I'm a web strategist and aspiring know-it-all with a passion for all things digital. I've worked in PR, advertising and not-for profit industries, and now I run a creative agency. These are the things I think about, and am sometimes compelled to write. More...

PR Mantras

Jul 11 2006

Every PR person has a list of phrases they find themselves repeating to every client, day after day. Deborah Schultz and David Parmet share theirs.

My favourites are:

David:

Yes his blog is read by only 2,000 people but it’s probably the 2,000 people you most want to reach.

Deborah:

No, real evangelism, buzz and community cannot be manufactured out of thin air.

I don’t have the energy to write down ten of my oft-repeated phrases, but I’d say that my number one would probably be “I realize that this is your corporate line, but that’s not a story anyone is going to care about.”

Anyone want to share their favourites?

Dell launches blog, suddenly everyone an expert

Jul 11 2006

Only in blogland would a company launching a blog be considered news, but hey – I’ll admit to being social media nerd, so I’m going to write about it too.

Dell, if you’re unfamiliar, is one of those companies that we PR bloggers are talking about when we refer to clueless old-school companies who are too big and Hell-bent on control to ever enter into a conversation with their market. Apparently, however, there are still some free-thinking communicators with enough sway to convince the company with one of the worst reputations for customer service in the blogosphere to take that leap of faith and start a-bloggin’.

Steve Rubel, Jeff Jarvis and countless others have offered their (actual) expert opinion on how to make the Dell one2one blog work. Dell would do well to heed this advice. I’m not even going to bother putting in my two cents, since the big guys have said pretty well all there is to say.

I’ll tell you what, though – reading through the comments on this thing, I would HATE to be the guy who had to spend his time responding to them. It seems that every self-proclaimed blogging expert in the world has taken it upon themselves to tell Dell what they should do with the blog and how.

Ranging from “drivel” to “such a boring blog” from someone who calls themselves “Microsoft Employee,” to rants about customer service and complaints that Michael Dell himself isn’t writing daily (hint: CEOs are busy) Dell has opened Pandora’s box for customer conversation, and there’s no closing it now.

Here’s how I predict it will play out:
- “Everyone hates us! Let’s start a blog!”
- “Welcome to the blogosphere – here is everything that is wrong with you.”
- “We’re trying! Bear with us as we grow!”
- “Um… yeah… I was trying to download Comet Cursor on my computer, and everything froze. What should I do?”
- “In order to make sure that we can address comments in a timely fashion, we’ll have to moderate them.”
- Blogosphere: “Rabble, rabble, rabble!”
- “We’re trying! Bear with us as we continue to grow!”
- Blogosphere: “Rabble, rabble, rabble!”
- “Everyone hates us even more now. Blogs are failures – let’s go back to shouting at our customers about how great we are.”
- Blogosphere: “RABBLE!!! RABBLE, RABBLE!”

*fin*

Blogging Emails

Jul 07 2006

I’m of the mind that anything you have to say that can make you look bad probably shouldn’t be said in an email. That’s extra true when it comes to pitching what are essentially strangers.

I have had a number of emails blogged verbatim – most of them were pitches, so no big deal, but it nonetheless surprised me. When I came across an email from another PR person in a group I belonged to, I had one of those “this is so painfully obvious” moments that make you shake your head and wonder why the hell you never thought of this before.

His email was simply appended with:

this email is: [X] blogable [ ] ask first [ ] private

I think this is a great idea. Of course, if someone’s out to ruin you, a line like this isn’t going to help, but I think in most cases that bloggers have enough respect for one another to abide by the wishes of the sender. Moreover, if you’re writing something that you want blogged, this may help the thought occur to the person you’re emailing.

del.icio.us and PR

Jul 07 2006

If you’re anything like I was a few months ago, you can tell that del.icio.us is a really powerful tool – you’re just not sure what to make of it, or really, what to do with it. As I explored it and adopted it more and more into my normal PR day, I discovered a lot of really intriguing uses for it.

Steve Rubel’s latest post, “Fifteen Things I Learned from del.icio.us” is a must-read for the novice, and even more advanced users will learn a few tricks from it.

