Let's talk about Blogher '09.

First, congratulations and thank you to Lisa, Elisa, Jory and their dedicated team for creating and hosting an event that means a great deal to a growing community of people. From location to sessions to ticketing to sponsors, producing a multi-day event for 1500+ people is an enormous task and I thank them for doing it.

By now, many bloggers have posted their opinions on the swag (yeah, it was pretty crazy), event-related dramas (nikon as the new motrin), and the black hole called wifi at the venue. I'll skip all that.

I'd rather share my observations of the community/event from the business side of the blogosphere.

As you probably know if you're reading this, I lead the social media and PR practices for creative ad agency Red Tettemer. I started specializing in social media in 2005, when I worked for a consumer PR agency in NYC and transitioned from my previous career focus on traditional media. Prior to that, I blogged privately from 1998 on (unrelated to my job as a PR person at the same time).

I frequently work with a wide variety of bloggers on behalf of clients, although that's just a small part of what I do.

When I started working with bloggers, I mostly represented tech clients and the bloggers I worked with were primarily, ex-journalists who left traditional media to blog. Working with them wasn't much different from working with traditional media. The same level of professionalism applied, and they understood common industry things like NDA's (non-disclosure agreements), product loans/review units (common practices to garner coverage), embargoes (agreed upon future date that the journalist will publish confidential information, usually in exchange for exclusivity on the announcement), advances (confidential pre-launch information provided to a journalist to prepare to publish a story on an agreed upon date, which is not necessarily exclusive but shared with limited non-competitive media outlets at the same time), press events, deskside briefings, etc.

What was a wake up call for me at Blogher, is the enormous number of attending citizen journalists who had no knowledge of journalism fundamentals. I wasn't the only one surprised at this observation, a journalist assigned to cover the event ended up standing up and commenting during Geekmommy's session, schooling the much of the audience on these fundamentals (sharing basics like: review units are a common practice, you have to receive them to review the product, don't feel badly about "accepting" free product).

Now, one could argue that the attendees weren't citizen journalists but rather hobbyists. In my opinion, in this economy, if you're paying $200 for a conference pass, plus airfare, and $200 a night for a hotel room for 3 nights, this probably is more than a hobby. For that kind of spend, if it's not a business now, you want it to be.

So here's my advice for the new and inexperienced:

• Take a journalism course. Seriously. At your local community college, attend a lecture, read some books. There are best practices, ethics and guidelines. See how they can adapt to your blog if you are reporting on things/people. There are also legal guidelines to be aware of in reporting.
• Present yourself as a professional. If you're seeking to generate revenue from your blog, then it's your business. You are your own product. Speak like an adult and with confidence, so that I can believe in your product and walk away feeling I NEED to work with you.
  
• Don't make noise, make a good impression. I can't tell you how many bloggers wasted money on print materials (postcards, flyers, etc) promoting their blog, that they scattered around the venue on tables and chairs like a college band playing a local bar. They generated meaningless leave behinds that just added waste. The real winners were the people who participated, contributed to conversation and connected with the rest of the attendees.
  

My last observation is for both marketers and bloggers. There were many attending bloggers who were "sponsored" by a brand (meaning the brand covered their travel and/or expenses) or acting as brand ambassadors for a brand. Unfortunately, in many cases, neither the brand nor the blogger were experienced in this tactic, leaving many of us bewildered by friends or new acquaintances shoving brochures or products into our overloaded bags with little to no explanation on what they were, what we were supposed to do with them and why.

I've been fortunate enough to work mainly with Fortune 500 brands throughout my almost 15-year career in marketing, so this next observation completely baffled me. I've always briefed/educated a brand ambassador on our brand or product in advance of an event and had a laid out plan that provided meaning as well as metric for measurement, which was agreed upon by the brand and the ambassador. At the end of the event we both analyzed results and benefit to the brand.

I have no idea how a brand ambassador shoving a postcard or soap sample into my laptop bag intended to deliver a measured ROI (return on investment).

