Getting Ink

But if the PRs are all dead, who buys the beer?

It's just been one of *those* days today.

I called a PR agency at 10am, explained I was writing a story based on a release they’d issued, and I needed to speak to someone before 3pm.  At 2pm I hadn’t heard anything so emailed the PR – to get an out of office reply.

Concerned, I rang switchboard to speak to someone completely new who said they might possibly be able to arrange an interview some time tomorrow. Or I could use the quote from the press release – which, I have to say, was a classic of the genre.

I admit, I laughed at the guy. I felt badly about it and apologised, but the idea that someone from a major PR agency didn’t realise that an online newswire wouldn’t wait 48 hours for comment on a release about a new data centre (this is not earth shattering news) seemed pretty ludicrous.

I posted three messages about the experience on Twitter – and was chastised by Jon Clements for “PR bashing”.

I reckon I look like more of a "PR tickler" compared to the guy who's just posted "Why PRs Should Die"

I know it's ironic, but even I read this and thought: "Oh grow up, you idiot, reading crappy press releases is part of your job". Personally, I don't think this sort of rant does anyone any favours - I don’t think anyone reading that post would learn anything constructive about how to do media relations better. I also suspect a few PR execs reading that post are now just a little less keen to phone a journalist and pitch a story or idea. So who’s benefiting exactly from this kind of pointless ranting? 

I know I like a good moan as much as the next journo, but I do try (honest) to be constructive, mostly. So if nothing else, my rant for today should remind you that in online news, getting an interview tomorrow is just too damn late. The story HAS to go up today or not at all. See?

And besides, if all the PRs die, who buys the journalists’ beer? Especially now we’re not allowed expenses any more. Ha - bet you didn't think of that, Mr Miserable Bastard, did you?

How do you respond to online criticism of a client?

So, I recently wrote a blog post for a client.

Within the post, I mentioned three companies providing activities for children. None of the classes were quite right for us: Flea didn’t like the music at music class, she didn’t want to swim at swimming class, she talked at the wrong times at the talking class.

The post went up, it was quite popular, everyone was happy.

Except I noticed this morning on my Google Reader the copy had been edited to refer to Company X, Company Y and “another company”. I called my client and was told that “another company” had complained and asked to be removed from the article. The client, with a million better things to think about, made the change. Which is completely understandable. But as a journalist and almost PR person (three clients now, you know) it makes me pretty uneasy.

First, what message does this send about the talking class? What sort of company is so afraid of criticism that it would be so concerned about what was really a very gentle criticism? It doesn’t suggest a company that’s successful or well-regarded, certainly.

Second, how does this kind of intervention make me (a parent and potential customer) feel about that company? Not only did we not enjoy the class, they also butted in to try and stop me telling people. That's the sort of thing I'm going to tell A LOT of other people about. I've already phoned three people this morning to tell them about it. Not good.

My advice to any business is this: if you come across negative feedback on a blog or forum, take it on the chin. Engage with the customer and if you think they’re wrong or their experience was unusual, then say so.

In recent weeks, I know the blogger Zooarcheologist has written and Tweeted about her poor experience with a Phil and Teds pushchair – and the company has responded and offered a replacement buggy. When I had problems moving to Virgin from BT, I posted on Twitter and a very friendly chap from Virgin Media helped to sort my account out for me.

What say you, proper PR people? Would you ever try to censor criticism of a client online? How do you deal with potentially negative comments making it into the Google-stream?

How to do due diligence on blogs (and why some PRs are stupid)

It's been a while (well, a week at least) since I had a good rant on the blog. I know, you've missed them. Luckily for you, I saw a post on Twitter this weekend from a blogger, advertising a contest to win some prize or other.

The contest wasn’t news – it’s already run on half a dozen other blogs over the summer. What was news was that this particular blog was running the competition.

The only reason I can imagine selecting this blog for a blogger outreach campaign is if the PR had some kind of RSI-related seizure over their keyboard and inadvertently typed the address.

This isn't meant to be catty. It's not a judgment on how well the blog is written. It's a comment on the lack of research that some PR execs do when selecting blogs for promotional campaigns. I'm presuming that when you choose a blog to run a promotion, you're looking for a targeted audience, a popular blog that's widely read, and one where content is widely commented on and shared online - extending the potential reach.

Now consider this: the blog running the competition is promoting it through a bit.ly link. It takes approximately 30 seconds to discover that the link was posted three times in the first 24 hours of the contest - and it was clicked on just 42 times. Of those 42 clicks, just 21 came from the UK - and one of them was me.

I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure the client might have expected a bit more for their money. The blog might be fantastic but it clearly has a small reach, and a reach that is 50/50 split between the UK and US.

This is just basic research, and the sort of thing I use a lot in creating my index of the Top 100 British Mummy Bloggers. But regardless of the sector, ANY PR doing blogger outreach should be doing this kind of due diligence.