Ham-handed PR approaches

Jul 06 2006

I wrote a few days ago about how companies who are not ready to lose control should stay out of the whole realm of social media. I will add quickly to this that not only should they not try to add social media public relations to their marketing mix, but they should stay away from it altogether.

Chris Thilik and Mack Collier both post excellent analyses of Paramount’s latest bone-headed move to issue a cease-and-disist order to The Movie Blog’s ISP, resulting in his site going down without receiving so much as a two-line email in advance.

This is a blogger who said nothing but positive things about the project in question, and even complied with a request to remove other pictures from his site. And yet, this is how they chose to reward the free publicity simply because they didn’t control it.

I won’t bother expounding on this, since both Mack and Chris have said everything I could have said and more, but I urge you to read both of them and treat this case as a case study in how not to deal with bloggers.

Having worked with heavily litigious clients in the past, I can say with authority that lawyers can be both the best friend and the sworn enemy of communication. However, in most of the cases I’ve encountered, lawyers do not understand the communications process any more than we understand commercial litigation, and when legal outranks communications, they have a lot of potential to completely screw things up, and end up biting the hand that feeds them.

Rent this space

Jul 05 2006

I was perusing messages on a public relations message board that I frequent this morning, and someone had asked about "PayPerPost" and whether they should sell their clients on the service to create online buzz.

My answer, and the answer of everyone else who responded was a resounding "NO."

PayPerPost is a service that allows advertisers to provide incentives to bloggers (about $5) to write pre-approved posts about their product. In short, they give bloggers a couple of bucks in exchange for any credibility they may have, turning them into little more than shills. Disclosure is optional, of course, but I sense that most posts that carry "I was totally paid to say this, and don’t believe a word of it" won’t end up in the "approved" pile by most advertisers.

This, to me, is about the worst thing that can happen to blogs. The only reason the blogosphere works is because of transparency, honesty and communal policing. My feeling is that the only bloggers who will bother with these are your run of the mill cat bloggers who nobody cares about anyway. The second a reputable blogger tries this, they will be found out and called out by fellow bloggers, which will be bad for their reputation and bad for the advertising company.

It’s the nature of business, I suppose, to try to make money off any new trend that arises. That’s fine, but it’s degrading the quality of blogs as a true communications medium. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that this service is to blogs as spam is to email, but then… maybe I’m overreacting.

Anyone want to disagree with me?

Two-point-oh

Jul 04 2006

Never has a version number incited such an emotional response from both extremes. We began to see this with the popularization of "web 2.0," people embracing it wholly and without thought, and others denouncing it for being pure hype. Now that the 2.0 suffix has been applied to PR, the praise and vitriol begin flowing once again.

Stuart Bruce chides Weber Shandwick for jumping on the PR 2.0 bandwagon, in his blog "A PR Guru’s Musings," saying:

However, after getting noticed I then always point out what a stupid idea PR 2.0 is. This whole PR 2.0 or ‘New PR’ is such a pile of garbage. What I’m doing is simply an evolution of what I’ve always done.

Fair enough – he’s right. Online PR, new media PR, social media PR are just extensions of what we’ve all been doing for years – at least to some degree.

However, while the profession hasn’t changed, the public has. The internet changed things when it began to become popular near the end of the 90s – what we’re seeing with the new social media trends is a next step in that evolution; a jump from where we were to a society of publishers, and a new set of rules.

With respect to Stuart, who, from what I’ve read is an extremely intelligent guy, the new PR, PR 2.0, or magic internet public relations – whatever you want to call it – is important, and is something that needs to be differentiated. It’s always going to bear resemblances to the original, but the 2.0 suffix isn’t about a sequel, it’s about an evolution – it’s about adapting to the social environment which has been carved out by the proliferation of technology, and understanding the new rules of the game.

Pitching bloggers IS different than pitching media. Social networks ARE different from real-life networks. Fail to recognize this, and you’re not going to be effective as a PR person… and that’s something that gets truer every day.

