Last week I told you how not to pitch a blogger in your PR outreach, so it raises the pregnant question of what exactly should you do?

For about five years now we've seen an extraordinary number of clients and potential clients who have frankly been afraid of blogger outreach because of the poor practices of companies and brands that have stumbled in their attempts to engage the blogosphere. So today I wanted to walk through our process to show you how it’s done. Just how do you pitch a blogger?

First off, we see if we already know anyone. We know folks at the top tech blogs, so we give them first bite. By the time that shakes out, we’ll have a couple-few-thousand blogs to QA and sort out. While we’re seeing how the A-listers pan out, we develop a message model that is inclusive enough to not alienate any single blogger but specific enough that each blogger is completely clear as to who our client is and what we want from them (a post, a tweet, an embedded video, a review, etc).

Continue reading »

I must have impulse control issues. I posted the following on my corporate blog yesterday — Here’s how not to (spam) comment (spam) — because a comment spam broke by heart. The person who did it was 80% there, he just #failed where he could have maybe won me over (because my blogs don't get a lot of comments and I am lonely and generally treat commenters — even shameless self-promoters — kindly since they're all I have!)

So, while I have no problem spam-canning the really awful, clueless, ESL foreign and automated comments, this looked like it was at least copied and pasted by a human, “Raymond McLemore,” but then it just came off as too generic, too self-serving, and not nearly neighborly or generous enough.

He has nothing to add and the post wasn't generous. It was dropped in with the single-minded aim at dropping a keyword link into my post via the comments, "Marketing Weekly," using that as his Author name.

Continue reading »

Last week, 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.

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 and my partner's name is Mark Harrison and there is no one named "Abraham Harrison" in my company. 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.

Continue reading »

Tips on social CRM for brands from an industry expert

Guest post by Lauren Carlson
CRM Analyst, Software Advice

The greatest benefit of attending those big, bulky industry conferences is not the swag – although that free Apple TV was pretty sweet. Rather, it's the opportunity to speak with some of the greatest thought leaders and innovators that attend. One of the more recognized leaders in the CRM industry is Marshall Lager of Third Idea Consulting. I was able to snag Marshall for a bit at last month's CRM Evolution in New York to discuss the most buzzed-about topic at the conference: social CRM.

Interview highlights:

• Social CRM is derived from tools that are entirely consumer-related: Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. People use these mediums to communicate and share experiences. Businesses are finally catching onto that, figuring out not only how to foster relationships in the social arena, but monetize them as well.
• The first step in getting started with social CRM is simply signing up for an account. Once that's done, it's time to listen and find out what your customers are saying. Once you have that, you can start building a strategy around how you will use the networks. The goal is to personalize your company, making it "someone" that individuals can relate to.
• Small businesses in particular can benefit from social media. SMBs already have that face-to-face direct rapport with their customers. Social media is a free way to extend that relationship, and because their customer base is still small, social media allows the small business owner to touch every single customer.
• Questions to ask when building a social CRM strategy: How are we going to do social media? What do we want to focus on? What's our personality? What are our rules of engagement?
• The golden rule of engagement: Always tell the truth. It sounds simple, but it's really important. If the customers trust you, they will come back. If they don't, you've lost them completely.

Blonde 2.0 on TechCrunch Disrupt from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

It has become something of a tradition for me to interview my Socialmedia.biz partner Ayelet Noff, aka Israel's Blonde 2.0, at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, which ended Wednesday.

This year Ayelet headed up the communications and social media for four Israeli startups, which were fairly representative of the fledgling Web 2.0-style companies that showcased at the seminal tech conference in San Francisco:

• Tonara: This was one of my favorite discoveries: an iPad application for musicians that provides interactive sheet music. Tonara will show you where you are on your sheet music, and it will flip the pages for you. As Ayelet notes, until now, sheet music hasn't changed much since Mozart's time. As the pièce de résistance, on Monday they brought in a string quartet with ex-Facebook honcho Randi Zuckerberg as lead singer. (Who knew that Randi can warble like an angel?)

• uTest: Looking for someone to kick the tires of your new website or app? uTest uses crowdsoruced testing for usability testing, loading testing -- "anything, anywhere, in any circumstance" testing, says Ayelet.

