PepperDigital

Live Blogging Over Lifeline Reform

By Brooke Winebrenner

Throughout life I have always been told that there are two subjects that you should avoid in a public setting, and those of course are religion and politics. Well, lately it has been challenging to keep politics out of daily topic of conversation, and even more so after last night’s speech—given by President Obama, addressing the health care reform. 

For the political aficionados that like to comment and argue every point—but need an outlet other than their opposing party roommate or opinionated significant other—venting was made easy through several sources that provided live blogging during the entire speech. This gave bloggers the opportunity to comment and question Obama’s statements in real time. 

The New York Times offered various blogging perspectives with David Herszenhorn on Capitol Hill and Katherine Seelye in New York, both blogging about the speech and reactions throughout the night. According to Seelye, reactions amongst several Republican representatives were vocalized with fact-checking gestures, disruptive outbursts and cynical laughter. Seeyle also mentions that the speech may have cost Obama some liberals. 

Whatever the case, Obama’s speech was certain to make clear the unclear and reassure Americans about the “stability and security” the reform has to offer. Is this so certain? Several blog responses prove otherwise, stirring about more anger and questions. 

Some of the live blogging sources include the GOP.com website, which hosted the RNC Live Response—providing ‘real time’ fact-checking that evoked many ranting comments. The Wall Street Journal featured a live blog that resulted in several bickering statements toward Obama’s promises. And, of course, you can conduct a simple search and stumble upon a number of personal blogs that posted speech feedback up-to-the-minute with their favoring or wavering opinions as well.

I have decided that live blogging is a hit in my book. I was simply amazed at the ability to learn about everything Obama spoke about last night (as if I was in the room) from a blog, as well as having the chance to hear the next “Joe Schmoe” comments at the same time. This is a great opportunity, not only for the bloggers, but also for the White House to take advantage and monitor the blogosphere realm. I wonder if they are frantically doing blog damage control today and putting a spin on America’s comments, or if they will actually take them into consideration as they move forward? 

Hell Hath No Fury Like A Blogger Scorned

by Jacqueline Kolek

Any PR professional worth their salt knows the opportunity and risk associated with product reviews.  Getting Walt Mossberg to review your client’s product can be a blessing or a curse.  A journalist’s love or hate of a product can send sales sinking or soaring.  Yet today’s New York Times seems to report that there is significantly less risk associated with reviews by bloggers and many are profiting from it.

"Approval by a Blogger May Please a Sponsor" starts with the position that bloggers who don’t like products simply just don’t write about them.  Now, while my mom always told me “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all,” I don’t think this applies to media – traditional or digital.  Many a company, product and person has been filleted by online journalists.  In fact, many bloggers can be more vicious, direct and personal than traditional print reporters.  To assume that they simply don’t write about things they don’t like is misguided and extremely dangerous.  Social media has opened up an entire universe of opportunities to get honest, open and direct feedback on everything from cars to books to travel destinations.  Amazon and Yelp, for instance, are built around negative audience reviews.  I was recently looking to book a trip to Block Island and having never been there, turned to tripadvisor.com to get some input.  One review of a hotel I was looking at said “if you have a choice between staying in this hotel and sleeping in your car, choose the car.”   That was all I needed to know!

The article goes on to say that companies are taking advantage of the world of blog reviewers by giving away free products to try, funding trips and sponsoring Twitter programs.  Many of the bloggers quoted in the piece mention various states of transparency, from disclosing when products are giving to labeling tweets as {SP}, meaning sponsored post.  This is a very slippery slope for both the company and the blogger.  Social media is built on foundation of authenticity and transparency.  Any violation of that trust is likely to permanently tarnish the reputation of a company employing a “pay of play” model with bloggers and the bloggers themselves will lose significant credibility with readers. 

The FTC is looking into the matter of sponsored product reviews and considering disclosure guidelines.  Of course, WOMMA has been promoting transparency since its inception.  At PepperDigital we often tell clients that in the world of social media, you need to take the good with the bad.  Yes, leveraging social media enables you to create creative and targeted programs, build a dialogue with key audiences, reach niche markets and get real-time feedback.  But along with that comes risk, such as having your own Wikipedia page.  Many clients want one, but they have to ready to live with the true, but sometimes ugly information that people have the ability to post.  