If I were a brand manager that would be the first or second thing I'd be thinking about when fleshing out a sponsored blogger approach.

Additionally, if I were a blogger interested in a long-term partnership with a brand or company, I'd be asking myself what value I could bring to the brand as an ambassador, and how that could be measured as a success to secure an ongoing business relationship/revenue stream with them. Being able to track, measure and prove success is not only the way to advance your own brand, but also something critical for bloggers to do & own during a time of corporate america layoffs and revolving executives. In short, if your marketing contact moves, you need to be able to show the new executive how you moved the needle for the brand in the past, so that you can continue to do so in the future.

Questions? Hit up my comments.

And Good luck!

It's important to know what you dislike and why.

Today My friend Cecily pointed me to a heated blogosphere discussion about a proposed week-long PR Blackout among mom bloggers.

Initially I guessed this proposed boycott was less of a "PR industry" boycott and more of a stand against consumerism. I can relate to desire to step away from consumerism. I'm not some pitchwoman who thinks everyone should buy, buy, buy.

However, after reading momdot's post, I see that's not the case. She feels that moms have many demands and blogging, initially adopted as a relief outlet, has become another demand in her life because PR people want to connect with her and get her feedback via blog posts/reviews.

Momdot also seems to want to read content by other bloggers that is solely passion driven and not influenced by any brands or paid partnerships.

I can relate to that. Heck, sometimes I even feel the same way.

What I disagree with, is the approach. Boycott, is a strong word and action. I tend to reserve a boycott for someone or something who has committed a heinous grievance against me or my moral code. I don't think a boycott is the answer to the problem of feeling overwhelmed or the way to shape content to be styled the way one person or group wants it styled. In fact, a boycott like this, is very close to a PR campaign of momdot's very own design. Touche, lady! ;)

Here are some alternative suggestions for momdot and the likeminded to find peace of mind:

• Create a badge or graphic and place it in your blog sidebar clearly stating "No PR Pitches"
• If you chose to accept PR pitches at another time, set up an email account just to receive those pitches. Clearly publish that email as "For PR contacts" in your "Contact" and "About" sections. This way, you can choose when to connect with PR people and when not to.
• Find new blogs to read that are solely "passion" blogs. There are plenty out there. For more "journal" type blogs, try LiveJournal.
  
• Take a break from blogging. Step back. Don't let the pressures of writing and having an audience overwhelm you. It's ok to take a break. This is your thing.
  You should enjoy it.

Should be interesting to follow this topic at Blogher next week!

Why I'm blogging again. (Part 2)

I decided to start blogging again because I was tired of listening to people tweet complaints about PR people. On twitter and marketing blogs, it's almost become a meme to bash PR people. Hating on PR, is the new black.

The gripes about PR people range from: bad pitches ("they pitched my blog and they've clearly never read it!"), to inauthenticity in the field or *as* a field (my friend Beth Harte struck a chord on the latter), to my own complaint of SM PR folks doing nothing but shilling on twitter.

Let's talk about PR and shilling.

First, let me disclose PR has been my career. I worked for NYC PR agencies for 11 years, on both the account side and media. The majority of my experience was spent in Media, where I focused on national broadcast and print. Because I worked in Media, I was responsible for generating or shaping the creative/programs that we sold into clients because my department was also setting the media goals and at the end of the program, we were accountable for those goals.

In 2005, I transitioned from VP Media to VP of Emerging Media at Marina Maher Communications (where I spent 8.5 great years), established and led a new department offering all agency clients "new media" services. I still generated creative, set media goals, and led execution but my focus was in new or social media.

In 2006, I moved in-house to a marketing organization to set up shop & lead social media there. Same responsibilities. In 2007, I joined creative indie ad agency, Red Tettemer, to again, set up shop & lead social media. Eventually, I assumed the responsibilities for our in-house PR practice as well. It was a natural addition to my SM job - SM platforms either support or are part of the PR approach and I had a decade plus experience in traditional PR.

