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June 28, 2007

Facebook's helping hands

An article in last week's Wall Street Journal had some interesting updates on Facebook's new platform that is allowing third-party services to create new applications for the No. 2 social networking site. According to the article, more than 800 services have been created for Facebook since the launch of its platform in May.

The new applications range from slide shows to horoscope finders, rating your top friends and Last.fm plug-ins. I know I've received countless requests from my friends asking me to add their new favorite applications. Looking at all of the options you now have on Facebook, I was nervous for them; didn't most of my friends abandon MySpace because of all the ads, band requests, and spam profiles? I guess not. Take a look at these numbers:

• In May, Facebook had 24 million active users.
• In June, just one month later, Facebook had 27 million active users.

Three million users can't be wrong...

I especially liked this rationale for why Facebook seems to "get it" right now. From the article:

Facebook is actually borrowing a tactic pioneered by Microsoft: Rather than building every piece of technology yourself, let others build on your "platform," much the way Adobe Systems Inc., Intuit Inc. and others built software for Microsoft's Windows operating system in the 1980s. Using this strategy, Facebook can nurture an ecosystem of developers who can create services far faster than Facebook could build them on its own.

With numbers that appear to be climbing every month, and friends who keep bombarding me with iLike recommendations I usually can't turn down, it looks like it's going to be a good summer session for Facebook.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 03:44 PM
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What we have here is a failure to communicate...

...Or, managing relationships, traditionally and digitally

By Nichole Woodcock

Reading Guy Kawasaki's blog entry on “The Top Ten Reasons Why PR Doesn't Work” is like rubbing salt in a wound. There is nothing worse than when a campaign is viewed unsuccessful in the eyes of a client. Every client dreams of “Oprah” and “The Today Show,” but if our client is Mattel and they are trying to get on top broadcast shows with the latest yo-yo, we have to advise them to thoughtfully reconsider. The same is true for the blogosphere. Not everyone needs to have an island in Second Life, even though the client might want the latest, greatest digital "must-have."

Whether it's a traditional PR initiative or a digital endeavor, It is our job as professionals to manage expectations of campaign results, keeping in mind that no two clients are alike. What might have been a great success for one client could turn out a flop for another. There is a way to be honest and fair with a client without insulting their ideas or thoughts. PR is a paid service to manage communication and if we do not advise our clients to the best of our ability, we all look bad in the public arena. If you were paying someone for something they promised you and it never happened, you would be upset too.

A client can be difficult, crusty or perhaps perfect to work with, but for each campaign or RFP we have to manage values and relationships with clients and act on their best behalf with honesty and integrity.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 11:47 AM
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June 27, 2007

Product reviews and contest giveaways

By Nichole Hurley

So what exactly is happening with the new craze of online contests and how did it get started?

Of course, people love contests. Companies have always used contests to promote their products. Contests have also been a part of online life and the blogging community, according to Janice Croze of 5 Minutes For Mom.

Janice and Susan at 5 Minutes for Mom noticed that contests were not being used in product reviews, and large contests appeared only on large sites (Janice and Susan run a unique “mom” social networking site that that is also a shopping resource and entertainment blog). It’s within their blog’s goals to provide reviews and contests for their readers. They noticed that their product reviews got very little attention until they changed them into contests. That’s when they became a “main stage attraction.”

Based on my own observations and outreach efforts, incentivizing promotions that aren’t product review-based have often been necessary in order to get bloggers to be receptive to your pitches. In all obviousness, the idea of receiving “free stuff” is what ultimately appeals to people. And providing them with a small token of appreciation for sharing their opinions is certainly a small price to pay, especially when a high level of influence is involved.

But Janice and Susan, while always looking for new ways to engage their readers, take “incentive” to a whole new level by creating these contest giveaways. They feel this tactic provides their readers with a chance for personal gain, whereas a generic product review only provides them with information. And although there is never a guarantee for everyone to receive swag with a contest put into play, the general idea of having a chance to win something has been seemingly just as appealing as actually getting it.

They have received hundreds to thousands of entries for these contests including bloggers, non-bloggers who are active online in other ways, and participants from both Canada and the U.S. With their readers in mind and their goals and tactics at-large, Janice and Susan are highly regarded in the mom blogging community.

While we at MS&L Digital have had the privilege of working with these fun moms for several campaigns, we have helped to coordinate several giveaways. Some of these items have included household and food-oriented products to high-ticket items such as electronic gadgets and DVD box sets.

