I put together a case study and exploration of blogger outreach for a webinar I put on for a company yesterday and I thought I would share it here. I might go from calling it Long Tail Blogger Outreach to Deep Blogger Outreach or Deep Content Marketing. Anyway, it was meant to be spoken through so I will do that as well but for now check it out and let me know what you think. You can also find it over on SlideShare, Long Tail Blogger Outreach Webinar.
Tag Archives: Public Relations
Grow your sphere of influence through reciprocity
So many people ask me what my secret is: to my Klout score (77), to my Twitter followers (43.5k), and to my acknowledged influence online, for what it’s worth. They wonder how I gamed Klout, where I bought my followers, and what PR firm got me into Forbes. Well, there surely are shortcuts and you can apparently game Klout and buy followers, friends, and Likes. I have tried out many of them over time but I don’t believe that growing and pruning Twitter followers or paying money for followers and Likes actually builds a social media community.
Surely, all that buying and gaming does something, but it’s not community. Maybe it’s for bragging rights, maybe access to perks, or perhaps just to establish to the people in your space that you’re really a social media player and not someone who ignored social media as an essential aspect of your organization until last Thursday.
Community is something different. And I believe that Google, in its charming Vulcan way, is finally starting to understand what virtual online community really is (and isn’t) and how to bestow holy Google Juice on the denizens of the Internet who have committed to moving in, staying, taking up residency and then committing to citizenship. Those are the people, sites, companies, communities, and organizations that I believe Google is trying to hard to identify and then favor. But since Google has a tin ear when it comes to who’s gold-digging, who’s using, who’s being an opportunist, who’s being a fair-weather friend, and who’s actually true blue, it has taken a while for everything to come together. And, though it isn’t yet perfect, they’re getting closer and closer.
If your ears perked up when you started to read that Google is really starting to favor all those who are deeply committed to connecting and engaging – and all of their various blogs, sites, platforms, and social profiles to boot – then you’re going to have a hard time. Why? Because you really shouldn’t care at all about SEO or Google or your Klout or Kred right now. You should care only about your natural allies, your natural prospects, people in your vertical, the folks who already love you to death, the folks who don’t get you at all, and also the folks who hate you, for whatever reason. And then there’s the next step, which is hard.
First, you have to acknowledge the fact that every single follower, friend, Like, and +1 you acquire represents a human soul who has committed to participating in your folly. Yes I understand how many spambots, fake accounts, Perlscripts, codeballs, and hectares of outsourced, unengaged, human clickfarms exist in the world, but these people will never and can never become anything akin to your online family, your online community.
What would I do if I were to do it again?
Well, what I would do is simple: I would first leverage the real relationships I already have. Every social media platform worth its salt allows you to shamelessly exploit all of your webmail contacts that you have collected over the last decade, as well as all of the real friends that you may have already earned on Facebook. You need to take it all the way, too: Don’t just follow all the folks who are already on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook; you need to invite all of your personal and professional friends to come to Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ (and others) just for you. If you cannot do this, then you’re really not willing to put enough skin in the game; you’re not willing to put your own personal reputation at risk in order to move your professional brand forward. This means you’re probably either a hypocrite or maybe know that you’ll eventually do something shady or short-game on social media that you really don’t want to be tracked back to your social media fingerprints.
All the individuals you’ll ever connect with in your online virtual community are indeed real people with hopes, dreams, fears, skepticism, concern, trust issues, and the like. It’s really best that you invite the people you really do know first so that you’ll always think twice before you engage with your community in a way that suggests you consider them — your followership and “friends” — to be just a professional asset.
There are so many social media marketing articles online that are putting dollar numbers on what each friend, follower, Like, and +1 means, similar to the valuation that direct mail marketers put on addresses and emails. Unlike this valuation that’s based on conversion and past performance, the numbers that you have been and will be able to collect are on an equal playing field. I am not naive: Yes, you can sometimes convert them to joining, buying, clicking, Liking, and +1ing; however, they’re also just as likely to throw your marketing grenade right back over the wall back at you.
When you’re working on developing an online community, you cannot just collect followers, you need to befriend them. They need to ask you favors and you need to ask them favors.
When you’re working on developing an online community, every social media action has an equal or greater reaction. These are not just numbers and assets that you can collect until you decide to seize the moment. Activate them to do something awesome, buy all your stuff, and change your world — and bank account — forever.
Also, like real friends, you cannot just collect them, you need to befriend them. They need to ask you favors and then you need to ask them favors. They’ll ask you for help and guidance and you’ll do the same. Little things, big things, again and again, for different folks, the same folks. You need to build this community the same way you would build a muscle at the gym. You cannot just collect all these folks in a box awaiting the perfect moment when you can let them loose on whatever you’ve been planning forever. Tacit and weak connections are just that. Really becoming chums is something else. Don’t worry, you don’t need to become chums with everyone who follows and befriends you. Most of the folks you’ll interact with online don’t actually want to become your BFF.
Most folks who follow you don’t want to get married
The majority of the interactions I have with brands on a daily basis are superficial. Most of the interaction that folks have had with my brand has been superficial too. When I reach out to @KLM of Twitter, it’s to see what’s going on with my flight out of Schiphol. I don’t expect much, just timely information. When @KLM offers to spot me some time in their club or buy me a coffee or something, that’s terrific (and I am always easily bought); however, getting my question answered in a timely manner and to my expectations is what I really want — the rest is just garnish and appeasement (I love garnish).
Eighty percent of all of your interactions online should involve some sort of listening. That can indeed include commenting, retweeting, Liking, starring, Listing, +1ing, reblogging, and just thanking someone for including you in a #FollowFriday post or for retweeting something. Being grateful is one of the best things one can be when nobody gets paid a livable wage to read your updates, to share your posts, or to include you in anything. No matter how rock star you are, you need to go out of your way to search out, find, engage with, and thank all the folks who mention you, your space, your vertical, your products, company, or services.
Growing your sphere of influence
Once I have brought all the real people I know into the fold — not just from my personal address books but also from my current client base — I need to go poaching.
What I mean by poaching is to say, you need to go foraging — looking for new followers. One of the popular ways is to find out what sort of hashtags your industry, vertical, product or service uses to communicate among themselves. The same thing is true with message boards, Lists, Groups, Listservs, Pages, and whatnot. The great thing about the Internet and all of these simple-to-use social media platforms is that folks tend to create their own ad hoc communities when they cannot find them easily and quickly.