I've always worked in consumer product PR, now consumer product advertising, so I'm speaking to those types of clients, not B2B or IR. I've also been always been at creative shops with household name clients, so I've been lucky enough to work with Brand teams consisting of the best marketers in the world (Hi P&G, Amazon.com, Coca-Cola, and J&J - all former clients) with decent budgets to move the needle.

That said, many of the basic PR tactics that SM people complain about today (bad press releases, mass pitches w/o research, outdated press lists) weren't part of our scope of work.

In my world of PR, we learned a client's business, did research/reviewed all the other marketing materials (packaging, R&D, advertising (creative & media plan), promotion, product launch timing), established PR objectives tied to reaching the BUSINESS goals of our clients, developed strategies that would help us reach our objectives/goals, spent time developing hot creative achievable within budget, soft sounded those creative ideas with media "friends" to ensure they were bookable or "mediable" (e.g. - would be something they'd cover) and developed achievable/measurable goals. After the client and sometimes other agencies aligned with our ideas and approach, THEN we did the work.

My approach never included: "draft press release," "develop press list," "pitch bloggers," "byline articles,"etc. Those things are PR basics. They're nuts and bolts. Most of them are ways of the old world. That's not PR in my world. Those are support tactics to help you complete the PR program; teeny tiny pieces that make up the bigger picture. The PR part for me, was always the IDEA. The "happening". The "thing" we created that told the story for the Brand, that provided value for the consumer, that interested media enough to cover it, that got people excited enough to talk about it and be proud to be a supporter or excited enough to be a new customer.

It saddens me that many people are perceiving PR as this DIY profession requiring no skills. In part, it's a Catch 22. One of the reasons PR is so valuable to a company, service or product is because it's relatively low cost in comparison to advertising or promotion/special events. Also, PR's low operational cost is appealing to untrained/inexperienced people who see it as an easy field to break into and make money as a consultant. Because there is little to no cost of entry, and little to no accreditation required, any Tom, Dick or Mary can jump in and call themselves a PR person, much like SM.

Those people, are doing a disservice a to PR as a whole. The people who segue to PR from other professions or having had no profession, are abusing the trust and investment of clients seeking prudent PR counsel.

To truly learn and understand the world of PR, I believe you must work at a reputable PR agency at least once. Why an agency vs. an in-house marketing department? Because at an agency, they live and breathe PR. A corp marketer's time is spent divided among the marketing disciplines (PR, Adv, Promotion) and usually, they are managing the agencies/people who are in the trenches doing the executions. There is a lot of practical experience you earn at an agency that you just won't learn in-house because the agency shields the client from the minutiae - that's part of the agency's job. Also, b/c a PR agency is focused ONLY on PR and not stretched like an in-house marketer covering all marketing disciplines for the Brand, you get a deeper dive into the practice and techniques. Last, at an agency you have the opportunity to work with other professionals of all levels of experience in this specific field. Those professionals are usually very smart because let me tell you, the PR agency world is lean and mean. If you're not producing, the agency cannot and will not carry your dead weight. It's do or die.

I urge people interested in getting into PR, regardless of their age, to intern or work at a reputable PR agency. To research reputable PR agencies, try: PRSA, PR Week or The Holmes Report to name a few.

And if you have questions about PR or getting into the biz, lmk.

Earlier this week I was feisty and decided to name the SM tactic du jour: giving away random coveted electronics product via a Branded hashtag contest on Twitter.

Now, let's clear the air before you dismiss this entry as one of my anti-hashtag rants.

For any of you who may not know, I am a long-time hashtag protester. If you aren't familiar with the battle against hashtags, go here to quickly catch up. We fought the good fight, however, we lost the war. Enough of the core community latched on to hashtags and the Twitter community grew so rapidly that many knew no other way. For the growing nation of Twitter n00bs, hashtags were a way of life within the platform. Last week, twitter made hashtags legit by hotlinking them, like @ replies.

Ya can't win 'em all.

Lately, adding a Branded hashtag to a tweet is the new SM "viral" campaign. A couple of start up's (and I'm sure there's more than the 2 I'm thinking of) have launched "promotions" (and I use that term loosely) offering to give away iPhones and/or macbook Pro's to randomly selected people who hashtag a tweet with their Brand name.

