Dave Fleet has an excellent post this morning on 8 Questions to Ask Your “Social Media Expert”, building on Ike Pigott’s on finding useful Twitter “experts”. Dave is offering a guide to “weeding-out the pundits from the practitioners,” so I figured I’d answer his questions for Amplify’s Internet practice.
1. Can you give me an example of social media work you’ve completed for a client recently?
Sure. We’re working with a religious organization to promote education about and understanding of other faiths, using Facebook and YouTube among other avenues.
2. How do you go about pitching bloggers?
We research an issue area, finding influential and interesting bloggers who would care about our topic (usually they’ve written about something related in the past). Often we already have relationships with some bloggers who fit those criteria. Whether we know a blogger or not, we write offering information and say we hope they’ll consider blogging about it.
3. How do you monitor what people are saying about you?
Google Alerts, Twitter search, comments from clients and friends at other organizations (offline conversations count too). We’re investigating several social media monitoring services but haven’t made choices yet.
4. Where can I find you online?
Our website, our other blog Disruptive Women in Health Care, Facebook. Our staff is on LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and lots of other places as well.
5. Can you write my blog for me?
We do blog training and work with our clients so they can easily keep something fresh on their blogs – create publication calendars, set up Delicious so they have a recent news feed, etc. Writing a blog is a valuable process as well as a way to promote your work (listen to Tom Peters and Seth Godin), and having someone else write it makes no sense.
6. How do you measure results?
Usually number of actions taken – advocacy lends itself better to hard numbers than marketing generally does.
7. How would you define social media?
People interacting online. I’m waiting for a better way to say “and I include mobile services in that too,” but no one’s invented a good word yet.
8. Can you just pretend to be me online?
No. See (5) for some of the reasons. We actually don’t have people ask us this, so either we’re just lucky or most advocates want to convey messages themselves.
All right, now go look at Dave’s post and see if I got the right answers!
Rohit Bhargava’s recap of his "10 Easy Ways to Piss Off a Blogger" session is one of the interesting posts out following South by Southwest Interactive. It’s all excellent advice; I particularly want to point out one of the ten irritants:
7. Ask for favors as part of your first outreach to them without building a relationship or earning the right to ask them to help you.
Sometimes this might be unavoidable: you have information for a blogger that they’ll be interested in (avoid 4. Send irrelevant information that exhibits no understanding of what they care about or fail to personalize it) but haven’t reached out to them in the past. Maybe this is a new area for you; maybe you’ve just realized as you’re ending a campaign that this person cares about your issues; maybe you read the blog in your spare time and they’ve now mentioned one of your projects. Then you’re stuck, and a cold pitch is the best you can do.
But since it’s far more effective to have an existing relationship, what are some of the ways to build that connection?
I’m working on a blog now where we’re about to set up a blogroll and email the bloggers we’ve linked to. Some of them we’ve talked to before; some are writing on complementary topics. Hopefully we can begin to direct some traffic their way. Over time, we expect our list to grow, and our investment of time in finding appropriate links will let us offer more to our audience. Even if we never need to explicitly call on other bloggers’ goodwill, helping them is worth the effort – and if we do, a request will grate less on the ear of a friend.
This week, we interview Dr. Susan L. Reid, a business coach and consultant for entrepreneurial women. She is the author of Discovering Your Inner Samurai: The Entrepreneurial Woman’s Journey to Business Success, and this interview will be part of her virtual book tour. Her website is Alkamae.com, and her blog is Alkamae.
How did you get involved in blogging?
I first became a blogger 18 months ago when I signed-up for Andy Wibbel’s "Write Your Book in 45 Days" teleseminar. It was one of those marathon writing seminars where a bunch of crazed writers come to the surface for weekly support and inspiration calls, and then go back under again to write in isolation. Along with these weekly lifeline calls, the other opportunity Andy created for our class was our very own writer’s blog space.
Here, after too many days spent staring glassy-eyed at my computer screen and from an impoverished place of writer’s isolation, I wrote my very first post. Driven from the abject need to connect, and with absolutely no prior instruction and a great amount of timidity, I wrote "Alkamae" in the name box and in the body of the post, something subtle like, "Help! Anyone out there?" And with that . . . my blogging career was born!