Social media brings with it great risk, but even greater reward.  In fact, negative reviews can serve as a great tool for companies to essentially conduct free focus groups, generate honest and insightful feedback and improve their products or services. But in the end, the greatest way to mitigate that risk is to be as authentic and transparent as possible.

To Blog is Human... To Successfully Pitch a Blogger is Divine

By Rob Longert, PepperDigital

A few weeks ago, I penned a post about how we can take the ideas of a “successful PR campaign and apply the things that made it great to the digital world.”

In the post, I mentioned six points that can be applied to traditional and digital PR and marketing, one of which focused on building solid media relationships online and off.

For now though, let’s keep things focused in terms of online channels.

Last week, Text 100, a “global boutique PR consultancy,” released survey results based on the responses of 449 bloggers from 21 countries based on “preferences of chiefly technology, business and lifestyle bloggers across the globe.”

Check out some of the takeaways mentioned in the press release, below.

1. Corporations are increasingly recognizing the influence of bloggers – The increased contact points to the “mainstreaming” of blogging as a communications channel, and the recognition by corporations that bloggers have increasing influence over their desired audiences.

2. Corporate News Releases are out - Bloggers say Social Media Releases will experience far greater usage in the coming months.

3. RSS feeds are a key source of information for bloggers, second only to other bloggers – If companies aren’t making their information available via RSS feeds, then they’re failing to use one of the bloggers’ most-trusted channels. Corporate bloggers and Web sites are also consistently deemed more credible sources than microblogging, newspapers, social bookmarking sites and television (and magazines in Europe and Asia Pacific).

4. The majority of bloggers are still part-timers – adjust your strategies accordingly - Outside of the United States, the majority of bloggers surveyed blog for less than nine hours per week.

5. Most bloggers will acknowledge when a post is supported by a corporation - While more than 80 percent of bloggers, no matter their region, say they would acknowledge sponsorship of blog posts, North Asian bloggers in particular tend to be less likely or willing to acknowledge sponsorship.

If you are in the social media space, some of these takeaways are no brainers, but as PR people, we know how important it is to put numbers behind our thoughts.

There is no question that Twitter is all the rage right now, but when we know that “microblogging is used by more than 75% of all bloggers, and those in APAC and Europe believe they are blogging more often because of microblogging,” it tells us something about how bloggers worldwide like to communicate, and that is what we can take away from this survey.

It is not necessarily eye opening to find out that “PR professionals are failing to read the blogs and truly understand their target bloggers’ communities,” as many of us know from reading the Bad Pitch Blog, but what is eye opening is that bloggers realize that some PR people are trying to pull the wool over their eyes.

Take a look at the findings when you have a chance, but if you don’t, just remember that your client may have the best product, service, idea or spokesperson in the world, but if you do not know how to communicate with the media you are pitching, whether it is print, online, radio or broadcast, you won’t get too far, and you will wind up with some frowning clients.

Thanks to Jessie Dienst for passing along this Text 100 survey.

The Man Who Motivated Michael Jordan…and His Sales

by Rob Longert

It isn’t too often that I click on a banner ad, but I couldn’t pass this one up…

The Charlie Murphy character from the Dave Chappelle Show left me speechless at times and I haven’t really seen him since the show went off the air, so clicking on this banner ad was a no brainer.

The ad took me to a microsite for “Leroy Smith, The Man Who Motivated Michael Jordan.”  At first glance I had no idea what the site was for. Was it a new Dave Chappelle show? Was Charlie Murphy coming out with a new movie?

I was wrong on both accounts. The site was built by Nike and is dedicated to “Leveraging Michael Jordan¹s highly anticipated Hall of Fame induction” via a “Air Jordan Hall of Fame (HOF) Collection” coming onto the market this summer, according to a press release from SportsFuzion, Inc.

As of 2006, “SportsFuzion has been the owner of the exclusive worldwide rights to the Hall of Fame’s trade names, logos, trademarks, designs, and photos for use in sportswear.” That said, earlier today they put out a press release, saying that Nike and “His Airness” went “behind their backs to cut them out of the deal” which “has become their worst nightmare.”

In legal land, Nike and MJ might be in the wrong, but from a PR perspective, the Leroy Smith microsite is well done, the brand has been optimized in terms of media outreach to big-time sports bloggers (such as Sports Biz with Darren Rovell, and Page 2) and they chose to use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as their social media channels, which seems to be working out for them as they have about 161,000 views on their featured video, 8,000 fans on Facebook, and 3,357 followers on Twitter.

It could be that I am a huge fan of MJ, a fan of Charlie Murphy or that I am a sucker for a funny online video, but I think the site works and Nike gets what it takes to launch an engaging campaign.

Do you think Nike and Air Jordan are in the wrong, or should Leroy Smith live on despite the suit from SportzFusion, Inc.?

PR Pros and Journalists Can Co-Exist Peacefully

Guest Post By: Vivek Sukumaran

Recently I have noticed the amounts of emails that go straight to my delete box without reading them has increased significantly (sorry Marketing Daily, EE News…), which made me realize that this is how journalists must feel when they complain about getting spammed by publicists. 

 

While I realize my situation is probably not on the same level as what journalists get inundated with, it made me wonder if there was a better way for us to do our jobs.  As noted in this post and also indirectly referred to in Mike Volpe's post on Hubspot, there are two main complaints that journalists have with us: we ‘spam’ their inboxes with emails that are both irrelevant/too long, and we don’t take the time anymore to develop relationships with them.

A first step for relations with PR people and bloggers on ProBlogger

By: Erik Sebellin-Ross, PepperDigital

Over the weekend, a post I wrote for ProBlogger.net appeared. The post is essentially aimed at giving bloggers a grounding in how PR professionals work, what motivates us, and why we do the things we do. At
I was overjoyed to see it print -- not only is this ProBlogger for pete's sake, but this is (I hope) the first step towards getting PR professionals and bloggers on the same page.

Why do bloggers need to know how we work?
Well, it is now two days later and the post has received 25 comments. There's a solid mix of people who hate us, people who love us, people who have learned to live with us, and those who haven't talked to us yet. The fact that a third of those people are angry -- nay, vitriolic -- towards us shows that our industry still has a long way to go.

My goal with this post was to help bloggers understand how we work so that they can better take advantage of us. I can't do anything about the scads of spam mail they get, but I can educate them so that they realize we aren't just news peddlers -- we are also a valuable resource.

Read on after the cut for some juicy quotes and thoughts.

A Blogger is Like You or Me

Its undeniable that blogging is a significant medium for sharing news, information and opinions for everyone and everything from the enterprise CEO to rants about the new Indiana Jones movie.  What’s most fascinating is the growth and power dedicated bloggers have accrued online. Clearly guys like TechCrunch, Huffington,Kos and Gawker hold more weight than some traditional media in terms of audience and influence.

So as a PR professional, how do you engage with these influencer bloggers in an appropriate manner?  This seems to be a question many people ask, thousands answer (similarly) and still people are flush with irresponsibility.

Think about it this way, a blogger is like you or me: everyday people.  Bloggers don’t want to get spammed, they certainly don’t want a 5gig pdf attachment and they most definitely don’t want to get hundreds of irrelevant and out of context emails. How annoying are the emails from the royal family member in Africa who’s looking for your help in transferring money from their bank account? Unless you’re in the business of getting robbed, you wouldn’t want to get these emails 400 times a day.

Here are a few tips for best practices I employ and share with my colleagues at Peppercom:

   1. Always let the bloggers know who you are and what company you’re representing.  You wouldn’t misrepresent yourself at a conference or in a board room would you? You shouldn’t do that online either.
   2. Read the blog and join the community. Bloggers are always more inclined to listen and comment on news when you’re a regular contributors and reader of the site.  This will also keep your content/news relevant and appropriate.
   3. Send an email when requested, otherwise share your news through a comment or private chat. Keep it short and to the point.
   4. Use your digital assets; urls, video links, pictures and podcasts are always better than heavy attachments and lengthy verbose emails.
   5. Like a reporter; bloggers want access to executives, unpublished papers and exclusive news too. Don’t save all the information for the traditional media, you’ll be more successful in the long-run.

Follow these tips and you’ll be more popular and successful with the blogging community and your clients.

Joe and PD team