This is non-strategic marketing for a number of reasons:

• This is not a contest to promote or benefit Apple/mac or affiliate programs/services, although you may think it is it, because they are giving away that company's products. Wouldn't it make more sense to give away something specific to the product or service you are offering?

• Call entry just requires the branded hashtag on any tweet. So basically, I could negatively tweet about the brand "Yo XYZ company, your service totally blows. #XYZ" and still qualify to win the prize. Or, I could tweet about something unrelated "Checking out the monkey exhibit at the zoo today. #XYZ." How does that shape or improve people's opinion of the brand using word of mouth? Not all word of mouth is positive word of mouth.
  

• I still have no idea who this company is and what they do. Why should I use them? What can they do for me other than win free electronics? What is their VALUE Proposition?
  

These things don't benefits the brand. They are the equivalent of standing in the middle of a Grand Central Station and screaming a brand name. Imagine standing standing waiting for a train and hearing someone scream "I'm waiting for a train. STARBUCKS!!!" I'd that person was crazy and immediately ignore them. If they continued doing this, I'd get annoyed and move away.

Wouldn't it make more sense to make the call to action a creative reply TO: the brand? Having them follow the Brand in order to receive a DM alerting you to winning? Requiring the tweet to say something positive about the brand and/or service? Customizing the prize to tie back to the product or service that awarded it?

It's great to play with shiny new tools and see your name echo online. However, echoing for the sake of echoing, isn't strategic. It doesn't add value. It doesn't educate people on your brand. It doesn't build loyalists. It's just a blip.

And that's why, since it's not quite spam and not bacn either, I'm calling the branded hashtag promotions/hashtag meme's, Twofu. Not quite spam or bacn. Just a flavored imitator I'll forget tomorrow.

I can't remain quiet any longer.

I rarely blog anymore for a number of reasons:

• The advertising/pr/social media/marketing blogosphere has become bloated. Everyone's got a blog and they're all talkin' about social media. They talk about marketing - whether or not they have experience in any or all of the marketing disciplines.
  
• I don't want to feed the ecochamber. It's rare anyone in this space says something new and maybe that's because many of these bloggers are talking rather than doing. The words conversation and dialogue and evangelists are so echoed anymore, I swear you could find a conch shell, put it up to your ear and hear them instead of the ocean.
• I'm not here to teach anyone. You want to learn, get in here and work with me. I'm doing. That's what I've been doing for the last 14 years. From PR agencies, to the corp/nonprofit world, to the ad agency world, I've been working on people's business. A lot of people's business. A lot of times I work on Fortune 500 business. Sometimes, I work on small business. I just work. And I like to work. That's how I learn.
  
• The blog format is a bit tedious for me now. And I'm not saying that in an "I invented the Internet" kind-of-way. I'm just explaining how I feel about it. I started blogging in 1998, vis a vis an online journal I wrote. I blogged almost everyday, sometimes several times a day, for 8 years. I got tired of it.
  
• I prefer twitter. It's mobile, it's quick, it's easy. It doesn't require me to sit down and pound out something coherent.
  

However, I'm putting those thoughts aside. I'm going to start blogging again.

Now. I'm not back blogging to bitch about adv, pr or promotion. I'm not getting on the hate bandwagon, god knows there's enough of that.

I probably won't tell you much more about the things I'm working on, because I'm bound by confidentiality and again, I'm not here to teach anyone. The secret to how I do my job defines my financial value in the marketplace. So while I'll share information and thoughts here, keep in mind, many of my tricks will remain that...my tricks;)

I will try to speak to the other elements of social media that I don't see the "experts" talking about: advertising in social media, promotion in social media, special events and their efficacy. Marketing isn't *just* PR, although PR is important. The best marketing, is integrated marketing and if you don't look at and speak to the big picture, then success will be a difficult challenge for you. Like the Red Tettemer Trailblazer states, "Success is the Residue of Design."

More to come.