Getting Ink

T is for Transparency

Social media isn’t new, is it?

We’ve had a few years now of doing this stuff and I think there are a few basic, commonly agreed norms of conduct. And two of the most important things in any social media activity are surely authenticity and transparency.

For me, this means if I’m blogging about a situation I have a commercial interest in, I’ll try and mention that. I don’t mind – I like plugging the fact that I provide cost-effective media training and training for PR executives in working with bloggers, for example (see what I did there?)

But maybe it’s just me.

I read a blog post yesterday about a health threat to consumers. You know the sort of thing: X causes cancer. The post described some of the research supporting this theory, and praised groups that have campaigned to raise awareness of the possible problem. Then the author suggested a few alternatives to X, with links to buy these products.

I’ve no issue with the topic, or the post. I’m certainly not qualified to say whether or not X causes cancer. Maybe the writer is perfectly correct. And I'm sure they are sincere in their intentions. But what they SHOULD have mentioned, in my book, is the fact that they’re the PR for all three of the alternative products linked to within the post.

In failing to mention the commercial relationship, I instantly suspect the author couldn’t care less whether X causes cancer. They just want to scare people into buying their client’s product rather than an alternative product. That’s not necessarily what they intended to do, but it’s how it looks.

Hmm. I could rant on for ages about this, but I’ll just say: not a good idea. And surely something PRs these days learn not to do on day one on the job?  

Are you playing fair with online competitions?

A few months back, I was involved in running a competition for a website.

We’d put a good deal of work into sourcing some fantastic prizes for the readers of the website, and then we’d spent time (and time is money) designing the competition on the page, laying out images, setting up the email account to handle competition entries, writing terms and conditions.

As you’ll know if you’ve been involved in this sort of thing, there are lots of things to organise when you put a competition on your site or blog, in terms of the wording used for each sponsor, getting the links just right to optimise SEO, that sort of thing.

The payback for all of this investment is, of course, that you attract visitors to your site. If you’re smart you’ll have tweaked your site so that people visiting your site to take part in the competition will see your key messages. You may devise a competition question that requires them to read some text provided by the sponsor, or which means they have to look at a certain page on your website.

But as anyone who’s been on the Internet for more than five minutes knows, there are people who scour the Internet looking for competitions. Post anything on Twitter including the word “competition” or “free” and within minutes the link will find itself on a competition site somewhere, and hundreds of visitors descend on your site to enter the competition.

That’s less than ideal – many of the people entering the competition aren’t your target audience, they’re just looking for something to win which they’ll sell on eBay after all. But it’s the risk you take when you post a competition online, and when it happens, I shrug my shoulders and get on with my day.

But I’m less sanguine when competition sites post the entire text of the competition entry AND the answer to the competition, with a direct link to the page on your site where they can enter.

What this means is visitors often bypass your home page (with any carefully crafted messages or special offers you’ve designed), don’t need to read any of the text that you or the sponsor have created, and simply enter the competition and immediately leave.

Hmm.

I must confess, when this happens to me, I’ve changed the question. I always write into the terms and conditions that I reserve the right to do this in the event that the answer is posted on the internet, and then I filter all the wrong answers straight into the trash folder.  Experience has taught me that 99% of people won’t bother to even read the question if they think they know the answer.

I’ve also let competition sites know that posting the entire text of a competition with the answer is a breach of my copyright (in the same way as reposting any of my content would be). Most sites are pretty good about taking down posts – and Moneysavingexpert will also disable links to your site in their forums when you alert them to this sort of problem. And I always use IP logging to ensure people can only enter a competition once (unless they own more than one computer, obviously!)

I’ve had conversations with other people who have argued that this approach is unnecessarily mean. But my view is that blogs posting someone else’s competition with the answer are facilitating cheating. And why should I let someone cheat?

What do you reckon? Should you worry about the quality of entrants to a competition, or is it just about the numbers?

Does anyone miss journalists yet?

I’ve been doing my accounts this week, and it’s official. I’m no longer a journalist.

I call myself a freelance writer because pretty much everything I do boils down to that in some way or another. But I’m probably a blogger more than I’m a journalist these days. Certainly, if you look at what I’ve earned so far this year, blogging is what's paying the bills. Not every quarter is quite this dominated by blogging - the first part of 2010 was dominated by the MAD blog awards and for the Tots100 index of parenting blogs that I produce each month - but in general, it's the way my work is heading.