So the next question is, how does everyone benefit from this? Take a look at what 5 Minutes for Mom does…

In order to grow their contests, continue building traffic for their site, and help promote the sponsoring company even further, 5 Minutes for Mom asks the participating bloggers to link back to their contest as well as to the company, providing free, top quality, word of mouth advertising!

With the excitement and craze of all these contests, you’ll notice when doing online searches or even navigating through other mom blogs that these ideas have taken off with the mommy blogging community, as other mommy bloggers are adopting these techniques for their own blogs.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 10:57 AM
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June 26, 2007

Senior marketers afraid to "let go"

By David Binkowski

Last week my employer, MS&L, and PR Week did a study among senior marketers asking if they thought CGM was very important to their marketing platforms. Just 12% thought it was.

You might be saying "Well, 12% is pretty high, Dave."

I'm not disagreeing with that, but this was the kicker:

The survey also indicated that while marketers may be highly aware of the power consumers wield, most are still wary to give consumers more control. Just 22 percent said they were “very willing” to let consumers play a significant role in shaping their marketing programs.

That's incredibly low. I can understand why this whole "letting go" has some brand managers and marketing folks nervous, but only 22% are willing to let consumers play a significant role in shaping marketing programs? I'm stunned. This ain't the 1950s. It's not about "reaching consumers." It's about engagement. It's about listening and learning. It's about embracing their values and not forcing them on "audiences."

Our CEO, Mark Hass, had this to say:

“Despite the increased awareness of the power of consumers in a digital age on brands and sales, marketing executives are reluctant to loosen their grip on marketing content, unwilling to give too much control to these empowered consumers.”

Interesting to note what they will spend budget on this year:

• Traditional online activities, such as building web sites (82%)
  
• Targeting influentials (70%)
  
• Media relations, both considered traditional public relations activities (65%)

Building web sites? Really? Welcome to 1995! ;)

CGM came in at 43%.

Here are the new media and CGM techniques their company had used:

• Web site production (71%)
  
• Consumer feedback for marketing/product strategies (50%)

Ah, so they’re sticking with the traditional one-way communication because, "nothing bad can happen if we don't listen." Riiiiiight ...

Mark Hass noted:

“These marketers basically address the consumer empowerment trend by using web sites to get consumer feedback. This raises the issue of whether or not marketers really understand the concept of new media and CGM. Marketers who think that using a web site, or asking for consumer feedback on a web site, represent cutting-edge new media tactics are missing tremendous opportunities to build their brands.”

It is encouraging to know that a few years ago getting brands to give products out for review online was a big step, so for that number to reach 50% in a few years isn't too bad. What's really shocking is that while text message usage among Gen Y is high, only 10% of marketers used text messaging in programs last year.

Text messaging has privacy issues…

Consumer-generated advertising was used in only 14% of programs last year, which I'm guessing is making A.G. Lafley chuckle. The world's top marketer says "let go" and 14% listened. Rome wasn't built in a day either.

Innovation (36%) and cost (32%) were also considered solid reasons to engage in new media and CGM. But here is the stat I'm taking to every pitch:

Other popular reasons include ... the declining credibility of traditional advertising and marketing (31%).

More telling are the reasons why they're reluctant to let consumers take control:

• No clear ROI (32%)
  
• Don't want consumers that close to their business (6%)
  
• One-third (33%) gave various other reasons, such as “management doesn’t embrace it yet,” “we simply haven’t given it enough priority to consider it at this point,” and “we’ve had difficulty in getting the establishment to understand it.”

That last point needs restating: difficulty in getting the establishment to understand it.

I'm not going to turn this into a sales pitch for MS&L, WOMMA or any other group out there, but if you e-mail or call me, explaining CGM will take no more than five minutes via phone without slides.

This isn't that hard to grasp. Smart companies like my boy Clay C over at Quicken are seeing the ROI firsthand — their LeBron James Etch-A-Sketch video on YouTube cost less than $6,000 in out-of-pocket expenses to produce and has received more than 1.3 million views. They just reached millions of consumers for a fraction of what they would pay for an ad, air time and acting talent.

Clearly this isn't just about knowledge, though, as budget played a role in this conversation:

The survey results show that 31 percent of those polled say they have no budget for such programs, while 44 percent say there was no change to the amount of funding for new media and CGM efforts over the past year. Additionally, the survey shows that nearly 50 percent of respondents spend 10 percent or less of their company’s marketing budget on new media and CGM efforts. Industrywide, the technology sector spent the most, coming in ahead of consumer, healthcare and b-to-b.

It's not a surprise to see that technology companies are spending the most in this space: that's where their audience is: online, gaming, virtual worlds, blogging. If I were ranking them I would put b2b ahead of health care; legal and privacy concerns prevent a lot of pharmas and health care companies from doing more in this space.

