Getting Ink

Then We Came to the End

Hello.

I've been blogging here at Getting Ink for almost six years or so now. I fancy a bit of a change.

Mostly, I find I'm writing less and less about old-school journalism and more and more about new media, social media, blogging and online journalism. If you're interested in those things, then feel free to mosy over to my brand, spanking new blog Blogger.Ed

Thanks!

Sally

Dear PRs - some tips for Blogger Outreach

It’s been a year since I started a personal blog over at Who’s the Mummy. It’s been an interesting experience with some good and bad moments, but one of the most interesting things is that I’m now a target of ‘blogger outreach’ campaigns from PR agencies wanting to engage with Mummy bloggers.

I think this is clearly a new area for lots of PR agencies, and I know from the workshops I run on blogger outreach that there's still relatively few examples of best practice, so I thought it might be useful to put together some tips and examples, based on my own experiences and the pitches I receive on a daily basis.

GOOD BLOGGER OUTREACH CAMPAIGNS FOCUS ON CONTENT NOT INFORMATION.

Bloggers will rarely just write up a press release. So the best blogger outreach campaigns give bloggers the opportunity to go somewhere, try something out, or meet someone.

Recent examples of this include the FSA campaign, which gave half a dozen parent bloggers iPhones pre-loaded with an app designed to help families reduce their salt intake, and let them try it out for a few weeks. Then there was the recent John Lewis Christmas in July event, where Mummy bloggers were given Flip cameras to make short films about the event, which they could post to their blogs. Reebok has engaged with a small number of Mummy bloggers who review its trainers, while Citroen recently invited bloggers to try out a range of its new cars.

The key thing to remember here is that there’s more to do than sending out a press release or inviting someone to review your new book.  Also - for the record - I love the agency that invited me to a preview of Toy Story 3 just a little bit more than I should.

GOOD BLOGGER OUTREACH CAMPAIGNS ARE (A LITTLE BIT) EXCLUSIVE.

The soft drink company Innocent recently invited a load of bloggers down to its head office for a family fun day. It was great in lots of ways – there was face painting, the kids got to make smoothies in the Innocent kitchen, and the bloggers involved (including me) really enjoyed the social aspect of the day. But I didn’t write about the event – because by the time I thought about it, 20 other bloggers had already written exactly the same thing. And since many parenting blogs share a proportion of their audience, people get bored of reading the same post on multiple blogs.

If you’re going to invite loads of bloggers to an event or send loads of bloggers the same product to try out, you either need to give them all a slightly different experience or you need to accept not everyone will cover your event or product.

By way of contrast, I was the only blogger invited to review a hotel in Devon last summer or to the Playmobil factory in Germany this summer – meaning I was able to really make the most of writing about those experiences on the blog. This week, my daughter and I are reviewing a new VTech camcorder for kids - and part of the deal is that it won't be sent to any other bloggers for a week or so, meaning when I post about it, it will be the only post about this camera most of my readers will see.

GOOD BLOGGER OUTREACH MEANS KNOWING MOST BLOGGERS AREN’T PROFESSIONAL

I was recently invited to a day’s sailing off the Isle of Wight. It would have been amazing and I’d have loved to have gone, but the agency had no budget to pay for bloggers’ travel or accommodation costs – meaning I would have to pay heavily for attending. If I was a journalist, that’s not a problem as I can claim on expenses – but a blogger shouldn’t really be out of pocket if they attend your event.

My daughter recently did some filming with Morrisons for an online film, and the PR agency covered the cost of petrol to and from the farm where we filmed – meaning I could just look on the day as a fun experience for her.

GOOD BLOGGER OUTREACH INVOLVES RESEARCH

I have a four-year-old daughter. Reading my blog makes this fairly apparent, and just in case you miss that, the first sentence of the ‘about’ page on my blog explains it’s a blog about me and my four-year-old daughter.

So I get a little exasperated when I’m invited to come and meet the stars of Timmy Time, or find out about new nappies, or review a supermarket’s range of baby products, or meet some guru to talk about toddler tantrums. And I say this as someone who’s worked in the media for 12 years and knows that the account exec is just working their way through a long list – imagine what this looks like if you don’t deal with PRs on a daily basis. Bloggers are (quite rightly) offended when you want them to plug your client, and you can’t be bothered to get their name or the basic details right.

