media PR works may not understand that unwritten rule, or even believe that it exists.

I can’t say I blame them, personally.  Right now, trust of bloggers is high, but how long will that last for?  How long before companies who are offering all-expenses paid trips to bloggers start insisting on positive coverage? 

The only remedy for this is transparency.  Bloggers must continue to keep these arrangements out in the open, letting their readers know when they have accepted a gift of the thing they are reviewing.

Corporations who wish to play in this space have a similar responsibility to keep word of mouth from becoming polluted.  My guess would be that Microsoft placed a fairly strict NDA on the bloggers for what they could and could not talk about in terms of the agreement.  To my mind, we need to make sure, as much as we can, that bloggers we want to work with to spread the word of our product are legally able to be as transparent as they need to be in order to keep the public trust that bloggers have thus far built up.

(Full disclosure: If any companies want to send me presents, I’ll gladly take them.  I do loves me some swag.)

The email server is down at work. For designers, not such a big deal. For the PR guy – it’s like getting your methadone cut off in the middle of detox. As much as I try to ignore the fact that my emails are piling up on the server and there’s nothing I can do about it, I keep being reminded of how dependent on that little beeping device in my pocket and on the soothing blinky notifications in Outlook.

You don’t realize how dependent you are on a tool until you can’t use it. For now, I’ll just bide my time until the server coughs up the 500 new emails into my Blackberry sometime this evening.

As I mentioned in my first post on the subject, I’m going to be spending the next few months helping a great cause called Movember. I also mentioned that I’m going to be using this blog to detail the PR efforts that we put into the event. I’m thinking about this as “open-source PR”. Hopefully, in addition to getting people talking about the event, the next few months chronicled herein will be educational both to my readers and myself.

That said, in this post, I’m going to begin to outline our PR strategy for Movember. Of course, I won’t be going into specifics of things that haven’t happened yet, to avoid putting people on the spot, but this will give a general overview of how we’re planning to make Movember a success. If you’ve got any feedback, feel free to leave a comment or email me (my first name at ryananderson.ca). Or, if you an internet geek, and I’m online, feel free to Skype me (see the sidebar).

So, without further ado, here is the bare-bones Movember PR Strategy for 2006:

Audiences: who are we talking to?

Demographically: young men, aged 18 – 30
Geographically: Major markets across Canada with a strong focus on Toronto.
Psychographic:1. Motivated young men with a sense of humour. A strong sense of social justice and the desire to make the world a better place. At the same time, he doesn’t take himself too seriously. 2. Health-conscious and athletic men willing to devote their time to the cause.

Doers:
- Canadian Men
- Friends and family of cancer survivors
- Already participating “Mo Bros”

Influencers:
- Clubs and Fraternities
- Bloggers
- Media
- Testicular cancer survivors
- Celebrity personalities

Enablers:
- Girlfriends
- Employers
- Sponsors

Targeted Media:
Toronto Newpapers & Magazines: City reporters, health & lifestyle beat reporters as well as weekly papers
National Dailies: Health and Lifestyle reporters as well as pop culture beat writers
Canadian Magazines: Men’s focus (UMM, Toro, etc.) to cover long-lead story, supplement with “best moustaches of all time”
Toronto Local Television: pitch coverage of opening event, plus an advance story to generate buzz
Local Radio: Public interest news story PSAs

Outcomes: what action do we want them to take?
- University dorms, fraternities and groups participate in Movember as a group effort
- Workplaces promote Movember internally
- Mo Bros blog their Movember experience and progress
- Mo Bros recruit other participants
- Bloggers take part in Movember, and link to the Movember blog
- Girlfriends support boyfriends in growing a moustache / helping with fundraising
- Participants spread the word through social media (tag their moustache shots “movember” on flickr)
- Major brands aimed at men sponsor Movember in cash and in-kind
- Celebrity personalities take part in Movember publicly

So, that’s the first part of the strategy. Stay tuned for tactics, which will be coming up soon, simply because I don’t want this to be a 2000-word post.

As I said, if you have any brilliant ideas, feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. And, as always, please take a minute to mention Movember on your blog if you have one. We’ll be making some changes to the site in the next week, so stay tuned for that.

Guy Kawasaki, one of my favourite bloggers, writes a great piece on the "Top Ten Things to Learn This School Year."  I’ve said many times that the problem with a lot of recent grads I see in any field is that they think that their degree is going to get them a job.  Totally wrong.  Since I’ve graduated, I’ve not once been even asked about what my degree was in (good thing, too, since mine sounds TOTALLY made up).

I especially like the part on learning how to negotiate.  I did a lot of that when I was in school, with the registrar, with the professors of courses I was trying to get into – it was pretty much a daily thing.  One of the advantages of going to a school with an utterly incompetent administration, I suppose.

If you do things right, you’ll learn more from your experience at university than you will from your classes.  Of course, you should probably learn something from your classes, too.