Pitching Mommy Bloggers

October 16, 2007 • Joseph Thornley • No Tags

Danielle Donders is an avid blogger who has found herself on the receiving end of a growing wave of pitches from marketers for products and services. She shared her experience and insights with the Third Tuesday Ottawa attendees last night.

Danielle began her Postcards from the Mothership blog, which she referred to as her “online shrine to parental self absorption,” in January 2005. Nearly three years and more than 950 posts later, she’s still at it. No blog fading for her.

Why does she do it? “Self-indulgent narcissism. I started to talk about my life and people listened. They liked me. They really liked me. People care about what I say. And I’m totally addicted to it.”

And public relations practitioners and marketers definitely seem to care about what Danielle things and writes about. In just the last four months, she’s received pitches for skin lotion, shoes, coffee, head lice cures, three different cell phones, soup, Nestle Quick, recipe exchange site; public service site about breast exams, contests about writing, yogurt, Bounty paper towels, and books.

Why do marketers care about mommy bloggers? Mothers trust other mothers and look to them for testimonials and referrals to quality services and products. “The mom-osphere is very intimate. Everybody’s unique perspective on issues common to mothers makes it compelling reading for others.”

She says that she can really tell who cares about the bloggers they pitch and those that are just carpeting the terrain. For example, “I got an free pass invitation to go to a fitness centre for teens in Los Angeles. I’m a suburban mom in Ottawa with a 3 and 5 year old. They didn’t read my blog. So, I don’t care” about what there’re pitching.

Advice for blogger relations: “Be a part of the community. That makes all the difference. Get to know the blogger. Show me that you care about what I’m writing, not simply about the eyeballs that come to my site. Follow up afterwards to let the blogger know that you read what they wrote and that you appreciated what they wrote.”

Danielle talked about one successful pitch to her – the Krazr blogger cellphone campaign. “I felt like they cared about what I was blogging about. One of their staff would follow up with me. He made a comment on a post I wrote about the phones.”

Does accepting a product oblige her to be positive about the product? “No. I’m obliged to be polite and reasonable and fair about the product. But if I hated the phone, I’d say so.” Danielle in fact indicated that before the trial with the Motorola phone, she had been offered a trial with a Nokia phone. She found it to be “too much phone and confusing” and she said so.

In her “day job”, Danielle works for the federal government. She has parlayed her experience as a mommy blogger into a full time assignment to help her department figure out the intersection between social media and government communications. She believes that social media can put a human face on government.

How should government approach bloggers? They should absolutely listen. … You’re not going to get an accurate impression. But do you get an accurate impression by reading the Globe and Mail.”

“Government is slow. It’s like turning around the Queen Mary. It takes some very strong evangelists. … They are so risk averse.”

A great presentation from an engaging personality. Thank you Danielle!

Technorati Tags: ThirdTuesdayOttawa, ThirdTuesday

Toronto Star afternoon edition in PDF format. What were they thinking?

October 11, 2007 • Joseph Thornley • No Tags

Just over thirteen months ago, the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest circulation newspaper, launched a special afternon PDF format edition of the newspaper that was targeted at commuters who might want to download and print a hard copy to read on the way home. At that time, Michael Goldblum, then-publisher of the Star said, “Star P.M. is designed to satisfy people’s craving for breaking news and the up to the minute information they need, in a format that meets their needs at the end of the day.”

My take at the time:

Add to the current mix downloadable podcast content, the ability to take emails and web content out of the office on BlackBerries and even to use these devices to surf the web for up to the minute content – and it seems to me that the Star is chasing a miniscule set of readers.

There are many innovate people at the Star and in the newspaper industry. And they will evolve the medium to compete with the new media. But this initiative by the Star isn’t really a step forward. It smacks too much of simply trying to apply the old model to a new medium. And I can’t believe that will work.

Well, news today that the Star has thrown in the towel on the PDF experiment. They’ve replaced it with a mobile edition that will offer the full text of Star stories formatted to be read on the small screen of a mobile device. The main content will be published at 3:30PM “and updated with breaking news and closing market numbers until 4:15.” Readers can subscribe to email alerts that will be delivered to their email boxes at 3:30 and 4:15.

OK. This is better. But not quite as good as it could be. Where are the RSS feeds? In the era of smartphones like the Nokia N90 and the iPhone. I can’t understand why the good folks at the Star don’t slap an RSS feed on all of their content. (Yes, I can find RSS feeds on the main thestar.com site. But why make me look on a separate site?)

So, to the Toronto Star, my compliments for learning from the PDF experience and moving to a mobile platform. But don’t stop there. Add those RSS feeds so that I can receive your news in the mobile format of my choice.

I'm speaking Thursday night at an IABC Toronto AIP Seminar

October 10, 2007 • Joseph Thornley • No Tags

If you’re in Toronto on Thursday evening, let’s talk about social media and blogger relations. That’s the topic that IABC Toronto’s Independent Practitioners group have asked me to address at their “Old Media vs. New Media” seminar.

When you visit the event page, you won’t see my name. But don’t worry, I’ll be there. I’m the “panel members (TBC)” 🙂

If you read my blog, I’d love to see you there and to hear what you think about blogger relations and whether they matter when compared with traditional media relations.

Student PR's Chris Clarke on getting a job in public relations

October 4, 2007 • Joseph Thornley • No Tags

Chris Clarke joined Thornley Fallis straight out of school. He was the first person we hired primarily because of his experience in blogging. He’d begun his Student PR blog while studying public relations at London’s Fanshawe College. I subscribed to Chris’ blog and read his posts. Over time, I thought that Chris demonstrated passion for PR and a distinctive perspective and voice that would mesh well with Thornley Fallis’ exploration of social media.

Well, today is Chris’ last day at Thornley Fallis before he leaves us to join another firm that recruited him away from us. We sat down to chat about the highlights of his first PR work experience, what he learned and what advice he would offer to students who are thinking about a career in public relations. Some of Chris’ observations:

On the job discovery: PR is a small community. Everyone in the business know one another. If you want to build a career in PR, get out from behind your desk and network. “It’s a nice, small tight-knit community, so the sooner you get to know people, the better off you’re going to be… Networking is one of those things that I picked up early on and hung on to because it’s so important to advance yourself professionally.”
On the job lessons: “You’ve got to listen. Always listen. Write things down. Try to take on as much as you can. … you try a little bit of everything and you learn a lot.”
Advice for students hoping to break into PR: “Start blogging. Get out there and get involved in the social media community and blog as much as you can.”

You can watch a five minute video of my interview with Chris Clarke here.

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