GOOD BLOGGER OUTREACH BUILDS RELATIONSHIPS

One of the more interesting developments of the past 12 months in parent blogging, in particular, is the number of brands that have sought to build ongoing, exclusive relationships with bloggers. Some bloggers are now well-known as ‘Disney ambassadors', while other bloggers are ‘Huggies Mums’ or ‘Pampers Mums’. So seriously do brands take these relationships that a blogger was recently uninvited from an event when the brand realised she had a pre-existing relationship with a competitor (a missed opportunity, surely?).

In this post I originally said that I personally am not really convinced of the value of ambassador relationships, because I think when a Brand X Mum talks about Brand X, the message has less credibility. 

One commenter  took this to be a criticism of bloggers who ARE ambassadors, or my questioning their credibility - I'm really not.

Let me explain better. As a blogger my value is my independence - if I recommend something, my readers trust me. But if I'm a Brand X Mum talking about Brand X, the brand message (not me, or my blog) has less credibility. It's the same with any endorsement or sponsorship deal, I guess. So Family Holidays sponsors the Tots100, and if I wrote a post about them being AMAZING, it would have less credibility than if the same post was written by someone who isn't being sponsored by them. 

What I'm really talking about is the PR's responsibility to the client and to the blogger to think this stuff through. Look at examples like Huggies, Pampers and Disney that work well, and think about how you might apply it within your own agency and blogger outreach strategies. Get it right, and I know that bloggers will be genuinely proud to be ambassadors for your brand. 

Other brands have pulled bloggers’ content into their own sites. For example, one supermarket promotes certain blogs on its website, as part of a regular ‘blogs of the week’. Other brands such as Proctor & Gamble and Figleaves are engaging bloggers as copywriters, models and spokespeople. Brands such as Butlins and Family Holidays have become involved in sponsoring blogging indexes such as the Tots100 or the MAD Awards, both of which I founded (in the interests of disclosure).

THERE'S ONLY ROOM FOR SO MUCH FREE STUFF

There's a joke to be made about bloggers and blaggers - I was chatting with a friend on the phone this week who asked what did us Mummy bloggers do before we blogged? Actually BUY stuff? 

Another (journalist) friend once told me that his children don't need presents, they need experiences - and I tend to think the same. In fact, I have a whole section on my blog just about the places we go and things we do. I pass on a LOT of stuff that I receive to charity, to the church, to relatives and teachers, and for school parties, and still our house is jammed with toys, cushions, books, bottles and assorted goods sent to us by various PR agencies.

Throwing product samples at bloggers might seem like an easy route to getting coverage, but what you'll find is that a large percentage of bloggers will take the freebie and not write about it ( I don't write about anything if I can't think of something interesting to write about it but I still get sent mountains of stuff to try). A growing number of bloggers are now writing monthly round-up posts, where they write about the 10 things they've tried in any given month - which is great, as far as it goes, but is this really the best use of a PR's time?

How about you - what are your favourite blogger outreach campaigns?

A Simple Guide to Stats for Bloggers

For various reasons, I ended up not taking part in the Stats session at CyberMummy last week, but I thought it might be worth sharing some of the information I put together ahead of the event that I would have shared.

What I wanted to provide was a simple answer for anyone who's ever wondered:

• Why do I need blog stats?
• How do I collect stats?
• How do I make sense of my stats?
• How do I use stats to improve my blog?

I'm by no means an expert in blogging statistics, but over the past year, I have explored and used most of the online stats packages in creating and putting together the Tots100 index. I've tried to be open about different options, while also letting you know which tools and stats I personally find most useful.

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So, why would I need to know my blog stats?

Let's face it - if you only write a blog for fun, for yourself and your family, or as a means of creative expression, you don’t need blog stats. Really. Turn them off; they’ll only make a bad day worse.

If you’re writing for an audience though (and many of us are) then blog stats can help you to understand your audience a little better. And that understanding is key in helping you to progress towards your blogging goals.