So, spending some time exploring Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Yahoo and Google Groups, email lists, and the magic world of message boards and forums is an essential way of getting to know the context of the world you’ve just elbowed your way into. Beware: every single community I have mentioned behaves a little like a very tight-knit family. Always go in submissive and make a point of quickly identifying a Majordomo: a tribal elder, high-poster, list or board owner, etc. If you would like to engage in conversations that are happening in a message board or an email list, engage the owner first and tell him or her what you’re up to and ask for some advice. Jumping in, all jazz hands and spittle, without knowing their context, their history, etc. (and without them knowing you) is more dangerous than you can imagine.
Simply put: If the hive doesn’t recognize you, it’s like poking it with a stick. Don’t be surprised when you get stung. Poor form. The solution’s easy and the analogy is easier.
Learn how to infiltrate the right way
How do you behave when you attend a party you weren’t directly invited to? What I do is this: I bring a nice bottle of wine or some beer. I dress as well as I think the nicest-dressed invitee will but no nicer. When I arrive, I ask around to find out who the host is and find him or her immediately. When I meet the host, I tell them why I am there: “Mike told me about the party and said it was OK to attend without him” or “Mike asked me to come and meet me here, but I just wanted to meet the host first” or “I live down the street and noticed there was a party going on and I thought I would stop by.” I then offer the wine or beer. I then spend as much time with just the host as makes sense, just so the host feels comfortable having me in his or her home and around valuables and friends and family. Only then do I grab a drink or wink at pretty people or take to the schmooze. Thing is, there’s really no reason to bullshit the host. If you are there because you’re looking to meet the neighbors because you’ve got a dog-walking service, let the host know and see if it’s OK to hit up his guests. If you’re really honest and the host likes you, there’s a pretty good chance that the host will take you by your elbow and walk you around to all the folks at the party who have dogs, introducing you to each of them, telling them your story on your behalf. That’s the perfect scenario.
And I do exactly the same thing when it comes to infiltrating communities I have not been invited to. I used the word “infiltrate” intentionally instead of “join” because so many marketers have rudely and shamelessly crashed parties without any care or respect for the community. Turn on any teen movie and you’ll see something quite similar in action (I am thinking about the party scene in “Mean Girls”). So, while you may very well be as well-intentioned as can be, folks are not going to trust you right way. By virtue of being in communications, marketing, sales, or in any way wanting to evangelize or promote yourself or your brand anywhere, you’re immediately guilty until you can prove yourself innocent.
I had every intention of geeking out and sharing some tools and step-by-step processes that one can use in order to engage online. However, I really think the first step has more to do with being willing to allow the folks with whom you’re engaging in your brand new, bouncing baby social media empire to be human: hopes, dreams, fears, insecurities, concerns, and issues.
In fact, communities are so used to being abused that you’ll be surprised and insulted by the level of caution, dread, and mistrust you’ll wander into, even if your intentions are pure and you’re just looking for ways to discover, engage, and help folks online. Because of the people who came before you, it’ll most likely always be an uphill battle.
So, I have a very important quote to share with you before I let you loose into the wild to meet your social media, online virtual community, fate, and attributed to Plato, Philo of Alexandria, Ian MacLaren, and the Rev. John Watson:
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
How NOT to pitch a blogger
I talked about how blogger outreach is scary, and I talked about why this fear exists for most people before they start talking to bloggers. In great measure, these fears exist because of the horror stories that have resulted from wrong-headed approaches.
In the five years that we’ve been reaching out to bloggers, we’ve learned just as much about how NOT to pitch as we’ve learned about the right ways. The main thing to keep in mind is how you feel when you are on the receiving end of a misguided PR pitch. If you just stick with that mindset, you’ll avoid the lion’s share of pitching mistakes.
Now, I have been getting pitches for my blog, Because the Medium is the Message, since 2004 or so. Now, Marketing Conversation gets loads of pitches as well. Some of the insulting things that abuse me to no end include sending your pitch to “Dear Blogger,” or to “Abraham” when my name is Chris Abraham.
I can generally tell when a compliment is hollow: they’re either too general or way too recent and specific. It is very easy for even the least sophisticated of my fellow bloggers to sense sucking up or kissing up, especially if you haven’t done any homework or any research at all.
Also, if you don’t have your formatting sorted and it looks like you obviously copied and pasted back and forth and I can make out weird spacing and a strange mixture of fonts and sizes, I can tell you’re probably cutting corners and doing things carelessly and without concern for how I will perceive it–as though half-assed is all I am worth since I am not a Mashable or TechCrunch. People don’t like it when they can obviously tell that you’re going through the motions until something else better comes along. Bloggers will always call you out if they sense you’re just calling it in.
No, I also don’t blame the agents too much. They’re often understaffed, juggling too many balls, have insufficient experience, or lack technological skills and are just doing their best. The agencies are why these agents are oftentimes coming up short. And, at the end of the day, many agencies have given up on earned media because earned media can be risky and it can oftentimes be an all or nothing venture. Outreach failure is easily possible when there is very little cultural awareness and understanding of how best to appeal to these thousands and thousands of very real people who wield very real power and influence over popular consensus and perception.
Perhaps the only thing you’ve come away from this article is that you need to hire me in order to get some of that white-hat link-farming SEO love. So, let me warn you: it doesn’t work unless you spend a lot of time, money, energy, and creativity to actually put together a plausible and meaningful PR campaign.
Bloggers did not fall of a turnip truck. If they don’t see the value in the pitch, they won’t post; if they fancy that you’re just asking them to post because you want to vampire bat on their Google juice, then you’re likely to be in a whole lot of #fail and possibly a whole lot of pain. The white-hat link-farm organic SEO pwn effect is only secondary if you are, the entire way along, a total Mensch and have amazing assets, viral-quality video, a great pitch, an accurate target, and a gentle, kind, and generous follow-through.
It is sort of like dating. You need to remain present during the entire date and not even get angry or resentful–or hostile–if you are not invited upstairs for a night cap. If you’re caught just calling it in and going through the motions, just being on the date because you’re hoping to get lucky at the end of the night, you’re likely to end up either hurting someone else’s feelings or destroying your reputation. Enjoy the company, enjoy the date, enjoy the diversion, enjoy the desert, enjoy the wine, enjoy the walk in the park, enjoy the play, enjoy the coffee, and then be surprised and appreciative when and if you’re invited upstairs for a night cap.
If you are truly present in blogger outreach, and what you do is driven by what’s good for the blogger as well as what’s good for you, you might be pleased with the results.
Target Twitter audiences of every size with a theory of everyone
Photo credit: Fora do Eixo
Well, as you all know who read this blog, I am a Cluetrainian. This means I believe that anyone who spends their time and talent online are online influencers and potential important brand ambassadors. Marketers balk with visions of lost dollar signs, especially when the in-house social media communications professional generally balances email newsletter, traditional PR and site copy. Marketers forget that influencers aren’t necessary partial to the brand, with the loyalty of a salary or paycheck. They may, shocker, actually be genuinely interested in the topic.
Leveraging the brand’s equity to build one’s own brand is common, a fame narcotic if you will. While I encourage each one of my colleagues to build their own brand equity I need them to maintain egalitarian and democratic values when engaging online on behalf of clients. I don’t want them to lose their tone and voice, I just want them to filter it depending on the audience.
Don’t know where to start? Well, I know for a fact that there’s a guy in Brazil who will hook you up with thousands of Brazilian tweeters almost immediately for a fee. That’s somewhere to start. Once you’ve bought your online friends, you have to deliver the je ne sais quois to keep them. If you suck, are salesy, don’t tweet or post very often, are selfish, don’t play games or bait conversation, don’t give til it hurts, even all of these thousands of purchased followers will start unfollowing you almost immediately.
It is sort of like being an opening act to U2: you might have 30,000 folks who didn’t come to see you who are there to see Bono but there’s no guarantee that they’ll ever buy your album. There’s every reason they should but you really could make a mess of it — if they don’t, it is your fault as they were your customers to lose. Same thing with buying followers and likes. If the targeting is completely off, if you suck as a host, or if you’re boring or rude, they’re gone — at least the real ones are.
Stated simply, the state of the art in social media is still bespoke, based on old models of public relations where each particular PR agent has a Rolodex and that card represents years and years of personal relationships . Very precious and personal connections, formed and tempered over time, built on trust.
And, this very same framework has been mapped directly into social media where many agencies and companies spend all of their time taking their current 25 mainstream media contacts and 25 social media contacts to dinners at Mortons. There’s not enough budget or time to prospect much further or deeper than that.
Which is a sincere pity.
How can one take an old PR model that only concerns itself with an easy-to-manage elite core of gate-keeping journalists, publishers, and broadcasters and map that onto a new media model? A model that could potentially include anyone and everyone who should decide to commit to starting blogging. Producing content for online consumption, resulting in becoming an online influencer. It’s like the circle of success.
In this theory of everyone, in this theory of long tail digital PR outreach and engagement, it is essential to find viable ways of 1) discovering everyone — because there are potentially a lot of people that show up in your net when you’re being inclusive and indiscriminate 2) keeping that list up-to-date as blogs are launched and shuttered every day.
Writing simply isn’t for dumb people
Universally, the biggest gasp I get when I meet with people new to marketing, PR, or advertising is that most ad copy is restricted to a 6th grade reading level. I am going to use this blog post to reassure everyone that writing simply should mean writing elegantly and not writing simplistically, resulting in young adult fiction. While the reading ease is kept simple, we’re generally not writing to appeal to 12-year-olds.
One of the biggest challenges that writers have across all disciplines is with interpretation. While ambiguity and nuance is favored by poets and novelists, creating copy that isn’t concise, clear, and succinct is a disservice to my clients.
What is required, at least online and when engaging bloggers, is messaging that endures the obligatory game of telephone that always happens when sharing between people. If you’ve never heard of telephone, I thought I would share this from Wikipedia:
The first player whispers a phrase or sentence to the next player. Each player successively whispers what that player believes he or she heard to the next. The last player announces the statement to the entire group. Errors typically accumulate in the retellings, so the statement announced by the last player differs significantly, and often amusingly, from the one uttered by the first.
Social media is essentially a game of telephone so it is essential to make sure the last player receives a message as intact as possible, no matter who is in the chain. No matter their background, native tongue, education, gender, cultural heritage, age, or disposition, our most important job is creating messaging that both injects a durable copy into the mind and consciousness of the consumer while also making it past the client’s review.
It isn’t easy, to be sure. If I choose a word that someone isn’t familiar with, they generally won’t take the time to explore the OED — not because of intellect but because people are busy, people have limited time and attention, and we don’t have them on salary. The time we have with them is generally limited to 5 minutes from opening an email pitch to when a blogger clicks on [Post] on their blog.
Gustave Flaubert was fastidious in his devotion to finding the right word, le mot juste, and so should we be because when you’re able to spend a little time distilling your message, the client’s message, your company’s mission, then you’ll probably learn quite a lot about yourself as well as how you’re perceived.
I had been using the word premasticate in my talks about blogger outreach and online messaging because I like to think about how the kiss was developed, in a time before Gerber’s when baby food was made by a mother who would pre-chew food for her child. I also like to think of sea birds going out to sea, fishing for smelt, and then coming back and feeding their chicks through regurgitation. I loved these visuals and it always amused classes when I did my Blue-footed Booby mating dance and subsequent feeding of chicks as marketing metaphor; however, I now know that the visual is vile and is often considered infantilizing to bloggers.
Like I said, I am always listening and always learning. Progress not perfection.
When you think carefully about your core message, think about not just the ideas but also the consumability of each word (6th or 7th grade reading easy, etc), you also realize that thinking this way can also be very useful for organic SEO and search. How?
Well, when you consider every word, you’ll start to think about how other people read and comprehend your brand. have you ever listened to an interview of someone who has a highly-technical job? Their responses tend to include acronyms, nicknames, and references that are only understandable by other scientists, politicians, engineers, doctors, and lawyers. A good interviewer asks what those acronyms means, slows the interviewee down, asks them to unpack what they’re saying. They call this unpacking, layman’s terms.
Google runs on layman’s terms — all search does. And since search engines don’t use thesauri and are painfully explicit, choosing your keyword phrases, your choice of words, your diversity of language, and the development of content copy to include a great biodiversity of phrases. For example, a television is also popularly called a TV, a flatscreen, a plasma, a big screen, an HDTV — even a boob tube and idiot box. If you don’t include them all in your online copy — if you don’t know the potential lingua fanca of everyone, you really had better cover your bases.
In summary, the resulting “simple” of any copy you write for general consumption should be as accessible as possible — not simplistic. More like Hemingway — to the marrow — rather than of a lower fidelity. Writing like this requires and demands that we, instead, work harder, become more concise, and distill the larger prose, copy, corpus, text, into something more essential, more easily and universally comprehensible and intact.
It demands the we bear the brunt of the load, do all the hard work, instead of depending on others to parse what we’re on about. And, on that note, I am well aware that I didn’t follow any of rules while writing this post. Let me know is I should.
Blogger outreach is only earned media and not paid
My definition of blogger outreach has always been about acquiring earned media coverage from bloggers and online influencers.
My definition–and my assumption–has always been that blogger outreach is public relations and not paid media. I may well be mistaken.
“Earned media (or free media) refers to favorable publicity gained through promotional efforts other than advertising, as opposed to paid media, which refers to publicity gained through advertising. Earned media often refers specifically to publicity gained through editorial influence, whereas social media refers to publicity gained through grassroots action, particularly on the Internet. The media may include any mass media outlets, such as newspaper, television, radio, and the Internet, and may include a variety of formats, such as news articles or shows, letters to the editor, editorials, and polls on television and the Internet.” (Wikipedia)
I recently had a Twitter chat with Serena Ehrlich, Director of Marketing for Mogreet during which we discussed the fine points of blogger outreach.
We agreed on everything except on whether blogger outreach was pay-per-post or earned, what bloggers wanted from a marketing pitch.
To quote @Serena, “Just smile, pay and disclose,” in response to my post, “don’t roll your eyes at social media influencers.”
I quickly responded, “Funny. I am an “earned media” social media marketer. There’s never “pay” so much as “gift” which is generally access, info, news,” and Serena asked, “do you find them moving towards pay? All blog conference preach payment (but I’m earned too so I get ur point)” and I responded “Don’t forget, most bloggers online have never been corrupted by blogger conferences :)” and, finally, “You don’t NEED to be sneaky in social media. You cannot CONTROL the conversation and you had better be as open as humanly possible.”
And that’s really the reason why people prefer the blogs and bloggers that offer predictable and controllable paid-content. Because you can control them by virtue of contracting with them over currency and sponsorship.
That comforts many but it lacks a number of important things, the most important of which is penetrating deeper into the conversation online, engaging with the newest talent–bloggers who have never been kissed or who have been blogging and sharing with their small circle of compadres in perceived invisibility (“what am I even doing this for, didn’t I start doing this so that I could get free review swag from Brooks, Nike, Saucony, and Mizuno?”) and in utter desperation (“I don’t have the time for doing this any more–I should be running about running instead of writing about running”).
What my version of long-tail blogger outreach offers is the ability to efficiently get deeper into the conversation, move further down the list of bloggers, into a social media conversation that’s a hell of a lot more like the blogosphere circa 2006: a cloud of conversations, reviews, insights, editorials, and exposures that reflect something and someone a lot more in touch with what they believe rather than the political and commercial give and take associated with the slick, safe, produced, and programmed world of mainstream media.
In my experience, bloggers want content that’s fresh, relevant, and germane to their topic of interest or expertise; they also want to be associated with something cool or flattering: a brand they like, a company they respect, or a product they have always loved, have been interested in trying, or have never heard of (or have yet to be released).
Being offered exclusive content, getting to be first kid on the block for something, or having the bragging associated with being identified, tapped, and invited, openly, into the fold of a worthwhile organization.
If you need to pay a blogger a posting or linking fee in order to get them to write about you, your social media agency is not doing their job; in fact, they’re just spending your money and they’re getting easy and safe posts but they’re certainly not doing right by you when it comes to identifying, engaging, and building a true relationship with the taste-makers and influencers in your space.
And, because you don’t have to earn their coverage based on the merits of the pitch, it calls into question the quality of the gift.
First, let me define “gift:” a gift is anything that a blogger considered valuable or germane to their news cycle. It could be exclusive content, it could be unique access to a person or technology, it could be the generous use or advance access to a product or service with the express intent of giving them time to experience, review, and critique it to share it with their readers.
It can even include exclusive blogger access to giveaways, discounts, membership, or coupons for the blogger’s readers.
But no, apparently every single blogger who has ever been to a blogging conference has been convinced–conned–into holding their posts ransom to a fee card. I mean, I see it all the time: folks who respond to any query with a fee sheet, be it their price for a “sponsored” post or even for just a keyword link.
I can understand offering me a price list for advertising space in the form of a banner or sponsorship credit, but these bloggers, who I will not name, are impenetrable when it comes to working on building a relationship, on becoming a preferred news channel, or even taking the audition towards becoming an official permanent member of one or more communications programs. This is a pity.
Why is this a pity? Well, most of the true A-list bloggers do not put such a mercenary barrier between companies, organizations, and brands–which is how they became A-list bloggers–by being likeable, accessible, having character, being popular, and having integrity.
The entire culture of the blog is supposed to be more authentic, more honest, and less under the thumb–and in the pocket–of the products and services about which they write. Right?
Long-story-short is that my long-tail strategy for blogger outreach, influenced heavily by the Cluetrain Manifesto, digs much deeper than just the top-50 or even to top-600 bloggers; in fact, my strategy doesn’t care anything at all about Klout, Compete, Google PR, or even page views or age of site. The only thing my strategy cares about is whether they’re topically-, linguistically-, and geographically-appropriate, targeted, and viable.
When you have a list of 1,000-9,000 viable and germane blogs for any particular campaign, you can readily dismiss anyone and everyone with a hand out and spend more attention grooming, encouraging, and rewarding those bloggers who are interested in being part of an interesting campaign, and innovative product, a special appeal, a new opportunity, or hot (exclusive) news.
At the end of the day, I will certainly collect a spreadsheet of all the folks with their hat in their hand, asking for payola for a positive post or a pre-written link through (they’re explicit that the link is a follow-me Google link-juicy link and not the hated “nofollow” blockade).
I will deliver that spreadsheet to the paid content and paid advertising folks–if they exist or are interested–along with their price sheets and offers. But when most of my colleagues and I, in our sundry agencies and associations, are hired to engage in blogger outreaches, our tasks are very similar to the tasks associated with traditional PR: connect with journalists and see if they’ll be willing to cover you.
These campaigns don’t have a discretionary bribery fund. We’re lucky if we even have the kinds of endless review copies that we want to circulate to all interested parties.
Our mission requires that we simply thank the folks who get back to us with their rate sheets and their requests for links and sponsorship, put them aside, and move on to build a connection, a conversation, and a relationship with all the other bloggers who are willing to enter into a conversation–a negotiation, if you will–first, before you shut me down before I even have a chance to make my appeal or to reach a mutually-beneficial agreement.
What I had to say, in appreciation, is that my team and I don’t need to waste a lot of time–these bloggers surely do get to the point right away. There’s not a lot of resource-intensive back and forth: it’s very clear what you’re getting.
But it comes right back down to what I thought blogger outreach and blogger engagement was: earned media public relations campaign wherein you pitch bloggers cum citizen journalists and they decide whether or not what’s in it for them or their readers is consistent with the quality of news, offer, or “gift” that my team and I are willing to give.
