BBS: Halley Suitt, Janet Johnson, and Buzz Bruggeman

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The next session was a panel with Halley Suitt, Janet Johnson, and Buzz Bruggeman.This session was billed as: Engaging with Bloggers: Working the Blogosphere. It promised to provide insight into the right way to approach blogger relations.

Halley Suitt: “For starters, can you please know what I’m writing about? Read my blog. … Everybody should take a month and read the blogs you are interested in and read them before you approach them. … Even within similar blogs, there are different perspectives and interests.”

Janet Johnson: “I was the person in the other seat two years ago when Jason started to rant against people paying bloggers, when Marqui did it. … It’s really important to have people in the blogosphere know what you want from them. If I’m a blogger and you want me to write about you, be very honest about what you want. Bloggers want to help others. But they need to know what you are up to.”

Question: What do you need to do to prepare?

Halley Suitt: “You need and aggregator and you need to subscribe to RSS feeds.”

Janet Johnson: “I also go out on the blog search engines and type in keywords and names. And then I find the feeds that are talking about the subjects that I am interested in.”

Imagine my surprise when Buzz Breggeman decided to show the audience how technorati search feeds work and what comes up at the top of the search for Halley Suitt? My ProPR post!

Buzz Breggeman: If you are a PR company that wants to pitch a company to help them, try their product BEFORE you call them.

Halley Suitt: If you are pitching me, include lots of data and all the necessary background.

Halley Suitt said that she had engaged a public relations agency for her company. And she was impressed that the PR people talked to her about a post on her blog. “They had read it. They showed they cared.”

Buzz Breggeman: “You don’t get points for shyness. You don’t get points for staying away from interesting topics. In my own blog, I only write once about every six or seven posts about my company. But most of my posts are about customers. What they need. What they are saying.”

“How do you engage a blogger? Read the comments. You’ll find whose interested in what topics. Most of the conversation goes on in the comments, not on the main posts.”

BBS: Jason Calacanis

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Jason Calacanis’ keynote was themed: From Weblogs, Inc. to Netscape: Maintaining Authenticity and Integrity Within Commercial Social Media.

Integrity. I was looking forward to this presentation after the aggressive stance Jason took earlier in the week in response to Newsgator’s experimentation with advertising on Newsgator Online.

“Good morning. My name is Jason and I’m a blogger.”

There are all types of uses for a blog today – to express a personal view, to build a business or to generate revenue. A blog is like paper. You can make a book, a beautiful magazine or toilet paper.

(Justin Hall began the first blog in 1995. If you don’t know who Justin Hall is, find the movie, HomePage, and learn about the roots of blogging.)

“The thing that attracted me to blogs was authenticity. They are very real.”

The year 2003 was the year when blogs really broke through. That was a dark time full of mistrust of mainstream media (Fox News!) Blogging software already existed. And when a large number of tech people were laid off, the perfect conditions were created for blogging to break out – motivation, tools and people.

 In 2003, Jason was publishing an online magazine. And as he watched his writers go out and be successful with the then emerging blog outlets. And as he watched his traditional publishing business wind down, he realized that he needed to change. Out of this, Weblogs was born. At a time when the business model was not proven and when there was suspicion about trying to commercialize blogs.

Jason regaled the room with anecdotes of his seminal moments with other web and blogging personalities – some happy (Peter Rojas, Mark Cuban) and some unhappy (Nick Denton).

“We’re all outsiders. Bloggers have found their own space, they’ve made it the way they want it, and they don’t like when you screw with it.”

His deal with Time Warner was found on an understanding that Time Warner would never try to mess with the Weblogs content.

“The forces of evil: Whenever something great is made, the marketers come in. There are good marketers and there are bad marketers. There are good people in life and there are bad people. …. There are some bloggers who are great. And there are some people who suck at it.”

“Want to be an A-list blogger. Go to Techmeme. Look for the top three stories. Write about them every day. Go to the blogs of the other people who are writing about these stories and comment. Do this every day and attend every conference going. And you’ll be an A-lister. Write once every two weeks and wonder why you aren’t an A-lister?

 “Blogging is the biggest meritocracy in the world. It’s not broken. You don’t rank? It’s because you suck. … How well you do is up to you.”

“It really is obnoxious to look at the space and say it’s broken because you’re not doing well. If you want to succeed, do a better job.”

“Then we have people who come along – like Payperpost. Now we get into the evil part of me. … I care when somebody comes into this beautiful place where trust and authenticity matters. And then these people come in and … they get into trickery…. If you go selling your posts and not disclosing it, that’s not innovative, that’s lying.”

At Weblogs, “we maintain a church and state separation of advertising and bloggers. The bloggers know about the ads when they see them on the site.”

“I’ve been talking about the payperpost folks. And I want to go over some of the arguments. … One of the things we do best as bloggers is argue. … But it’s always with a smile that we debate…. But you can be intellectually dishonest when you debate.”

“One of the first arguments of the payperpost people is, “We’re just an enabler.” When you enable people to do something wrong, you are part of it.

“They make the other crazy argument that The A list bloggers are trying to keep the Z list bloggers down. There are no A list bloggers. Just people who’ve been at it longer.”

“Tim Draper, you put $3 million into a company doing covert marketing. What were you doing? … What were you thinking, Tim Draper?”

Final thing: “This podcasting thing is going to be big. Two years ago I said that I didn’t see it. I was wrong. … Probably 20% of what I write is wrong. But that’s OK, because we get there together.”

“Something’s going on. I listen to more radio than I ever have and I never turn on a radio. Something big is going on. … I want to podcast and I don’t need the pay cheque. I will be dong calacaniscast on podtech. Podtech and GoDaddy together have donated over $100,000 to sponsor 50 episodes together. And the money will be used to sponsor two girls to attend the Baycrest private school in New York City.”

Audience question: What about YouTube? “I was fabulously wrong about YouTube. … At the end of the day was there growth based on a ton of copyright violations? Duh. But at the end of the day, I’ll give them credit for threading the needle. … Unlike Napster, they cut deals with the content rights holders. …. I believe that YouTube will go down as the company that will be seen to have convinced content holders to put their content out there and then to figure out how to make money later.”

Audience question: Why did you sell Weblogs? “When to sell your company is a personal question that depends upon your shareholders and where they are in their lives. Our shareholders were offered a deal that would pay them for the next three years of their lives. They wanted it and they took the deal. … You have to look at these things on a personal basis and pick when you exit. … This was right for our shareholders.”

Audience question: How about if you are transparent that somebody has given you money for something? “Yes. Transparency counts. … But if you’re going to make a media business out of it, you never ever want anyone to be able to say that you benefited from the people you wrote about. … All you have as a blogger is your authenticity, your trust.
Fight, do not ever let anybody get inside the blog post.”

An entertaining sesson with lots of quality name dropping. Look for it on YouTube.

BBS: Jeremy Pepper, Jeanette Gibson and John Starkweather

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Jeremy Pepper, Jeanette Gibson from Cisco and John Starweather from Microsoft kicked off the conference with a session titled What’s Next in Online Communications?

John Starweather led off by talking about Microsoft as a place to blog and a place to innovate. John is involved in the Mobius project which is developing new applications and platforms for mobile technologies. He believes that we will soon see even more useful applications for mobile devices.

Jeanette talked about Cisco’s efforts to use the new social media to develop feedback and communication with customers and users.

One of the audience members asked the panelists about their efforts to educate employees about the potential for engagement and how these tools can be used internally. John responded that he believes that most marketers have not yet grasped the full potential of social media and the changed relationships with consumers. As he talks to people internally, people are demanding data. And this is an area that must be focused upon. Good data to show what is really happening.

Jeanette says that Cisco’s CEO communicates with employees using Vlogs. They have an IPtv network internally. They’ve also developed an internal Wiki to share information.

A couple members of the audience raised questions about Second Life. One questioner asked Jeremy about his views on crayon’s Second Life presence. Jeremy suggested that Second Life provides the crayon partners with a presence in a single “place.” This overcomes the fact that they are geographically dispersed in four cities thousands of miles across. As such, it’s a clever move.

John suggested that the future will see mobile devices becoming as ubiquitous and non-intrusive as watches have become. Developers should watch this closely and be sure to design for the small screens of these devices.

How can social media be proved and sold internally? Jeanette suggested that she and her colleagues are spending a great deal of time trying to find indicators of effectiveness. For their web newsroom, they attempt to identify the social media opinion leaders and to demonstrate that these people will generate content that will lead mainstream media coverage.

There were no great new insights at this session. But is was a nice warm-up for the audience. And the best indicator for this was the buzz that began in the auditorium immediately after the session as members of the audience turned to one another and kept the conversation going.

Business Blog Summit – Thursday sessions

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I’ve arrived in Seattle for the Blog Business Summit.

I’ll blog as much of the conference as possible. Sessions I’m hoping to take in today include:

And that’s just in the morning (whew.) In the afternoon, I’m looking forward to:

  • Mary Hodder, