Everybodysagenius’s Weblog

Hey Everybody,

I recently read in a press release from Cision that they are offering more blogger contact listings than ever before. The press release was especially focused on Mommy blogs. If you are a mommy blogger out there, what do you think of this? Have you received any unrequested press releases from PR people lately? Do you want to get them?

The Cision press release also highlights the efforts of Cision to push PR people to treat bloggers with more respect and to address them in a very personal matter. Speaking from experience, (as a pr guy and blogger) that is the only way to do things. I need a very personal note or product trial to write about a product or service. I have heard that from a lot of other bloggers too. I have heard bloggers complain that PR people have never even read their stuff and are still sending that press releases. That is crazy and a big risk because it can often result in negative online coverage.

Cision is offering a free download of their tips on working with Mommy Bloggers here.

Best Quote that I read from Cision so far on Mommy Bloggers:

Blogs authored by mothers are one of the more influential social media communities, engaging with a market of more than 30 million women in North America between the ages of 18 and 42 who directly influence household spending estimated at more than $1 trillion a year.

Those bloggers influence so effectively because they are truthful, sometimes brutally so. Just a message of caution to PR practitioners: don’t try to push BS or you just might get some awful coverage. It doesn’t cost anything to put up a blog post.

Anyway, hit me back with what you think?

Thanks

Will Flavell

Just that – broad sweeping accusation that everyone in the PR field is a liar, cheater and snake. Those that are not? Unemployed.

Personally, I am a PR guy and I am not offended by this. We need to get our act together and quit lying. We need to become experts in engaging our publics, not just whitewashing them with half-truths and hoping it sticks.

I just wanted to add that the Bulldog Reporter wrote on this today and they really didn’t have much to say. The ‘Dog article really just gave a lot of quotes. I guess that they are sitting this one out. Anyway, check it our here for more details.

read more | digg story

Hey Everybody,

A friend recently sent me this post by Matt Haughey. It is a great little set of 5 rules for PR people to deal with bloggers. I think that it is pretty good and what a lot of bloggers will agree with. I am a PR guy and a blogger, so I can see some of the disconnect between the two professions. Beyond what Matt says, a PR person can get themselves in a lot of trouble by using the “spray and pray” technique of Cision built media lists. This is because bloggers, unlike traditional media, can lambast your product if they feel you are spamming them. While print media won’t waste ink on complaints and TV won’t burn valuable airtime airing greivances. Bloggers don’t run out of either. So be honest, open and engaging. It is that simple. And no press releases to bloggers! Really! This means you PR people!

Here are Matt’s Rules:

So in the spirit of extending an olive branch to the PR industry, here are some very basic tips I haven’t seen anyone mention elsewhere:

1. Don’t ever send a press release to a blogger based on a purchased list
I keep hearing about this thing called the Bacon/Cision listand how all the bloggers complaining about getting spammed are on it (the idea of someone selling a list with my email on it is another matter). As many PR people have stated, connecting PR and bloggers should be a connection made via reading their blog and contacting them with a personal note at the very least. Adding 200 names to a bcc: list on an emailed press release because you got 200 blogger emails from some list is the absolutely wrong way to go about it. Don’t ever do this.

2. Go beyond the press release
The rare, few times I’ve felt like enduring all this PR hassle was worth it was when someone from a company contacted me with an invite to preview a product, try out a site, and/or obtain a review item. A press release is the thing I line the bird cage with, a review unit is something I can actually use for a week or two and get a full review story written ready to publish on the day your client launches the product. I can’t stress it enough that a press release sent to me is just plain noise and totally and completely useless. Or if you must, at least just send me a link to one in case I want to learn more about the news you are sharing instead of pasting 2,000 words in ALL CAPS into an email.

3. Introduce a feedback loop!
I’ve never been contacted by anyone in PR that bothered to follow-up with me at any point in our “relationship”. I just get a bunch of press releases emailed to me again and again, often by the same people. If you’ve hand-picked out some bloggers covering topics you have clients releasing news about, at least check with the bloggers after a month, or your second message, or some other regular interval. Ask them if the PR they’ve been receiving is helpful and if it should be tweaked, or even ended if it’s not useful.

4. Provide an unsubscribe link
This is totally bottom-of-the-barrel, least-you-can-do-to-appease-bloggers stuff here, but at the very least provide an instant, no-humans-required way for a blogger to remove themselves from contact they aren’t getting anything but frustration from. About 1/4 of the PR email I get is managed with some sort of list interface and provides this option, and I use the option when off-topic, all-caps press releases get blasted my way. I prefer a no-humans-required option because I’ve asked people at an agency to remove me and they said they had and sorry for the inconvenience, only to be emailed by the same person two weeks later.

5. Use metrics to help you do your PR job
If personally emailing a bunch of bloggers with personal messages sounds like a lot of work that doesn’t scale, try using metrics to help you figure out what works and doesn’t. Right now we have the annual “did my PR firm show up on a blacklist?” metric, but if you implement the suggestions above, keep tabs on what percentage of receivers clicked on a link to read a press release (are your press releases effectively written?), figure out what % click on an unsubscribe link (how effective are you targeting bloggers), figure out how often the bloggers you contact ever write about your clients (how effective your PR/blogger strategy is) and when they do was it because of a press release or did you give them something more (to figure out if newer non-traditional approaches are working better).

Just wanna say thanks to Matt for a good post and thanks to my friend Max Riffner for sending this my way.

William Flavell

Hey Everybody,

 I probably shouldn’t be so flattering to Richard Edelman as he is technically competition, but I gotta say, I love this guy. He has vision, guts and the will to work at things that he beleives in. And, of course, he is also a champion of everything new media and public relations.

This is a quote given by Edelman in the Book Naked Conversations during an interview with Robert Scoble and Shel Israel:

On Blogging:

Blogging is not a passing fad. Any brand, business or organization that fails to grasp [that] fact may very well be. It’s essential to any company seeking to connect in a spontaneous, continous fashion with its publics. It affords a window into a company unlike any other — more credible because it lacks the dimension of control, more sustainable because it is rooted in reality, more powerful because it can be connected to comments of others having primary experiences with a company’s product or service. Smart companies will take heed of what they learn from online critics, amending the product or process by being committed to continuous improvement from whatever source.

On Traditional Marketing and its coming demise:

Marketers could reach 97 percent of the target audience with three ads in prime time on network TV. They relied on a pyramid of authority in which elite audiences such as investors, regulators, retailers, and elite media received advance notice of company plans. A large commitment to advertising and appropriate monies for slotting allowances guaranteed favorable treatment at retail…and the consumer, lured by the ads, would purchase, especially if a big name celebrity is in the ad. The big idea — keep everything under wraps until the last moment before the ads break — give an exclusive to the Wall Street Journal and you are home free.

So now a smart company has a different approach — call it the “paradox of transparency.” Co-create your brand with key consumers. Talk to critics at NGO’s (non-government organizations) in advance to reach an understanding. Use your employees as your first line of offense. Use a real person as a spokesperson or maybe the winner of a reality show like American Idol. Create synergy among the promotions and talk across the silos, but offer real dialogeue, not hot air.

I love that he makes it so simple. I am sorry that I haven’t linked to his blog yet in my blog and this post is my tiny homage to the man that is making these strategies popular and profitable. I can preach the same ideals all day and then once a senior member of our PR team finds an Edelman interview in an AdAge article from 2 years ago saying the same thing, and it becomes fact.

So here’s to the guy that gives hope to all of us tired and haggard PR guy’s trying to push new media to clients and in our own companies.

Richard Edelman.

I don’t want to do a lot of intro. I am a writer and a PR guy who spends a lot of time with new media. I am also a hackey sack playing, punk-rock fooligan. So this blog will serve both. I plan to host both industry information and my crazy ideas and writing samples. Feel free to use what you want and enjoy.

Some upcoming segments to look forward to:
Transcripts from actual conversations (ridiculous)
Ingenious money-making ideas
Short stories (but I God I hope that you don’t have to read my terrible poetry)
and Much, Much More