And I don’t even know what is valuable anymore, really. I understand the desire for revenue and the desire to not be taken advantage of by big brands (with deep pockets, assumedly) who should really be willing to put up or shut up. Fair enough, but there’s a lot of opportunity and future associations that are dismissed out of hand as a result.
What these brands, associations, nonprofits, companies, and their associated advertising, marketing, and PR companies want is earned media even though they could very well afford the $150 link fee or the $250 sponsorship in any single blogger’s rate sheet; they could probably afford a thousand of those, presumably.
The reason they come to Social-Ally or an agency like mine is because what they get for that money up front is PR garbage. They’ve all been through IZEA, they’ve all been through the SEO link-buying frenzy, and they’ve all bought sponsorship and ads just about everywhere.
What they haven’t found is authentic journalism from someone who is not paid for nice things; someone who has the integrity and character to offer balanced, quality, reviews and insights, be they good or not so good, consistently and over time–and these folks, the folks that my clients are looking for when they look for blogger outreach are not the folks who sound like car-salesmen or infomercial pitchmen when they write a client-friendly (or even client-doting) sponsored post, they want someone who is really passionate for Mizuno running shoes for example or has had a relative build a Habitat for Humanity house of has hosted a child during the summer for the Fresh Air Fund.
They’re looking for taste-makers, of course; they’re also looking for brand ambassadors; they’re looking to get married rather then just getting lucky; and they’re hoping that the enthusiasm of being associated with a real PR campaign from a recognized brand is enough (for now).
And, what they’re really hoping–all except a very few clients (and those are really just in it for the links, I’ll be honest–is that that boundless pride and excitement really translates into an irresistible, passion-infused, post that no longer ever happen in mainstream media.
They’re not looking for neutrality or objectivity–they’re happy with fanboys, fanbois, and bona fide enthusiast-obsessive, but they’re more excited that the end-result is organic, hearth-felt, and extemporaneous–what each earned media blogger wants so say rather than saying what he or she thinks we want to hear (which, like I said before, almost always sounds like the forced song-and-dance of a veteran used car dealer).
Anyway, there are loads of mommy bloggers, sports bloggers, gadget bloggers, tech bloggers, and sundry other topics and categories–none of whom are in their top-50–who have decided that they’re not citizen journalists but something more along the lines of the paid circulars in the paper or the “paid advertising” or “advertainment” section of most commercial magazines.
That’s fine. But because most blogger outreach campaigns are resource poor and their agencies a little lazy, the experience of most blogger outreach campaigns don’t go very far down the list of bloggers–or are restricted to just a certain class, PageRank, Klout, or Compete score, all they ever get is a load of jaded mercenary bloggers who readily hold their posting ransom, posting–or dropping links–only for the highest bidder.
The reason is simple: most brands are not national or global enough to command the attention of the real top bloggers. These bloggers have mostly maintained a semblance of journalistic and community integrity–being honest and open in their review, coverage, or sharing; however, they also have a strong level of discernment as to what they will cover, when they will cover it, and what sort of terms their article or post will follow (first right of refusal or first post or an ability to leak before an official announcement, etc).
TechCrunch will only cover your startup if you’re willing to reveal financials to them in a big way; Om only covers it if he things is personally cool; etc.
I am not saying that these top guys are saints. There is a lot of money going on. There is a lot of access. There are a lot of business class tickets and flights to corporate headquarters being offered, but none of these things (should) effect the quality and comprehensiveness of the copy, be it a review or announcement or just the editorial commentary.
Below them, there are the folks who have been able to accrue the correct metrics–the semi-pros or the advanced amateurs. To them, their “blogs” have become businesses, which is cool enough, I get it; however, they’re exclusively pay-to-play.
They’ve sold their souls to the real market of the Internet these days: keyword phrase links designed to transfer Google juice from a blogger’s blog directly to a company’s site, product, service–or to deposit an affiliate link into an advertorial review designed to drive a direct sales funnel to a commissioned sale.
These strategies are part of my previously-mentioned social media robot armies and zombie hordes: link-farming, affiliate marketing, and inbound marketing.
That’s all well and good but it is not blogger outreach. And if it is, maybe we need to rename blogger outreach to blogger relations instead. Or, rather, I think we need to make sure that we call these payola blogger outreach what they really are: inbound marketing campaigns with a blogger component.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what we at Social Ally call it, it’s what you hear (thanks, Frank Luntz). Let me ask you: what do you think of when you think of a blogger outreach campaign?
Do you think of earned media first–traditional PR mapped to bloggers–or do you think of blogger outreach as a way of identifying bloggers who would be amenable to sponsorship, paid posts, or bough links? Or, both?
I really like to know how that phrase is used circa 2012 instead of 2006, when I started Abraham Harrison, RIP, and if I should even be using blogger outreach to represent earned media blogger relations campaigns on the Social Ally website. I would love to hear your feedback in the comments.
Stop shouting at your social media fans
I know you. You’re spending all of your social media marketing budget on promoting your brand, products, and services; that’s fine except you’ve either forgotten — or never knew — that social media is a two-way street. It is.
And, something you also didn’t know: social media is two-thirds defense and monitoring — listening — and only one-third promotion and publicity — speaking. Most marketing folks not only don’t get PR but they revile it; sadly, this is what social media is, no matter what you call it: public relations, all aspects of it: publicity, of course, but also crisis management!
A social media crisis almost always begins as a customer support call and generally escalates slowly and then exponentially, generally because a customer doesn’t feel heard, doesn’t feel responded to, doesn’t feel appreciate, or doesn’t feel respected. And the truth generally has nothing to do with any of those things (at first) though both sides can easily become very heated.
The truth most often has more to do with “not hearing the knock at the door,” “not hearing the phone ring,” — not noticing they’re there. And that Mr. Nobody, that real nowhere man, need not be a sniping, paranoid, lonely, nebbish, either. That person may very well be Chris-Frigging-Brogen himself!
Yesterday morning, Chris Brogan reported his terrible experience with NMTW Community Credit Union. Though now resolved, let me summarize: Chris lost track of an account at NMTW, one of his many bank accounts, which had drained and been empty or negative for only a couple weeks. NMTW automatically closes account after 15 days. Chris was a 20-year veteran of this bank and reached out via the info@ email and then took to Facebook.
You lost a 20-year member today. I emailed your info@ email address to forward the reason why to your president. Wishing you better in the future.
Long and short of it, he received a form mail:
NMTW takes pride in its member service and we strive to add value to everyone’s day. We regret that in your situation we were unable to assist you any further at the time of your branch visit. NMTW would like to thank you for bringing this to our attention and in doing so will prevent similar events in the future.