I was recently asked, "How can you justify budget for something that has little or no internal buy-in? How would you propose I sell this in to take budget away from one program and put it toward this?"

The answer is simple: Look at your marketing mix and find the program that delivered the lowest return for you last year. When I worked at the Karmanos Cancer Institute we axed our Yellow Pages budget and put it toward online. It's common sense — if something isn't producing the results you want, you change course and try something else.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 03:36 PM
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June 21, 2007

The end for Perez?

When a co-worker of mine told me PerezHilton.com had been shut down, I couldn't believe it. And then I checked for myself.

If, like me, you had trouble accessing Perez Hilton's blog yesterday, there was good reason. The site was taken down by server host Crucial Paradigm for violating warnings to stop using copyrighted photos, a problem Perez has been having recently. Now back up and running, thanks to a different host, Perez's blog is running at a "skeleton" capacity, according to Variety.

As of this posting, comments were still down and the archive was gone. Clicking on the "copyright statement" took you back to the blog's homepage.

But even a blog shutdown can't keep the blogosphere's most popular gossip hound down.

Try as they may, can’t nobody hold us down... Thanks for sticking with us and putting up with all the bullshiz. Truly. Deeply. Thank you!

What does all this mean? Should anyone outside of the blogosphere care? The answer... yes.

By finally holding Perez accountable for his actions, the blogosphere takes another step toward being a respected, CREDIBLE media source. The debate continues as to whether or not bloggers should be held to the same standards that MSM journalists are. With the shutdown of Perez's blog, a signal has been sent out saying, "Yes, bloggers should be held accountable."

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 02:09 PM
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June 18, 2007

Road Work

By Charlie Kondek

Mike Sansone over at ConverStations has an interesting post up about finding, and planning, the time to blog.

He compares blogging to running, and suggests bloggers warm-up first, the same way a runner would before a jog.

"So, before I even think about my own post, I invest 15-20 minutes responding to comments on my blog and commenting on other sites. I find this gets me in a blogging rhythm. While commenting — a post formulates that I can bang out in another 20-30 minutes."

This resonated with me because it touched on two of my interests, writing and exercising. It seems to me that what Mike is talking about is the discipline of writing. Lots of people favor different approaches to writing but one thing they share in common is the discipline to write consistently, something Mike addresses here.

Blogging is a specific kind of writing, of course, but whatever your goals are with it, you have to stay consistent and, yes, warming up and regular stretching of the muscles is required.

I'm also tempted to stretch the analogy further, thinking about my own running habits. Should I listen to James Brown on my headphones while I write, or rap music? Should my writing go around and around in a circle, or stretch out into new horizons? Do I have the right outfit for writing? Will I be too warm? What about headgear?

That's the thing about analogies. Like muscles, they can be stretched too far!

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 05:13 PM
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June 11, 2007

Working the blog

By Nichole Woodcock

Newbie alert! This is my very first post since joining MS&L BlogWorks. In May I transitioned from four years of good old-fashioned public relations at MS&L Atlanta to the new media world of BlogWorks. When I arrived, I couldn’t believe some of the differences between the blogosphere and traditional PR realms.

Here are some of my immediate observations:

Traditional PR’s bread and butter for media is traditional print and online outreach. PR professionals want to place stories at print publications and the online versions of those publications. Hardly any thought is given to the thousands of blogs that could provide a great service to clients and impact a highly influential niche market. Many think (I was guilty of this too at one time) that simply by using blog search tools such as Google blogsearch or Technorati you can create a master list of top blogs and begin outreach. On the contrary, without knowing the blog industry there is no way to sort through the numerous blogs on a topic. Instead of trusting the list of blogs found doing a general search, you have to put effort into it and get to know the material.

PR and blogs help drive media results, but the avenue to garnering coverage can vary between the two. All clients want to receive coverage and no client really wants negative press. In traditional PR you develop plans of strategic messaging and outreach to deliver the appropriate information to the media. In blog-based outreach you have the product or promotion, and this is what has to speak to the target audience. By removing the filter, blogs have the ability to express whatever opinion they desire about what you're sending them.

Some clients have learned to embrace blog postings on their products and appreciate that they are hearing directly from the consumer and target audience, and others have not warmed up to the idea that blogs provide relevant information to the masses.

At the end of the day we are all here to help our clients receive meaningful coverage. The great thing about MS&L is that each office has so many specialized areas. I am excited to be on the other side of the fence and still have a lot to learn!

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 02:09 PM
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June 07, 2007

The Geography of the Internet

By Charlie Kondek

Imagine this scenario. You're working on a web-based PR campaign for a widget. You're trying to find blogs relevant to the widget and connect with the widget audience. You develop pitch materials and a target list. You pitch the blogs. You get some favorable responses. One of them, a blog that's exactly what you want for this campaign, is enthusiastic about your materials and eager to receive your widget and share his thoughts on it with the widget community. Now it's time to send this person the widget.

He's in Malaysia. The widgets are in a warehouse in Racine. To ship him the widget, you will not only have to pay the larger fee, you'll have to pay import fees and any other duties and fill out extra paperwork, something that can take the cost of a shipment from tens of dollars to hundreds, not including the time spent shipping and tracking it.

Part of working in internet-based PR and marketing means realizing that physical geography does not necessarily correspond to internet geography. The internet makes an international community local, developing networks based more on shared interest and shared language than proximity.

Most of the work I have done has been in the English language, and I am often surprised at who is contributing to the dialogue on any given subject in the blogosphere. Citizens of many countries are fluent in English and often they choose to blog about a given subject in English. They may be in Sweden, Malaysia, Portugal, or other countries, but they choose to blog in English and connect with English speakers who share their interests all over the world.

This is something to keep in mind as you develop and execute your PR tactics. Clients should understand that the best English-language widget blogger may in fact live in Malaysia, and that it's worth it to ship the widget there, import duties and all. The resulting placement will create impressions all over the English-speaking world and remain online to rematerialize as search results for English-speaking consumers.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 04:30 PM
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June 06, 2007

Tired of reading real blogs?

...Then try this vlog of deep thoughts, brought to you by Creed from NBC's "The Office." You can read all about his thoughts on rootbeer floats (yes, it does float), at www.creedthoughts.gov.www\creedthoughts.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 02:32 PM
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June 01, 2007

Leaks in the blogosphere

It’s no surprise that after Chicago radio station Q101 played an entire preview copy of former-Detroit rockers The White Stripes’ new album “Icky Thump” on Wednesday that radio rips of the unreleased album began making their way around the Internet(s). And it’s no surprise that a battle over musicians’ rights, fans’ rights and bloggers’ rights began.

For anyone unfamiliar with the drama, simply Google “Icky Thump leak.” The top results bring up angry posts from music bloggers irritated about the situation. “But stealing is wrong!” you say. It is. Very wrong. However, looking at their arguments, and what happened to one blogger in particular, is a case study in the ever-blurring line of what’s right and wrong in the blogosphere.

Product Shop NYC, a popular indie music blog, was shut down the same day the radio station leaked the album. Known for posting mp3s from upcoming releases, the author received a cease and desist letter from Warner Brothers telling him to take the tracks down after a web sheriff-esque site found the tracks. He did, but six hours later, his blog was shut down, to his surprise. Here’s what Jason, the author, had to say about the situation:

“Why did they choose to take action against me? I don't know. I complied with their request and did as they asked. I've been nothing but supportive of the White Stripes and will continue to support the band. I buy their records, spend a ton of money on concert tickets and have given them an absolute ton of free publicity by covering almost everything they've ever done.


Major labels are happy to send along a million press releases, update us on every single move a band makes, feed us into their machine, but if we show our support by exposing people to the actual music, then we get shut down?


People want to buy music. Not an image.”

Most major music bloggers, like The Modern Age, are in agreement that leaking the album by the radio station was wrong from the start, but are siding with Product Shop NYC.

“Sometimes I think Jack and the labels can be a little overzealous about hating some things (such as having Product Shop NYC shut down for linking to downloads of “Conquest” and “You Don’t Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You’re Told)” AFTER they had removed the links by request of the label !!!!), but I gotta side with the man on this one–Q101 totally effed up on this.”

What does a situation like this mean for bloggers? It’s hard to tell, and often sounds like a “Do as I say, not as I post” scenario. Jason makes a very compelling point- his blog has been giving The White Stripes loads of free coverage for more than five years, and nobody, from the corporate level, seems to be complaining about that. But the minute he gives the people (the fans) what they want, his blog is shut down.

This story is hardly new- car companies are constantly dealing with car blogs and “spy” product photos posted before embargo dates have passed. But the leaked White Stripes album is a good example of something I believe we’re going to see happen more frequently with bloggers as mainstream media outlets, like Warner Brothers, expect the blogosphere to adhere to the same standards that traditional publications, journalists and even radio stations (unlike Q101) have been expected to follow.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 05:10 PM
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