It looks like February is the one year anniversary of your blog. Has your blog met your expectations?
Because I had shunned blogging in the past, and never considered how a blog or blogging could be beneficial to my book, my business, or me; I don’t think I had any expectations about my blog.
In fact, I probably wouldn’t have set-up a business blog and begun blogging in earnest if it hadn’t been for Yvonne DiVita at WME Books. When I signed on with them to publish my book, one of the conditions of their contract was that I must have a blog, and that they would help me set one up and train me how to blog, correctly.
Yvonne is a very savvy blogger. Because of her, I got off to a very strong blogging start. Couple that with some reading I’ve done on my own and the example of other great bloggers, I now have expectations for my blog that are being met.
If you had to start your blog over again, what would you do differently?
First off, I’d design another banner. The banner I have now reflected where I was a year ago. It resonated with me then. If I had to do it over again, I’d design a banner that reflected my most forward thinking vision.
Secondly, I’d be more aggressive in how I reached out to others. I would be more deliberate in finding ways to build community by helping to promote and support others. I’d do more interviews, host more guest bloggers, do more promotional give-aways, and be more entertaining and less serious in my approach (much of which I have already begun doing).
Lastly, I would have spent more time on other people’s sites, seeing what worked and didn’t work, before I started my own blog.
You have just published a book. What role did your blog play in its development? Do the two work together?
Blogging is one of the most strategic things I have done for my book and ranks up there with one of the most powerfully expressive things I’ve ever done for myself. As I was writing my book, I’d post excerpts from my book on my blog to see what kind of response I would get. Often, reader’s comments were just the thing I needed to clarify, modify, and in some cases, jettison that part of my book.
I used my blog categories to collect my thoughts about the three main sections of my book: dealing with change, Accidental Pren-her journey, and discovering your Inner Samurai. These categories were then transferred, in whole or in part, to sub-headings in chapters. My blog posts and my writing muse worked as a team to produce my book.
Currently, the Virtual Book Tour that I am on is a further expansion of my year of blogging. Because I had been writing about my book in my blog for nearly a year before it was published, my book and its content were already "out there" in the blogosphere, being noticed and commented upon by others and picked up by search engines. Because of my blogging, my book had begun its own publicity long before it came out in print.
How do you see blogging evolving? What’s the next big thing?
Midlife entrepreneur blogging. With more than four million men and women turning 50 each year in the U.S., and nearly half the country’s self-employed workers (7.4 million) 50 years and older, I expect to see a rise in midlife entrepreneur blogging.
Entrepreneurship among mid-lifers is growing as the Baby Boomer generation redefines retirement. Instead of following the conventional traditions of retiring at 65, mid-lifers are eschewing those conventions in favor of either starting up or staying involved with their business, continuing to contribute to society, and following their passion. Keep a sharp weather eye out for midlife entrepreneur bloggers — they will delight and surprise us all.
I will be presenting at the “Social Media for Internal Communications Conference: How To Engage Employees, Drive Change & Improve Your Bottom Line Using Blogging, Podcasting, & The Latest Web 2.0 Technologies,” February 4-7, 2008 in San Francisco, CA. Overall, the conference will focus on how to use social media and leverage the latest interactive tools and techniques to advance organizational goals.
I will be conducting a pre-conference workshop, “Social Media 101: What You Need To Know To Start Your Own Organization’s Blogging/Podcasting Strategy" and presenting “How To Connect With Your Audience Using Social Networking” along with J.C. Bouvier of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
Hope to see you there!
For more information or to register, go to the conference website.
- Kevin
Happy New Year!
As we look forward, I want to remember what happened in blogger relations in 2007:
The big discussion of the year was started by Chris Andersen, editor of Wired, saying Sorry PR people: you’re blocked. He published the email addresses of hundreds of public relations people from whom he’d received pitches he didn’t care about – and that was just October’s collection of people he’d banned in Outlook. The post prompted responses by Shel Holtz, David Berkowitz, Joshua Porter, C.C. Chapman, and Brian Solis, among many others.
The previous sensation was Ogilvy’s blogger outreach code of ethics. Take the time to read the comments (at least the two that caught John Bell’s eye if you’re in a hurry).
Everyone seems to have had some advice to give. Kevin Dugan told PR people how well they ought to know a blog before pitching its author. Jonathan Trenn suggested many areas to consider in planning a blogger relations program. Chip Griffin suggested throwing out the social media rulebook, and started a mini-firestorm of his own.
Other people wrote books as well as blog posts. Geoff Livingston’s book Now Is Gone (with coauthor Brian Solis) is getting excellent reviews (go see what Valeria Maltoni and Debbie Weil had to say). Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo’s ebook "Getting to First Base" had its own impressive marketing campaign. And because the posts it collects were written in 2007, I can include Brian Solis’s ebook The Art and Science of Blogger Relations.
It’s been an interesting year – my thanks to all those who spoke/blogged/Twittered and helped me learn more.
So, since this is heavily biased to the contents of my feed reader, what’s the most interesting 2007 discussion of blogger relations that I missed and should catch up on?
This week, we continue our interview series with Henry Abbott, lead blogger of ESPN’s popular TrueHoop blog. Henry is trained as a journalist whose work has appeared in HOOP, Inside Stuff, Men’s Journal, the official NBA Finals program, and on CBS’s national radio network.
How did you get started in blogging?
Henry Abbott: Three years ago this month, I was convinced that blogging was extremely geeky. It was something dorks used to talk to other dorks about their favorite meals and sick pets and stuff.
But then I was at a Christmas party and my friend Alex called me over to the corner of the room, fired up the host’s laptop, and essentially made me read his blog. Then he made me look at the back end, and see how easy it was to do. And he kind of made me start a blog.
I did, and quickly started getting all kinds of comments, and inbound links, and fiery debate. It quickly became clear how lame other kinds of writing were in comparison.
What are the differences between having an independent blog and one owned by a corporation? How did your routine change? Are you more or less concerned with others’ reactions to what you post?
Henry: My daily routine is essentially identical. I sit at the same desk, read the same RSS feeds, and (if you believe the people who read before and after and have emailed me) write the same posts that I would have written. Now I go to meetings sometimes, and I have some resources (travel budget, photos, some video stuff) that were not there before. I have agreed to follow ground rules about porn and hate speech and the like. And I don’t swear anymore.
I can’t say I’m all that worried about people’s reactions. Before ESPN and after, there were always people ready to say I was full of it. That’s just part of being a blogger.
Have you gotten any feedback from players or coaches about your posts? What has been the most interesting comment you’ve received?
Henry: Oh man, not to sound like some old-timer or something, but I have published many thousands of posts, and I have heard a lot of fascinating things. And my email address is right there for the world to see, so I hear from all kinds of people. Frankly, it’s an amazing part of my job.
I’ll give you an example from this morning: One of the most interesting books about basketball ever written is Rick Telander’s "Heaven is a Playground." It’s about the streets of Brooklyn, in 1974, and the central figure is Rodney Parker, who is a bit mysterious. He’s a mentor to young players, a ticket scalper, and someone who delivers a lot of top talent to college campuses.
I wrote about that book in 2006. Sadly, Parker died yesterday. And because she had read some thoughts about her father on my blog, and knew that I cared about him, his daughter contacted me this morning, out of the blue, to talk about his final days. An amazing conversation about an amazing man.
How has the emergence of blogs from NBA players and NBA-specific blogs from major newspapers affected how you blog? Do you position yourself and the blog differently?
Henry: Fair question. My niche is very journalistic. I’m essentially trying to do what I learned in journalism school, but better, thanks to the medium which is super flexible, and lets me interview people, reference the work of others, publish quickly, and talk in a natural human voice. Few of the new blogs are like that: many are more narrowly focused — on one team, for instance — or not so journalistic.
I haven’t really changed my game at all, and frankly even if there were another blog just like it I’m not sure I would. All I’m doing every day is trying my best to tell the smartest and most interesting NBA stories I can get my hands on.
How do you see sports blogging evolving? What’s the next big thing?
Henry: Oh, I think whatever blogging looks like in 2012 will be easier and faster to create and consume, and will probably be a lot more multimedia. Bring on your video files!
I also think there we’ll see a lot more blog software in the hands of professional journalists. (I’m part of an interesting project, beatblogging.org, which is investigating ways that blogging can bring more expertise to beat writing.)
This week, we continue our interview series with Colin Delany, author of the popular epolitics.com blog, which received the Golden Dot Award as “Best Blog – National Politics” at the 2007 Politics Online Conference. Colin has published the e-book, “Online Politics 101: The Tools and Tactics of Online Advocacy,” and frequently speaks at conferences. Colin is currently employed full-time as online communications manager at the National Environmental Trust, but will be starting his own consulting practice on January 1, 2008.
What’s the story behind epolitics.com. How did it get started?
Colin Delany: Epolitics.com is a prolonged and shameless act of self-promotion — and thanks for helping out today.
Well, okay, there’s a little more to it than that. I love to write but hadn’t been doing much of it, so a couple of years ago I started thinking about things I could write about for an online audience. At the Politics Online Conference in March, 2006, I realized that I’d learned enough about online political advocacy in 10 years working in the field that I might just could contribute a little something to the conversation.
The domain name was key: it was left over from an early online political venture that had failed miserably back in the late ’90s, but it was a perfect hook for the site. A few months later, after I’d had a chance to put the Online Politics 101 handbook together so that the site would have some kind of semi-permanent content, I launched. Since then, it’s been a fun adventure, and it’s certainly opened a lot of doors. If you like to write and are passionate about a subject, write about it in public — if you have something to say, people will find you (though a little self-promotion usually helps out on that front). Note: I’m always looking for guest authors….
What’s your take on newspaper blogs? Are they really blogs?
Colin: Sure, they’re just like blogs, only better written than most.
Seriously, I don’t think it helps to get hung up on definitions — at some level, a blog is anything published with blogging software. Blogs range from personal diaries to online columns to massive political community sites, and it’s almost meaningless to lump them all together. I don’t think of myself as a blogger, for instance — I’m a writer, and the particular medium I use is irrelevant. We don’t call people who write for magazines "magaziners," so why should should we lump everyone who uses a blogging platform together into a category?
You have recently changed the commenting policy on your site. Can you talk a little bit about that? Any advice for other bloggers about how to deal with comments?
Colin: The problem with comments isn’t the human commentors, since in most cases they’re completely fine. The problem is the &%$#ing spammers — a site like mine can get over 1,000 fake comments per day, usually linking to some page that’s loaded with Google ads. Even with good anti-spam software, a few get through every day, so I’d relied on human filtering to catch the little bastards.
What I did recently was make a simple tweak to the WordPress installation I’m using that allows comments to go straight to the site without moderation once the writer has had at least one comment approved (with identity tied to the poster’s email address). This way, regular readers can get their words on the page right away, which I hope will help actual conversations get started. It’s hard to have a good back-and-forth if you have to wait for the moderator to wake up from a nap before your comment appears.
You will soon become a full-time, independent consultant. What will you be doing? Will you continue to blog? You have to sleep at least a little, right?
Colin: I hope I’ll be taking lots of naps (see above). Yep, I’ll keep writing e.politics, and the plan is that being free of the day-to-day hassles of having a job (showing up, bathing, maintaining a semblance of public dignity, etc.), I’ll be able to write more often. With the political primary season in full swing by January, there’ll be a lot to keep up with.
For a living, I plan to help advocacy campaigns work their way through the essential questions of online communications — with all the tools out there right now, a lot of people are too bewildered to even get started. Whom do we reach? How do we reach them? What do we get them to do? And, how do we do it while using our resources as efficiently as possible? If I can help campaigns get to the right solutions quickly, I might just be able to help them win.
What do you think will be the killer app in online political organizing this election cycle?