As a fully-paid up member of the blogosphere, I think I’m supposed to be cheery about this change. I’m supposed to be glad that mainstream media is dying on its feet, replaced by enthusiastic bloggers free of the shackles of publishers and advertisers. I’m supposed to celebrate the fact that nobody needs to pay for content because it's the Internet, and who buys Empire when Rotten Tomatoes is free, right?

And yet, and yet.. the phrase that keeps rattling through my head at the moment is “society gets the media it deserves”.

Why do people not see that the good content on Rotten Tomatoes is pulled from newspapers, and written by professional film reviewers? Or that the content that’s endlessly duplicated and stuck on news websites ultimately got written by some professional reporter working on the story. Or that the features they’re so enjoying are being written by freelance reporters who are having to work harder than ever for rates that haven’t increased in 10 years just to keep their heads above water?

If nobody is willing to pay those people, pretty soon they won’t exist. And I for one think society will be poorer for it. User-generated content isn’t some democratic utopia where we all have a voice and the quality rises to the top. Because, let’s face it, the real quality will have buggered off to do something that actually pays the mortgage. Looking at some newspapers today, I suspect a big chunk of the quality has already jumped off the sinking ship. 

What will be left will be the corporates with the budget and the SEO expertise to pump out content expressing their particular world view, and the people who feel strongly enough about issues to generate content for free – and history suggests these are not necessarily going to be the most balanced observers of life. As someone who writes a good deal of corporate copy, I know that the majority of it is well-researched, accurate and truthful - but it will never pretend to be objective.

So I for one am keeping my fingers crossed that the Times experiment in paid-for content works. And I'll pay the subscription. Because, God knows, someone needs to try something to preserve the value of what I used to do for a living. Oh, and I still subscribe to Empire.

Are blogs a soft touch, then?

So a few months back, a tech PR agency got in touch to ask if I’d like to try out a particularly desirable bit of kit. They would send it to me, I could try it out, perhaps Tweet my impressions, and then I’d be free to keep the item in question.

I thought about it for, ooh, almost five seconds, and said yes please, I’d love to try it.

A few days later, the courier brought my new gadget. I turned it on (I don’t read instructions) and it didn’t work. Hmm. I reset it, turned it back on, still didn’t work. I read through the instructions to check I wasn’t missing anything, and I wasn’t. It just didn’t work.

I took out the batteries, did a hard reset, and the device still didn’t work. I read the instructions cover to cover, to see if I could solve the problem. No joy. 

I emailed the PR, told them about the problem, and they offered to get back to me. The next day, the PR sent me a suggestion. I tried it, but it didn’t work. The next day, another suggestion. That didn’t work either. The third day, the techie guys at the client sent a suggestion. That didn’t work.

So, back the gadget went to London, and a brand new device was sent out in its place. Guess what? It didn’t work either.

After a bit of back and forth, and a week of messing around, the second gadget sprang to life. Sort of. The clock goes haywire at random, several of the apps don’t work, some features only work intermittently, and the whole thing is really a bit of a waste of time. I put it in a drawer with my equally pointless iPhone (sorry, I’m just not a believer) and forgot about it.

Then the PR emailed me to ask when I might be Tweeting about my new gadget, and said she didn’t want to miss it.

I emailed back, politely, and said I hadn’t written anything about the gadget because, in my view, it didn’t do what it’s supposed to do. I pointed out the problems I was having, and said that my view as a journalist is that you don’t review a faulty unit, as it would be unfair. You give the company the opportunity to supply a review model that isn't broken, basically.

And... no reply. Not a word.

Which I find sort of interesting. If the problems I’m experiencing were unusual, or down to a faulty unit, I’d have expected the PR to offer a replacement. Or, if there wasn't a replacement available, an assurance that I'd just been unlucky and maybe I could try the next version of the product when it's available.

But total radio silence just suggests that, actually, the PR and the client are actually more than familiar with the problems. It suggests to me that the product is known to be unreliable. In which case, why on earth are you sending them out to bloggers to review? Could it be because – gasp – you think bloggers are going to go easier on this product than anyone else?