• Farmigo: One of the more ambitious efforts, Farmigo is an effort to create a global network that lets consumers find and purchase locally grown, fresh produce.

• TapTank: Use your social networks to achieve goals and build relationships in real life. Sign up for early access to the online service.

Watch, download or embed the 6-minute video on Vimeo

A production note: At 3 am, I gave up on trying to correct the white balance, which went kablooey about 3 minutes into the 6-minute interview. The Color Correction filter in Final Cut Express just flat-out refused to work after a dozen attempts. So I opted for timeliness rather than high production values.

Ihad a blast at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco this week. Met startup CEOs, some new and old friends, marketers, grassroots journalists — and not a few tech pioneers.

Here's my Flickr photo set of 80-plus photos — including actor/celebrity Ashton Kutcher (who'll be replacing Charlie Sheen on CBS's "Two and a Half Men," but has an incisive instinct for investing in innovative tech startups), Mike Arrington, Sarah Austin of Pop17, Gina Bianchini, Kevin Rose and my longtime partner, Ayelet Noff, aka Blonde 2.0.

See coverage of TechCrunch Disrupt and my accompanying interview with Ayelet Noff about four startups that made waves here.

Tips for how your agency or firm should do outreach the right way

Unlike a few years ago, today everyone at least pays lip service to reaching out to bloggers, the same way that PR people have always reached out to mainstream media. That’s what my company, Abraham-Harrison, does and lots of other companies try to do it, too. But I am still surprised that many companies don’t do blogger outreach, even today. My conclusion is that what is holding them back is fear. Simply put, blogger outreach is scary.

And it’s not a completely irrational fear. It is true that bloggers are unpredictable and we all know, thanks to posts by the Consumerist and the Bad Pitch Blog, that one false move and you’re public mincemeat. Publicly shamed, drawn, quartered and, finally, drummed out of the corps.

We all know this, except that it isn’t so. The biggest faux pas that most agencies commit when they test the waters with blogger outreach has less to do with the natural meanness of the bloggers  and more to do with the behavior of the agencies. In many cases, the bad experiences that many agencies blame on the rudeness of the blogger is square on the agency’s shoulders.

It is a case of the abuser blaming the victim, the blogger.

In truth, the blogger often has no context for a PR outreach, has never been part of the publicity machine, and often doesn’t know what’s expected, what proper and improper behavior is, and most often is just behaving naturally and not part of some insidious cabal aimed at defaming you or your brand or your personal reputation.

Continue reading »

Turn on a New York based filter when you use Mobli.

We started working with Mobli about a month ago. When I met CEO Moshiko Hogeg for the first time, I was captivated by his passion and vision for Mobli and the concept behind this company, which is not just a mobile application but a whole visual social media platform that enables people to share moments of their lives from around the world.

Think of Mobli as a visual engine that lets you do a 360 around the world and see who’s doing what, where and when. People could be sitting in a café in Paris, watching a show in London, eating at a restaurant in New York, and Mobli brings all these visuals together to enable us all to see what a beautiful world we live in.

I used to be an Instagram freak, sharing photos on my iPhone. However, the minute I started using Mobli, I realized it let me do a whole lot more than I could on Instagram.

One feature that I particularly like in Mobli is the location based filters. When I am in New York, I have access to the New York based filter, when I am Silicon Valley I have access to the Silicon Valley based filter. This week as I attend TechCrunch Disrupt, I will have a special TechCrunch Disrupt filter, as you can see in the picture below. These filters can be time based or permanent. As a marketeer, I cannot help but think of all the branding opportunities that this opens for brands. Think about it – filters for resorts, filters for concerts, filters for sports events … the possibilities are endless.

Continue reading »

Here's an Animoto video consisting of photos I took on the opening day of Social Capital Markets 2011 at Fort Mason in San Francisco — a breathtakingly beautiful day in the Bay Area that brought together 1,500 attendees at this year's SOCAP conference to discuss social entrepreneurship, collective action, crowd-funded investmentments and lots more. Great to see all the familiar faces and good-hearted people working to promote social good and make the world a better place.

Here's a Flickr photo set of SOCAP.

Related

• Tips on attracting funding for a social enterprise (SOCAP 2008)

• How to pitch your social enterprise (SOCAP 2008)