Colin: Email, email, email and email. I know people think I’m crazy when I keep talking about electronic mail with such reverence, but just about every campaign out there of any size will have an email list, and most will find that it’s a far more effective tool for organizing and fundraising than social networking sites.
Of course, video will also be key, particularly since campaigns can use it at all levels. Same with online fundraising, particularly now that sites like ActBlue and its Republican counterparts exist. But really, the Killer App isn’t any one application — it’s the effective combination of the right bundle of applications. And if you’re looking for help figuring that out, I know this guy you can call…
Final question: If you were to get an epolitics tattoo, what would it look like?
Colin: A giant question mark, both to represent eternal, stubborn skepticism and as an homage to my early homeboys, The Three Investigators.
Our interview series continues this week with Yvonne DiVita of Lip-Sticking, a popular blog that focuses on marketing to women online. Yvonne also owns a publishing company, Windsor Media Enterprises, and is the author of Dickless Marketing: Smart Marketing to Women Online.
What’s the story behind the Lip-sticking blog? When did it get started?
Yvonne DiVita: Kevin, I started the blog instead of a newsletter, almost four years ago. To be honest, I did not want to start a blog. I didn’t know what a blog was…and the information I had on blogs made a blog seem like a BIG project. I was just beginning a new business and did not want to be stuck without something that would be hard to keep up. Luckily, my fiance, Tom, convinced to to "give it a try" and he created the design, then showed me how to use Typepad…and the rest is history. I LOVED it! It’s been very, very good to me…connecting me to hundreds of people all over the world, and helping me grow my business.
You are the author of Dickless Marketing: Smart Marketing to Women Online. Is there a new edition in the works?
Yvonne: Yes, there is a new book in the works. It won’t be "Dickless Marketing Two" but more of a Women and Web 2.0 – who are they, what are they doing online, and why should anyone care kind of book. Look for it in late 2008 – if the force continues to be with me.
Let’s talk about blogs… What’s your definition of a good blog?
Yvonne: To me a good blog is one that is updated at least three times a week (on average – we all have those weeks where we can’t get to our blogs) and that offers fresh insight into a specific topic or niche. A good blog encourages comments and doesn’t get mad when people disagree with something written in it. A good blog connects with other bloggers, to build conversation and keep an open approach. A good blog is true to its purpose – and worth returning to again, and again.
What’s the biggest mistake someone makes when they start a blog?
Yvonne: The biggest mistake… hmmm… I believe that business blogs should be business-focused, which means NOT talking overmuch about family and personal things. Yes, stories are great, but don’t share anything you wouldn’t want your Mother to read, or that you wouldn’t want someone you’re talking about to read. Even on personal blogs, you should be very, very careful what you write. Too many people forget that the Internet is not only global, it’s forever. Be friendly, but save the deep, dark details for someplace else.
You obviously spend a lot of time on blogs… which are your favorites?
Yvonne: Ah, my favorites. Well, I like too many blogs to pick favorites. Naturally, I read Michele Miller and Holly Buchanan, and I follow Toby Bloomberg, and a number of others in marketing. One blog that I recommend, and this is a client blog but it’s really good… is written by a thought-leader in communication. His name is Lee Thayer and he does a good job of pulling people’s chains. His focus is leadership and how to be a high performance company. Well worth a read at least once a week. He gets me thinking hard about things I never used to think about – like how to be better at what I do, and how to turn my company into a high performance company.
What’s your favorite social networking application?
Yvonne: Right now I’m leaning toward Facebook. I just started Twittering and still don’t get it… I’ve never been much of a chatterer… so, Facebook keeps me connected on a more personal level, and let’s me know who’s doing what at any given time. I use LinkedIn occasionally, and Plaxo…but, those are just databases to me. Facebook seems like a warm, happy, friendly platform to communicate with friends and family.
Finally, any new insight about marketing to women that you would want to pass along?