I know - blogging goals - sounds a bit pretentious. But what I mean is that the reason I blog might not be the same reason you blog. We all have different motivations for blogging, and that means we want our blogs to achieve slightly different things.

Maybe you just want to grow your audience. Maybe you want your blog to capture the attention of publishers. Maybe you want to promote your skills to potential clients or employers. You might want to make friends through your blog, and develop a more loyal audience that visits your blog regularly. 

Using and understanding blog stats can help you to progress towards these goals.

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How NOT to use your blog stats

First, don’t just look at your blog stats and congratulate yourself when they go up, and drown yourself in wine, tears and self-hatred when they go down. That way madness lies.

Second, don’t get geekily obsessed with stats and check them on an hourly basis and change your blog content daily in response to what you see. Stats are there to help you achieve what you want to achieve with your blog, and the very best way to do that is to let them settle, and look at trends and overviews. That way you’ll be able to tell the difference between traffic going down because of a seasonal trend, and traffic going down because a specific sort of post wasn’t pulling in readers.

Third, remember that when you have a specific goal in mind, bigger doesn't necessarily mean better. If you are reaching the right people, in the right way, the size of your auience is immaterial. Sure, it's nice to see a graph heading upwards, but never forget that someone might have an audience 10 times larger than yours without successfully reaching their blogging goals.

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How do I collect blog stats?

It’s very simple to collect the information needed to generate blog stats. You need to install a small piece of HTML code into your blog. There are various products that will do this for you, including Sitemeter, Statcounter and Google Analytics.

Depending on the level of detail you need, I suggest starting with Statcounter or Sitemeter. These free tools are very easy to install as widgets on your blog, and provide most of the information you will need. With Sitemeter you can automatically create a customised widget for your blog, which makes it very simple to use - it can be up and running in under 2 minutes. The downside is that the free version will only store 100 or so records – which might mean you need to look at them several times a day as your site gets busier.

Two quick tips: if you’re using a free tool and want to keep stats private, you need to specify this in your account – the default setting makes your stats public. Second, if you are putting this sort of HTML onto your blog ALWAYS place it at the bottom of the right-hand sidebar so it doesn’t slow down the load time of your site.

Google Analytics can store data indefinitely, but be warned – it is far more complex and offers much more sophisticated analysis, and can be intimidating to new users. Approach with caution.

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What will stats tools tell me?

Whichever tool you use, it will record some information about a visitor whenever your blog pages are loaded. This information should include:

Referring URL (a website where someone clicked a link to arrive at your blog. Will be blank if someone typed the address into their browser, rather than clicking a link)

Entry page (the specific page within your blog where the visitor lands)

Exit page (the last page they look at before leaving)

Service provider (the ISP your visitor uses, or their company, if using a dedicated corporate Internet connection)

Summary: Stats tools will also provide summary or dashboard data showing overall patterns of traffic to your blog each day, week or month. When looking at this data you should see things like:

Visits (how many times your blog was visited in a given time period)

Impressions or Page Impressions (how many times pages on your blog were loaded in this time period)

Unique Users (how many individuals are responsible for the total visits over this time period)

Bounce rate (percentage of visitors in this time period who left your blog without clicking anything else)

New visitors (percentage of visitors in this time period who are brand new to your blog)

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How to use blog stats

So, let’s say you want to grow your audience...

First, look at what are the most popular landing pages on your blog, or which is the most popular content (this is very easy to see on Analytics). Knowing which posts work well, and which don’t work so well, can help you to write more of what people like to read.

Next, think about how people are reaching your blog. If you’re posting links on Facebook every day and only getting 1 visitor, but your Tweets are generating 100 visitors, that’s good information. Now you can focus on Twitter, or see how your posts on Facebook might be more inviting. Stats can show you which forums, websites, ads, links and blogrolls are delivering you traffic - and which aren't.

And if you want a specific audience...

Start by looking at keyword stats. If you want to attract people who are looking for organic baby gifts, but most of your keyword traffic comes from a phrase such as “monkey porn” (as is the case with my blog) then that’s good information. You can start thinking about how to use more relevant keywords in the right way – incorporating them into blog titles, category names, tags and headers – and your stats will tell you whether your new keywords are working.