I can sort of see how the problem comes about. I met with two PR execs last week, from a children’s PR agency. They freely admitted they don’t have kids, don’t read parenting blogs and have identified bloggers to work with in two ways: responding to bloggers who are using Response Source to request review kit, and by seeing who gets a mention in the newspapers.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

There are a hundred different ways to do due diligence on a blog before deciding whether it’s a good partner for your client – and not one of them is “has the blogger asked for freebies lately?”.

So here are my top 10 questions to discover how influential a blog REALLY is :

1. First and foremost, what does the blog cover? Are the values in line with your client’s messages? No good running a major competition with a blog only to find the blogger is massively critical of your client’s whole industry, for example, or that they work for a competitor as a consultant or copywriter. To see if they’re likely to cover a topic, spend the 20 seconds it’ll take to type “site:http://www.blogaddress.com widgets” into Google.(replace "widgets" with something else for the best results)
2. Is this blog widely read? It’s impossible to know another site’s traffic, but there are ways to make educated guesses. For example, you can easily see how many people use Google Reader to subscribe to a specific blog feed – by comparing different blogs within the same sector, you should get a fair idea which are most popular.
3. Is the blog widely discussed? When you’re working with a blogger, ultimately you want the message to be shared and promoted to that blog’s readers and beyond. So consider – how many inbound links are there to this blog? How many times have posts from this blog been saved to Del.ici.ous? How many links to this blog show up in search results from the likes of Google Blogsearch, Technorati or Icerocket? 
4. Is the blog interactive? The best sort of blogs (in my humble opinion) are those that are widely commented upon – where readers are compelled to join in the conversation, either on the blog itself or via Facebook, Twitter and the like. This is the sort of thing you’ll get an idea of by looking at the blog, but Postrank is an excellent tool, too.
5. Who comments on the blog? Some blogs can become something of a circle-jerk (if you don’t know what this means, don’t look it up, especially if you’re reading this Monday morning). But if all the comments come from the same three or four people, it suggests the blog’s reach might not be as good as someone with fewer, but more diverse commenters. No point sending your client’s messages into a tiny echo chamber.
6. How often is the blog updated? Regular content encourages regular traffic, and helps build a site’s profile.
7. How visible is the blog in search engines? Some bloggers are more savvy than others about tags, keywords and SEO. While you shouldn’t necessarily ignore a blog that doesn’t perform well in search engines, you might want to provide some advice if the blog is going to be running a promotion on your behalf, even if it’s just explaining how to use tags and embedded links.
8. Does the blogger have a good Twitter/Facebook network to promote their blog. Don’t just look at how many followers someone has – after all, you can buy friends and followers by the thousand these days. Consider who the blogger is talking to online – and do a quick search for their Twitter name to see who’s talking back. Is this blogger mostly talking to their mother and their neighbour, or are they in contact with the influencers in the market you’re targeting?
9. Finally, ask the blogger themselves – how many unique readers does the site have? How many monthly page impressions? Where do their visitors come from? What’s the site bounce rate? What’s reader loyalty like? A good, prolific blogger will know this stuff. Mind you, I include this with a caveat, even if a blogger knows, he doesn’t have to tell you this stuff. And you’d be unwise to base any of your client’s budget just on the fact someone tells you they get 10,000 unique users a day.
10. Just one final note: think about what you’re offering and whether it’s of interest to the blogger, and will enhance their blog or not. So, Pizza Express, no, I’m not going to plaster a 300 word ad for your new “diet” pizza (it’s got a big hole in the middle where they put some salad – does anyone else think that’s the funniest thing EVER? ) on my blog just because you offered me the chance to eat one for free, thanks. I think I’d rather shell out the £8 or so and just buy a pizza, preferably one where I’m not paying for a hole.  

What's the difference between a blogger and a writer?

There's a fascinating debate happening in the Mummy blogging community at the moment.

Leaving aside some of the personal conflicts involved, the heart of the issue is this: can someone be considered a “good” blogger if they’re not a good writer?

I think it’s a really interesting question. Until recently, I’d have argued that you have to be a good writer to blog effectively. Even if you’re not writing something creative, you need to be able to communicate ideas concisely and clearly to your audience, and if you can’t do that, then how can you capture their attention?

But lately, I’m not so sure.

If you look at tech bloggers, for example, readers aren’t necessarily drawn to good writers – they’re drawn to breaking stories, details of products they’re interested in, and useful information like hacks, tips and tricks. Basically, utility trumps the writing.

In the Mummy blogging world, there are some really popular blogs that make my inner sub feel all sorts of frowny. There are spelling mistakes, grammar is all over the place, and structure is non-existent. Yet these blogs are part of the community, people comment on the blogs and they have masses of subscribers. In this case, I think, honesty and participation in the community trumps the writing.

It’s a real shift in my thinking, and as a writer, it’s potentially quite depressing. Could all that book learning really have been a waste of time? Are we now more concerned with engagement and SEO than whether someone knows the difference between they're and their?