At first, Chris sent an email to the company using the only email he could find; then he reached out, gently, using the only other point of contact he had with his favorite community credit union, NMTW, because it mattered to him. Finally, a response! But not a response to his terse Facebook wall post, a copy-and-paste form response (rule one, never copy-and-paste responses, ever).
I didn’t ask Chris but I bet you he was pretty bemused by everything up to this point, though indignation has probably been building. What got him was the fact that the Facebook response was out of sync with what Chris wrote on Facebook — was completely deaf to his comment — but that he was shut down. That his comment reached a dead end.
What Chris expected — demanded — (and what I demand as well) is that Chris’ and my ping via email, form, Facebook, or Twitter actually goes somewhere. And, in this case, Chris was completely explicit as to where, “forward the reason why to your president.” He expected, rightly, that there was a direct path — a stovepipe — that runs from the social media dashboard that NMTW uses in their Social Media Command Center directly all the way up to El Presidente. Rightfully so.
Everyone who consumes social media expects that. We have been trained to. We don’t expect that when we call an 800 customer support line, but we do expect satisfaction when there — or can be — witnesses. On a phone, tarring-and-feathering and stocks in the village square aren’t even worth it, but on Facebook and Twitter, there’s nothing to lose. Every altercation can be a bona fide “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” moment!
So, if you’re going to dance with devil — with social media, naked and covered with tar and feather in stocks at the very center of the village square, you had better spend at least two-thirds of your time, resources, and respect making sure you’re not missing very important conversations — listening — while you’re spending way too much of your time pitching, selling, marketing, promoting, hawking — speaking — like some itinerant peddler.
You’re better than that. Right?
Integrity is only inherent in earned media
[author]Yesterday I wrote a post called Blogger outreach is earned media not paid, right? wherein I asked if earned media was a think of the past and whether payola, pay-per-post, pay-per-link, sponsored posts, and site sponsorship were the new de facto in digital PR.
This morning, Gail Gardner wrote a post in response, accusing us digital PR professional of stealing from bloggers since we agencies do get paid for doing blogger outreach only to “talk bloggers into working for free” on our behalf:
These companies want to argue they deserve “earned” media coverage when what they are really doing is BUYING that awareness by paying PR agencies to go out and sell it for them. They aren’t earning it by some good deed or being awesome – they are spending money to get a PR agency to talk bloggers into working for free on their behalf.
NOTE The following is basically a copy/paste of the comment that I left over at the article, so it’s written to Gail, which might read weird, so forgive me on that. At the end of the day, I worship Gail Gardner for starting this conversation so please forgive my mild ‘tude — I am well-caffeinated and really passionate about this topic.
While I don’t believe or agree with a word in this post as the entire premise is flawed, however, I agree with everything that Doc Sheldon says in his comment — thanks Doc (we don’t know each other, I don’t think):
I agree that a blogger should have the option of taking pay for reviews, opinions or publicity, if that’s their chosen business model. For many, it is, and I have no problem with that. But when the required disclosure tells me that a blogger was paid to write about a product or service, it causes me to doubt their objectivity. If they’re okay with that, fine. Personally, I prefer that my readers believe I’m giving them an honest review, so I prefer to do independent reviews. That doesn’t mean that I think that every blogger that receives pay or gifts is being dishonest… just that it casts a shadow of doubt. One I prefer to avoid.
Let me explain the flawed nature. Firstly, I don’t believe that you, Gail, read the post very carefully at all; secondly, I never said their were thousands of exceptional bloggers — I believe that there are a few exceptions — awesome — bloggers, a number of payola bloggers, and then a long tail of passion-players; finally, your line, “they are spending money to get a PR agency to talk bloggers into working for free on their behalf,” is just a little bitter but it is also not true.
We don’t want to get bloggers to work for us at all — we just want each blogger to consider what we’re pitching — yes, to the blogger, but also to the readers. We can only pitch content to the blogger for the benefit of his or her readers.
And, if we’re able to engage with them in such a way that the blogger sees a professional, reputation and content benefit to what we’re pitching, then, and only then, do we “earn” an “earned media” post.
And, the blogger is under zero obligation to write nicely; he or she is allowed his or her own integrity and journalistic distance and is more than able to trash it, to love it, to recommend it or not.
Which is the risk I take when I go any outreach. If my client’s products or services such or if we package it poorly or target it sloppily, then the entire campaign can roll snake eyes at best and at worst, there can be a huge media blow-back.
The biggest flaw in the premise is that we’re stealing from bloggers. That because we’re professionals we’re in some way duping or conning these poor guileless bloggers into doing work for us for free.
With earned media blogger outreach, there must be a win-win-win between the blogger, the client, and the readership or it really doesn’t work at all.
I so do enjoy the conversation, so thank you for that, Gail.
Blogger outreach is earned media not paid
My definition of blogger outreach has always been about acquiring earned media coverage from bloggers and online influencers.
My definition–and my assumption–has always been that blogger outreach is public relations and not paid media. I may well be mistaken.
“Earned media (or free media) refers to favorable publicity gained through promotional efforts other than advertising, as opposed to paid media, which refers to publicity gained through advertising. Earned media often refers specifically to publicity gained through editorial influence, whereas social media refers to publicity gained through grassroots action, particularly on the Internet. The media may include any mass media outlets, such as newspaper, television, radio, and the Internet, and may include a variety of formats, such as news articles or shows, letters to the editor, editorials, and polls on television and the Internet.” (Wikipedia)
I recently had a Twitter chat with Serena Ehrlich, Director of Marketing for Mogreet during which we discussed the fine points of blogger outreach.
We agreed on everything except on whether blogger outreach was pay-per-post or earned, what bloggers wanted from a marketing pitch.
To quote @Serena, “Just smile, pay and disclose,” in response to my post, “don’t roll your eyes at social media influencers.”
I quickly responded, “Funny. I am an “earned media” social media marketer. There’s never “pay” so much as “gift” which is generally access, info, news,” and Serena asked, “do you find them moving towards pay? All blog conference preach payment (but I’m earned too so I get ur point)” and I responded “Don’t forget, most bloggers online have never been corrupted by blogger conferences :)” and, finally, “You don’t NEED to be sneaky in social media. You cannot CONTROL the conversation and you had better be as open as humanly possible.”
And that’s really the reason why people prefer the blogs and bloggers that offer predictable and controllable paid-content. Because you can control them by virtue of contracting with them over currency and sponsorship.