Look too at your bounce rate. When visitors land on your blog using a keyword you think should be working well for you (not monkey porn, probably) do the visitors stick around? In other words, are you meeting their expectations well?

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What other stuff can stats tell me?

Understanding what platform, operating system and browser your visitors use can help you to ensure your content is working for them. If 60% of your blog visitors are using Firefox while you're using IE, that's worth knowing - so you can test your blog in Firefox when you add a new feature or design!

If you want to build a regular audience, the bounce rate is your friend. Try out different techniques to make your site ‘sticky’ and encourage visitors to hang around – picture icons for categories, related post links at the bottom of each post, special categories and clearer navigation – and see how each of those changes impacts your bounce rate. Tweak, test and improve!

If you ever come across online bullies or trolls then stats tools will capture information about them. If you use Statcounter or Sitemeter, it will even capture their specific IP address, which ISPs and police can use to identify the specific user and computer that an attack originates from - so do remember to take a screen shot of the evidence. You can sometimes identify an IP owner yourself, by using a free site to 'reverse engineer' an IP address - this means the website will look up who 'owns' the specified IP). You can also block that specific IP address from commenting on your blog in future.

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What other stats should I know about?

Sitemeter, Statcounter and Google Analytics will give you stats relating to blog traffic and visitors. However, if your blogging goals are slightly different, or change, you might find other tools useful:

PostRank: this is a tool that measures engagement on your blog. Engagement is a posh way of saying ‘conversations’ – so this records how many times people comment on your blog, Tweet about it, or share your content using social bookmarking sites like Digg and Del.ici.ous. It gives each of your posts a score of 1-10 based on how engaging it is, compared to your typical content. (To look at your blog, click on 'top content' then enter your address in the search bar. If your blog isn't yet indexed, searching for it will trigger the site to start indexing it so you should see results next time you visit).

Feedburner: one of the weaknesses of StatCounter etc is they only gather information about people who visit your blog. If people read your blog’s RSS feed in a reader, you won’t know about them. Feedburner is a free way to direct your RSS feed through Google, and then you can access stats about how many people use your feed, how they read it, and what they read.

Alexa/Technorati/Wikio: These sites are all blog search engines, and collect stats on links pointing to your blog. If you aren’t using Google Analytics they can be useful but all have weaknesses. Technorati requires bloggers to register, and this can be a complex process, meaning the directory is rather limited. Alexa measures traffic to blogs and links but has a focus on large US blogs and is very inaccurate when measuring anything with less than 10,000 visits a day. Wikio is simpler to register with, but much less widely known.

Klout: one of a number of free online tools that analyses how you use Twitter, for example by looking at how many people you follow versus how many people follow you; how often your Tweets are replied to or re-Tweeted, how popular the people are who talk to you, and how far your Tweets reach when they are shared. Klout uses a complex algorithm to turn this into a score from 1 to 100. I'm not sure it has any practical use for most bloggers, beyond providing a weird diversion on a quiet afternoon. 

Erm ... At this point I planned to stop talking and wait for the bouquets to start landing...

Should freelancers hire interns?

What do you make of the idea of freelancers hiring interns to do their leg-work?

These two job ads, one for an intern to help a real life journalist source, compile and sell her features, and another for an intern on a blog, have caused a good deal of chatter on Twitter this morning. I’m really not sure what to make of it.

Back in the day, when I worked as a features editor on a technology magazine, I was contacted by a very experienced freelance journo with clips from the Wall St Journal and all the major business magazines.
We met for lunch (this is how things worked back in the 90s, when magazines still had a few pennies to rub together) and chatted about ideas. I needed some meaty corporate profiles for my section of the magazine, and he seemed like the chap to take them on.

A few weeks later, he filed his first feature. As agreed, it was an in-depth analysis of a global company, covering products, executives, future strategy – but the name of the company was spelled wrongly throughout.

Turns out, the freelancer worked with a couple of keen young journalism students. When he got a commission, he’d make a list of people he wanted to speak to, and the students would set up calls. In some cases, he’d provide them with a list of questions and they would conduct, and transcribe the interviews.

As an editor, I’ll admit I felt uneasy about this. I felt part of the (pretty generous) fee we were paying was based on the writer’s experience and contacts. I wouldn’t have agreed the same rate had I known the work was being done by a newbie, even one who was being supervised. I felt we’d been tricked somehow, because the students weren’t mentioned when I’d met the journalist to discuss the commission.

On the other hand, do I think a freelancer offering the opportunity to help her out for six weeks is any more evil or exploitative than the publishing company that advertised on Gorkana last week for an unpaid intern for a MINIMUM commitment of six months?

As a journalism student, I worked at Literary Review magazine for four weeks for free. I got some experience and a few contacts, but I think working with a jobbing freelancer and arranging interviews and setting up calls might actually have taught me more than I learned sitting in an office doing typing for Auberon Waugh.

Just a thought.

3 Reasons Not to Write for Free

This week, I was offered a regular writing gig for a website owned by a major FTSE brand. It all seemed very interesting until the company told me that, ‘for the time being at least’, the work would be unpaid. But, hey, I’d get a link for my troubles.

Personally, then, I don’t consider they were offering me work. They were inviting me to make writing into my hobby. I have hobbies, thanks – and none of them involve sitting at a computer, writing stuff. That’s what I do for a living, in fact.

Writing for free is a tricky issue when you’re starting out, though. There’s a view in some media circles that people should serve their time, learn the ropes, get their foot in the door by doing an internship or similar. An internship where you learn the ropes of a job for a short time is a very different proposition to writing for free, though.

For starters, an intern is identified as someone new – you’re there to learn how to do stuff. Writing for free means doing exactly the same job as the people being paid – you’re just cheaper. Sure, it’s a personal choice, but I would always advise a new writer against writing for free for three reasons:

First, in agreeing to write for free, you’re telling an editor or client that you’re desperate. That you think what you do has little or no value.

Second, when exactly do you think that editor is going to start paying you? Do you think after a month or two they will be so amazed by your talent that they say, ‘Hey, Jane, you know that article I was getting for free? This month I’d like to pay you £500 for it. Have a great day!’ Never gonna happen.

Third, when you write for free for a company or publication that usually pays people, you’re making it that much harder for me, and people like me, to earn a living. You are under-cutting your colleagues and becoming part of a movement that is pushing down rates for writers.

You might not think it’s important now, but put yourself five years in the future – do you want to be earning a living as a writer? Well, stop doing it for free now, then.

If you genuinely cannot get commissions and clips from paying magazines, then there are many online start-ups and community-led publications that don’t pay anyone for their time. If you choose to write for free for those titles, surely that’s a better option?  

The Green Ink Brigade

Someone I’ve never met and never spoken to popped up on my radar last week.

Turns out, they hate me.

I don’t mean they don’t want to be friends, or they don't really like the way I can't listen to music without singing along. No. They hate me enough to take time away from their spouse, children, career and hobbies to spew their hatred onto the Internet, complete with some alarmingly creative nicknames and intense speculation about my mental health.

Another day recently, I got an email from someone else I’d never met. This person was convinced a Tweet I wrote to a friend a year or so back was a personal insult directed at them. This was apparently one of many messages I’ve directed their way. They demanded that I leave them alone and stop being rude about them.

Erm, okay.

While backing away with my hands in the air, I got to thinking about these people. On magazines we’d call them ‘the green ink brigade’ - a nickname that came about because their letters were almost always hand-written in some wacky ink or other. Online, you’re more likely to spot them by their lack of attention to punctuation and a fondness for exclamation marks.

Over the years, I've been contacted by green inkers who tell me I should die, it's no wonder my husband left me, I'm mentally ill and in need of an immediate section, my editors know what I'm really like, everyone in my home town hates me but just hasn't told me and, also, I'm a bad driver. Although that last bit was probably fair comment.

My all-time favourite online green inker was Ben, who took time out of his day to tell me I was the most evil and vindictive mother he'd ever known. Do read it, if you haven't before, it's possibly the funniest thing I've ever been sent by email.

I’ve got a journalist friend who loves to provoke Internet crazies – adding salacious details to stories that she knows will drive them into a frenzy of righteous indignation. She then sits back and laughs as strangers declare that she is an abomination of womanhood.

Unfortunately for me, I can rile them without even trying. I’m a single Mum. I’ve got quite a dry sense of humour. I like to rant about PR and journalism. I earn a major part of my living from blogging. I earn most of the rest of my living by writing articles in newspapers and magazines.

In short, I'm very visible, so it's easy for the green inkers to find me. I sometimes think I might as well just walk around with a target stapled to the back of my t-shirt.

In my early career, I used to try and converse with the green inkers. Then I realised that nobody who takes time out of their day to tell you that they hope you die in a car crash is going to read anything you say and think, “Wow, I had them all wrong”. If that were THAT rational, they'd have just unfollowed you, or stopped reading, let's face it.

These days I only reply to rude messages if they’re not personally abusive or threatening. As a rule, I keep it factual and thank people for their feedback. Then I set up a rule to delete any future messages from them unread, and I forget about it.

It hasn’t always been so easy. In my early days of blogging, in particular, I could be upset for days by a horrible remark, particularly one about my daughter, or something that implied someone knew me personally. It’s hard to ignore your inner five-year-old who is busy keening: “But why don’t they like meeeeee?”

What I’ve learned – and what I hope will help you next time you’re subject to online attacks – is that it’s almost never personal. Because they don’t know you. Having such a violent, irrational reaction to something they’ve read online is everything to do with something lacking in their lives, and nothing to do with your personality, writing or talent.

I have seen time and time again that the single identifying characteristic of the online green inker is that they cannot understand or articulate the difference between “I don’t agree with you” and “I hate you”.

In some ways, I’m grateful for the green inkers. They’ve given me a far thicker skin than I ever used to have. They also remind me every time they get in touch that life's short - far too short to waste time worrying about what some Internet weirdo thinks of you. Also, one day, I'm totally going to put together a book of the best of the green ink, and retire on the proceeds.

Newsflash: I do not care about football. Or biscuits.

Someone chastised me on Twitter this morning for being snarky about PRs.

Oops.

I had Tweeted my congratulations to a PR agency for their brave and innovative thinking in creating a press release that linked their client’s survey to – wait for it – the World Cup. Well, paint me purple and call me surprised, I didn't see that one coming.

To be fair, I do understand the notion of using the news agenda to help make a client's story seem more relevant. But I think this technique works if one of the following is true:

a)    the underlying story is so good the news hijacking is irrelevant

b)    you’re one of a small number of people to have spotted the opportunity

c)    the story is genuinely related to the event in the news

In the case of the World Cup, I’ve yet to see a World Cup press release that was genuinely interesting. All 46 of the releases I've received so far this week were pretty dull, I’m sorry to say.

Second, let me just reiterate: I’ve received 46 World Cup press releases in two days. Sending a World Cup press release does not make your client stand out. At all. I stopped reading them after a while. Especially given that I’m a technology, business and HR journalist, and have absolutely zero interest in football on a professional or personal level.

Third, I can’t see why most of these companies are talking about the World Cup. When I think about the World Cup, I’m not immediately struck by the thought: “I wonder which bath oil I should use during the tournament?” or “I wonder how the business continuity market could help me enjoy the World Cup more?” Certainly not, "I wonder if Fabio eats macaroni cheese?" And who is Fabio, anyway?

I’ve received World Cup press releases about gas, biscuits, macaroni and cheese recipes, DVD rental services, HR consulting, insurance, credit cards, online supermarket delivery services, broadband, price comparison websites and – in possibly the most random example of the technique I’ve seen so far – I even got a press release about the World Cup and… the importance of discrimination legislation in the workplace. Hmm.

Maybe I am being unnecessarily snarky - after all, it's just as easy to delete a World Cup themed press release as any other. But it just strikes me that when so many PR agencies and clients are desperately trying to piggy back on this sort of big event, the idea of quality or relevance gets chucked out of the window – and I’m not sure anyone really benefits as a result.