Yvonne: To share new insight about marketing to women online I’d say that the very, very best thing you can do to reach women online (and this works offline, too) is to hang out where the girls hang out. Literally. Read women’s blogs. Visit the fashion, entertainment blogs. Discover the many likes and dislikes of the women who buy your products and services, and find out where they congregate. It’s easier and more fulfilling than ever before for women to commune and talk about things, maybe about you. After you’ve discovered where we hang out to laugh and talk and share our stories, step back and diversify. Go to places you don’t think we’ll be – look at women’s groups and blogs that aren’t in your core group of interest. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at what you’ll find.
We continue our interview series this week with Kevin Hendricks from the Center for Church Communication, publishers of Church Marketing Sucks, a popular blog that focuses on helping churches improve they way they communicate with their members and the public. Kevin is the "Chief Blogger" and Labs Director. Enjoy.
Tell us a little about the Center for Church Communication and Church Marketing Sucks.
Kevin Hendricks: The Center for Church Communication (CFCC) is all about helping churches matter. It’s a nonprofit organization that works to help churches understand and improve their marketing and communications. We have a number of different ventures, including a peer review group, an events calendar, a job board and Church Marketing Sucks, our flagship blog. Church Marketing Sucks is what we’re most well known for and has the largest following. The blog itself tackles all kinds of marketing and communication issues for churches. We’ve been around since 2004 and in that time I think churches have really started to wake up to communication issues and started to realize that they need to do better marketing. I won’t claim that it’s all because of us, but we’re definitely in a time right now when a lot of things are coming together and churches are becoming more savvy.
When did you decide to incorporate a blog into your work?
Kevin: From the very beginning. We actually conceived of Church Marketing Sucks as a book originally, and our process to pull the content together was going to be a blog. As we got into it we put the book idea on the back burner and concentrated on the blog and we really haven’t looked back. Blogging was just an ideal way to approach this subject and it had so many advantages over a print book. It gave us the opportunity to figure out what we thought with the help of our readers and I’d say we’re much better informed and can do our jobs better now. We haven’t completely given up on the book idea though.
It seems that more and more bloggers are reworking their blogs into books. What are you thinking about doing?
Kevin: We are still interested in creating a church marketing book–the hard part has been actually creating a book. You can’t just take a bunch of blog entries and call them a book (well, you can, but that’s kind of lame). We’ve had a few ideas lately and we keep getting closer and closer to doing it. The other hard part is finding time to do it. It’s hard enough to find time to blog regularly, writing a book is that much harder. One of these days I think we’ll get to it. A book is just a different animal from a blog, but it can also spread your ideas farther–how many pastors will read a book but they won’t read a blog? So we do see the value in it, it’s just a matter of making it happen.
What type of comments do you get?
Kevin: We get loads of comments. In the past few months it seems like the average number of comments per entry has sky-rocketed and it’s not uncommon to see a dozen or more comments on each entry. Mostly commenters are engaging us on the issues we’re bringing up and are responding to what we’re saying–adding their own opinion, pointing out where we might be wrong or adding additional insights. There’s really a lot of wisdom in the comments.
Do you have a specific commenting policy?
Kevin: We don’t have a specific written commenting policy. We have some general guidelines for what we consider appropriate and we’ve never really had any major issues.
Have you ever had to delete a comment?
Kevin: We’ve probably deleted a comment or two, but I can’t remember a specific instance. For the most part the comments are an open place to respond and we let people say what they want, whether we agree or not. If we do delete something it’s because it’s either spam or inappropriate.
You have a team of bloggers. Did you start out that way? How did you recruit them?
Kevin: We started out with just Brad Abare and I blogging. We’ve added guest bloggers as we went, recruiting people to submit stores on a one-time basis and we’ve invited a few people to blog more regularly. Currently our intern Joshua Cody is doing the lion’s share of the blogging on the site and doing a great job.
What other social media tools are you using now?
Kevin: We try to explore all sorts of stuff. I think the most successful thing we’ve done outside blogging is our Church Marketing Lab group on Flickr. It’s basically a peer review group where people can submit stuff they’re working or have finished and get feedback on it. We have over 1,300 members and almost 3,000 pieces submitted, so it’s been a great little group. There’s also a ton of discussion going on and a lot of community building. We have explored other things like MySpace and Facebook, but none of them have been as successful.
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