Yes, PR 2.0 is a buzzword, and it should be treated as such – to throw out everything we know about the profession and to dive naked into the new media pool would be stupid. But we also can’t ignore the importance of the distinction.

Soon, PR 2.0 will just be PR… but for now, it’s way of calling attention to the disparity between the old guard of PR pros who are still stuck in an old media frame of mind and the more tech-savvy crowd who understands the importance of online tools beyond Google.

Pitching bloggers

Jun 29 2006

I’ve seen it happen. PR people or clients start believing in the power of the blogosphere, and want their next communications plan to involve "blog pitching." The PR firm agrees, not really knowing anything about it or really, even where to start. They figure that it must pretty much be like pitching reporters.

Pitching bloggers is a touchy subject for a few reasons:

A reporter won’t write a story about you on the front page if you hit them with a bad pitch (though they might pass it along…)
A reporter probably won’t be mortally offended by your suggestion that they would write about anything other than exactly what they wanted
Bloggers are under no obligation to get facts right, and are all but immune to libel claims
Reporters are (ideally) less apt to write based on opinions instead of facts.

This isn’t to say that bloggers are unprofessional, but the fact remains that some are, and pitching to them is akin to trying to pet a tiger. It looks like it could be soft, but you might end up missing half your hand.

I’ve always been open to PR pitches, both in this blog and my other one, though I can count the number I got on one hand. That doesn’t mean that every blogger is, though – in fact, some are downright hostile about the whole thing.

I’ve had some success pitching bloggers – and the key, it would seem, is the personal touch. Search through Technorati to find people blogging on a certain subject. Read each one to see a) if they’ve said anything about asshole PR people contacting them and if b) they really do write about the subject their blog is tagged with. At the very least, the first time you contact a blogger, you should be familiar with what they write about and the tone they write in. You should also know something about them – often on a "contact" or "about" page, bloggers will list what they do and do not want to be contacted about… obey these warnings, or face the consequences.

The pitch is important – keep it short, keep it personal, but don’t assume a level of familiarity that doesn’t exist. Make it clear that you have actually read their blog – if you read it regularly, tell them… but don’t lie. Provide them with everything they need to make a decent post – including a choice of images, a link to a YouTube video or another media source.

The big thing to remember here is that it is entirely possible that a blogger will reproduce your pitch in its entirety. It has happened to me a number of times… and frankly, always makes me uncomfortable, regardless of how well thought out it is. Be prepared for a story that begins with "so and so emailed me and said <BLOCKQUOTE>"

I know I’ll miss some here, but these are some golden rules of pitching blogs from my experience. If anyone has others they’d like to add, I would LOVE to hear them.

Be transparent – let them know that you’re a PR person and who your client is
Aim for conversation rather than "pitching." I’ve ended up continuing correspondence with some bloggers I’ve pitched cold just because they were cool people.
Give them an out – the first time you pitch them, make sure you let them know if they don’t want to know about whatever they’re pitching you on to let you know and you’ll stop. And then actually stop, if they do, of course.
Give them something to cut and paste. Writing is hard work, and blockquotes are part of the tools of the blogging trade.
Don’t pitch them something they’ll never be interested in. It’s not worth the effort / stress / potential backlash
Offer swag whenever possible – if I’m going to write about your new phone, you better give me one to play with
Give them something to link to. You need a good website to link to – preferably one that has a plethora of information and media for people to link to and visit.
Be cautious with pitching A-listers. Unless you know it’s something they would be interested in, don’t waste your first chance to make a good impression on wasting their time.

The big lesson here is something that has been said before – pitching blogs is not like pitching the media. It’s much more time consuming, and much more dangerous.

Any PR people or regularly pitched bloggers want to add to this list?

How to generate word of mouth

Jun 28 2006

Olivier Blanchard at the Brand Builder Blog posts what is possibly the truest thing I’ve heard all week. To paraphrase his post, the steps to creating great word of mouth are as follows:

Create something that amazes, delights and excites your customers.
There is no step 2.

Check out the original post, bookmark it, and send it to every potential client who wants you to generate word-of-mouth for something completely mundane.

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