Last week was a rough week for marketing and PR professionals in the blogosphere. Chris Anderson (Wire/Longtail), David Meerman and Marshall Kirkpatrick (Read/Write, TechCrunch) wrote critical posts to PR folks who are trying to reach out to bloggers. Chris even published a list of emails from PR people he’s blacklisting.

But what are the responsibilities and expectations of PR/Marketing Agencies and Blogggers?

While I am a marketer by profession, I am also a blogger. I’ve received plenty of horrible blog pitches, like the dreaded “Dear Website Owner” emails or even those completely misunderstanding who I am or who I work for. I’m right there beside with Chris, Marshall and others on this.

We bloggers embrace the long tail influence we have over traditional media, but we don’t like being on what looks like a “Press Release spam list”. Marketers and PR folks need to adapt to this. And as Bloggers, we’ll always be caught with horrible “Dear Site Owner” emails every once in while. It just shouldn’t be every blog pitch email.

As someone involved in e-Storm’s Social Media efforts, we spend time reading and targeting each blog we recommend our clients to contact. We build a list of bloggers along with a description of each, plus an “Approach & Messaging Recommendations” document for each blogger. Generally, these documents have to be approved both internally by e-Storm and externally by the client before any blogger outreach happens.

Bloggers: Help Educate us PR/Marketing on How to Do It Right

And to my fellow bloggers out there, instead of just being angry, write back and tell them what you’d prefer. Educate us marketers because in this ever changing Blogosphere, we’re all learning what it means to be a blogger, what is a blogger mindset and how can we reach out to bloggers relevantly.

Marketers and PR folks need to learn that the blogosphere is a community, not a place to send press releases to. Let’s show them by helping them join the community in a relevant and helpful way.

To those rightly annoyed bloggers, point us PR/Marketing flacks to the right direction:

• Emergence Media Blogger Relations Outreach Guidelines
• SHIFT Communications Blogging Guidelines
• Word of Mouth Marketing Association: 10 Principles for Ethical Contact by Marketers

I’ve also set-up a Wiki on Blogger Outreach, which is available here. Feel free to contribute as you wish and save bloggers from poorly targeted PR pitches and help PR/marketers from embarrassing themselves.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Following-up on the Social Media Club round-table discussions on Blog Disclosure (EM’s roundup here), Chris Heuer has encouraged me to participate in a the “Disclosure Cafe” discussions at the Web 2point2 Unconference in San Francisco (November 9-10).

It will be held in a “World Cafe Style Format” (See PDF here), which is a very effective way of creating small, but dynamic brainstorming groups that share gained knowledge among each other. Its like a group, offline-form of P2P networking.

Cafe Questions: Agency Responsibility

As part of the “Disclosure Cafe” discussions, I’d like to focus on the issue of the responsibilities of the agencies (marketers like me and our PR cousins) and by extension WOMMA (which is the professional face of this segment of the industry).

I believe WOMMA has pushed this issue off to a good start with the “Ethics 20 Questions” draft guidelines on blogging, but there’s a lot of room for discussion. Here are the questions I’d like to propose for the Disclosure Cafe:

• Educational Outreach: As a member of the blogosphere, what should an agency/company/WOMMA do to help educate the general audience to assess blogs intelligently?
• WOMMA Training: What training or certification should help WOMMA provide to agency and company employees? Regular re-training like CPR?
• Blog Disclosure Policy: If every corporate website has a “Privacy Policy”, why doesn’t every agency or corporate run blog have a “Blog Disclosure Policy”?

I’m looking forward to getting overall feedback from Chris on this and hopefully I’ll get his overall approval and adjust were needed.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Last night I attended the Social Media Club “Talking About Disclosure” roundtable discussion, which took place in the CNET headquarters in San Francisco.

The discussion was on the issue of disclosure on social media content (blogs, podcasts etc), especially in the light of issues surrounding Edelman and their Wal-Marting Across America campaign and other recent controversy surrounding Pay-Per-Post blogging.

In attendance was yours truly along with Tantek Celik (Technorati), Mike Arrington (Tech Crunch), Brian Solis (FutureWorks PR), Shannon Clark (JigZaw), CNET folks and a few others.

Overall, the discussions were very interesting and even a little lively at some points, but its great to have such engaged group of people discussing and addressing this topic. Kristi Wells have Fickr Photos here.

Quickie Notes from the Roundtable

General Discussions Old Dot-Com: 3Cs of Content, Commerce and Community New Dot-Com: 3Ts of Truthfulness, Transparency and Trust Learning from the Edelman and Walmart scenario: Do immediate acknowledge that there are issues and investigations are underway Try not to keep silent for days while waiting for internal investigations to be completed Everyone agreed that publishers (bloggers, podcasters) have a duty to disclose, but to what extent? Disclosure on reviewing a product/service/company that your friend works for? How good of a friend? Retroactive disclosure: if you invest in a company you posted about 6 months ago? If you heard about the company over a free drink? The Audience (Blog readers) and active reading responsibility. Just like any media (newspapers to radios), to what extent should readers fall under Caveat Emptor when reading blogs? How can blog readers (especially those new to blogs) discern how and if a blog is credible? Next Steps for the Social Media Club SMC to push for Greater Media Literacy for both bloggers and the audience: Open guideline system (wiki as Tantek suggested) to both educate: The Bloggers on “blogger ethics” and proper disclosure The Audience on understanding how to better discern Building a Common Blogging Ethics Document Draft a Blogging Ethics Guidelines setting down strong, but common values and guidelines Discuss what happens when a blogger who claims to uphold the guidelines violate it (Similar to Edelman violation of WOMMA guidelines)

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.