That comforts many but it lacks a number of important things, the most important of which is penetrating deeper into the conversation online, engaging with the newest talent–bloggers who have never been kissed or who have been blogging and sharing with their small circle of compadres in perceived invisibility (“what am I even doing this for, didn’t I start doing this so that I could get free review swag from Brooks, Nike, Saucony, and Mizuno?”) and in utter desperation (“I don’t have the time for doing this any more–I should be running about running instead of writing about running”).
What my version of long-tail blogger outreach offers is the ability to efficiently get deeper into the conversation, move further down the list of bloggers, into a social media conversation that’s a hell of a lot more like the blogosphere circa 2006: a cloud of conversations, reviews, insights, editorials, and exposures that reflect something and someone a lot more in touch with what they believe rather than the political and commercial give and take associated with the slick, safe, produced, and programmed world of mainstream media.
In my experience, bloggers want content that’s fresh, relevant, and germane to their topic of interest or expertise; they also want to be associated with something cool or flattering: a brand they like, a company they respect, or a product they have always loved, have been interested in trying, or have never heard of (or have yet to be released).
Being offered exclusive content, getting to be first kid on the block for something, or having the bragging associated with being identified, tapped, and invited, openly, into the fold of a worthwhile organization.
If you need to pay a blogger a posting or linking fee in order to get them to write about you, your social media agency is not doing their job; in fact, they’re just spending your money and they’re getting easy and safe posts but they’re certainly not doing right by you when it comes to identifying, engaging, and building a true relationship with the taste-makers and influencers in your space.
And, because you don’t have to earn their coverage based on the merits of the pitch, it calls into question the quality of the gift.
First, let me define “gift:” a gift is anything that a blogger considered valuable or germane to their news cycle. It could be exclusive content, it could be unique access to a person or technology, it could be the generous use or advance access to a product or service with the express intent of giving them time to experience, review, and critique it to share it with their readers.
It can even include exclusive blogger access to giveaways, discounts, membership, or coupons for the blogger’s readers.
But no, apparently every single blogger who has ever been to a blogging conference has been convinced–conned–into holding their posts ransom to a fee card. I mean, I see it all the time: folks who respond to any query with a fee sheet, be it their price for a “sponsored” post or even for just a keyword link.
I can understand offering me a price list for advertising space in the form of a banner or sponsorship credit, but these bloggers, who I will not name, are impenetrable when it comes to working on building a relationship, on becoming a preferred news channel, or even taking the audition towards becoming an official permanent member of one or more communications programs. This is a pity.
Why is this a pity? Well, most of the true A-list bloggers do not put such a mercenary barrier between companies, organizations, and brands–which is how they became A-list bloggers–by being likeable, accessible, having character, being popular, and having integrity.
The entire culture of the blog is supposed to be more authentic, more honest, and less under the thumb–and in the pocket–of the products and services about which they write. Right?
Long-story-short is that my long-tail strategy for blogger outreach, influenced heavily by the Cluetrain Manifesto, digs much deeper than just the top-50 or even to top-600 bloggers; in fact, my strategy doesn’t care anything at all about Klout, Compete, Google PR, or even page views or age of site. The only thing my strategy cares about is whether they’re topically-, linguistically-, and geographically-appropriate, targeted, and viable.
When you have a list of 1,000-9,000 viable and germane blogs for any particular campaign, you can readily dismiss anyone and everyone with a hand out and spend more attention grooming, encouraging, and rewarding those bloggers who are interested in being part of an interesting campaign, and innovative product, a special appeal, a new opportunity, or hot (exclusive) news.
At the end of the day, I will certainly collect a spreadsheet of all the folks with their hat in their hand, asking for payola for a positive post or a pre-written link through (they’re explicit that the link is a follow-me Google link-juicy link and not the hated “nofollow” blockade).
I will deliver that spreadsheet to the paid content and paid advertising folks–if they exist or are interested–along with their price sheets and offers. But when most of my colleagues and I, in our sundry agencies and associations, are hired to engage in blogger outreaches, our tasks are very similar to the tasks associated with traditional PR: connect with journalists and see if they’ll be willing to cover you.
These campaigns don’t have a discretionary bribery fund. We’re lucky if we even have the kinds of endless review copies that we want to circulate to all interested parties.
Our mission requires that we simply thank the folks who get back to us with their rate sheets and their requests for links and sponsorship, put them aside, and move on to build a connection, a conversation, and a relationship with all the other bloggers who are willing to enter into a conversation–a negotiation, if you will–first, before you shut me down before I even have a chance to make my appeal or to reach a mutually-beneficial agreement.
What I had to say, in appreciation, is that my team and I don’t need to waste a lot of time–these bloggers surely do get to the point right away. There’s not a lot of resource-intensive back and forth: it’s very clear what you’re getting.
But it comes right back down to what I thought blogger outreach and blogger engagement was: earned media public relations campaign wherein you pitch bloggers cum citizen journalists and they decide whether or not what’s in it for them or their readers is consistent with the quality of news, offer, or “gift” that my team and I are willing to give.
And I don’t even know what is valuable anymore, really. I understand the desire for revenue and the desire to not be taken advantage of by big brands (with deep pockets, assumedly) who should really be willing to put up or shut up. Fair enough, but there’s a lot of opportunity and future associations that are dismissed out of hand as a result.
What these brands, associations, nonprofits, companies, and their associated advertising, marketing, and PR companies want is earned media even though they could very well afford the $150 link fee or the $250 sponsorship in any single blogger’s rate sheet; they could probably afford a thousand of those, presumably.
The reason they come to Social-Ally or an agency like mine is because what they get for that money up front is PR garbage. They’ve all been through IZEA, they’ve all been through the SEO link-buying frenzy, and they’ve all bought sponsorship and ads just about everywhere.
What they haven’t found is authentic journalism from someone who is not paid for nice things; someone who has the integrity and character to offer balanced, quality, reviews and insights, be they good or not so good, consistently and over time–and these folks, the folks that my clients are looking for when they look for blogger outreach are not the folks who sound like car-salesmen or infomercial pitchmen when they write a client-friendly (or even client-doting) sponsored post, they want someone who is really passionate for Mizuno running shoes for example or has had a relative build a Habitat for Humanity house of has hosted a child during the summer for the Fresh Air Fund.
They’re looking for taste-makers, of course; they’re also looking for brand ambassadors; they’re looking to get married rather then just getting lucky; and they’re hoping that the enthusiasm of being associated with a real PR campaign from a recognized brand is enough (for now).
And, what they’re really hoping–all except a very few clients (and those are really just in it for the links, I’ll be honest–is that that boundless pride and excitement really translates into an irresistible, passion-infused, post that no longer ever happen in mainstream media.
They’re not looking for neutrality or objectivity–they’re happy with fanboys, fanbois, and bona fide enthusiast-obsessive, but they’re more excited that the end-result is organic, hearth-felt, and extemporaneous–what each earned media blogger wants so say rather than saying what he or she thinks we want to hear (which, like I said before, almost always sounds like the forced song-and-dance of a veteran used car dealer).
Anyway, there are loads of mommy bloggers, sports bloggers, gadget bloggers, tech bloggers, and sundry other topics and categories–none of whom are in their top-50–who have decided that they’re not citizen journalists but something more along the lines of the paid circulars in the paper or the “paid advertising” or “advertainment” section of most commercial magazines.
That’s fine. But because most blogger outreach campaigns are resource poor and their agencies a little lazy, the experience of most blogger outreach campaigns don’t go very far down the list of bloggers–or are restricted to just a certain class, PageRank, Klout, or Compete score, all they ever get is a load of jaded mercenary bloggers who readily hold their posting ransom, posting–or dropping links–only for the highest bidder.
The reason is simple: most brands are not national or global enough to command the attention of the real top bloggers. These bloggers have mostly maintained a semblance of journalistic and community integrity–being honest and open in their review, coverage, or sharing; however, they also have a strong level of discernment as to what they will cover, when they will cover it, and what sort of terms their article or post will follow (first right of refusal or first post or an ability to leak before an official announcement, etc).
TechCrunch will only cover your startup if you’re willing to reveal financials to them in a big way; Om only covers it if he things is personally cool; etc.
I am not saying that these top guys are saints. There is a lot of money going on. There is a lot of access. There are a lot of business class tickets and flights to corporate headquarters being offered, but none of these things (should) effect the quality and comprehensiveness of the copy, be it a review or announcement or just the editorial commentary.
Below them, there are the folks who have been able to accrue the correct metrics–the semi-pros or the advanced amateurs. To them, their “blogs” have become businesses, which is cool enough, I get it; however, they’re exclusively pay-to-play.
They’ve sold their souls to the real market of the Internet these days: keyword phrase links designed to transfer Google juice from a blogger’s blog directly to a company’s site, product, service–or to deposit an affiliate link into an advertorial review designed to drive a direct sales funnel to a commissioned sale.
These strategies are part of my previously-mentioned social media robot armies and zombie hordes: link-farming, affiliate marketing, and inbound marketing.
That’s all well and good but it is not blogger outreach. And if it is, maybe we need to rename blogger outreach to blogger relations instead. Or, rather, I think we need to make sure that we call these payola blogger outreach what they really are: inbound marketing campaigns with a blogger component.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what we at Social Ally call it, it’s what you hear (thanks, Frank Luntz). Let me ask you: what do you think of when you think of a blogger outreach campaign?
Do you think of earned media first–traditional PR mapped to bloggers–or do you think of blogger outreach as a way of identifying bloggers who would be amenable to sponsorship, paid posts, or bough links? Or, both?
I really like to know how that phrase is used circa 2012 instead of 2006, when I started Abraham Harrison, RIP, and if I should even be using blogger outreach to represent earned media blogger relations campaigns on the Social Ally website. I would love to hear your feedback in the comments.
Stop shouting and start listening to your social media fans
I know you. You’re spending all of your social media marketing budget on promoting your brand, products, and services; that’s fine except you’ve either forgotten — or never knew — that social media is a two-way street. It is.
And, something you also didn’t know: social media is two-thirds defense and monitoring — listening — and only one-third promotion and publicity — speaking. Most marketing folks not only don’t get PR but they revile it; sadly, this is what social media is, no matter what you call it: public relations, all aspects of it: publicity, of course, but also crisis management!
A social media crisis almost always begins as a customer support call and generally escalates slowly and then exponentially, generally because a customer doesn’t feel heard, doesn’t feel responded to, doesn’t feel appreciate, or doesn’t feel respected. And the truth generally has nothing to do with any of those things (at first) though both sides can easily become very heated.
The truth most often has more to do with “not hearing the knock at the door,” “not hearing the phone ring,” — not noticing they’re there. And that Mr. Nobody, that real nowhere man, need not be a sniping, paranoid, lonely, nebbish, either. That person may very well be Chris-Frigging-Brogen himself!
Yesterday morning, Chris Brogan reported his terrible experience with NMTW Community Credit Union. Though now resolved, let me summarize: Chris lost track of an account at NMTW, one of his many bank accounts, which had drained and been empty or negative for only a couple weeks. NMTW automatically closes account after 15 days. Chris was a 20-year veteran of this bank and reached out via the info@ email and then took to Facebook.
You lost a 20-year member today. I emailed your info@ email address to forward the reason why to your president. Wishing you better in the future.
Long and short of it, he received a form mail:
NMTW takes pride in its member service and we strive to add value to everyone’s day. We regret that in your situation we were unable to assist you any further at the time of your branch visit. NMTW would like to thank you for bringing this to our attention and in doing so will prevent similar events in the future.
At first, Chris sent an email to the company using the only email he could find; then he reached out, gently, using the only other point of contact he had with his favorite community credit union, NMTW, because it mattered to him. Finally, a response! But not a response to his terse Facebook wall post, a copy-and-paste form response (rule one, never copy-and-paste responses, ever).
I didn’t ask Chris but I bet you he was pretty bemused by everything up to this point, though indignation has probably been building. What got him was the fact that the Facebook response was out of sync with what Chris wrote on Facebook — was completely deaf to his comment — but that he was shut down. That his comment reached a dead end.
What Chris expected — demanded — (and what I demand as well) is that Chris’ and my ping via email, form, Facebook, or Twitter actually goes somewhere. And, in this case, Chris was completely explicit as to where, “forward the reason why to your president.” He expected, rightly, that there was a direct path — a stovepipe — that runs from the social media dashboard that NMTW uses in their Social Media Command Center directly all the way up to El Presidente. Rightfully so.
Everyone who consumes social media expects that. We have been trained to. We don’t expect that when we call an 800 customer support line, but we do expect satisfaction when there — or can be — witnesses. On a phone, tarring-and-feathering and stocks in the village square aren’t even worth it, but on Facebook and Twitter, there’s nothing to lose. Every altercation can be a bona fide “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” moment!
So, if you’re going to dance with devil — with social media, naked and covered with tar and feather in stocks at the very center of the village square, you had better spend at least two-thirds of your time, resources, and respect making sure you’re not missing very important conversations — listening — while you’re spending way too much of your time pitching, selling, marketing, promoting, hawking — speaking — like some itinerant peddler.
You’re better than that. Right?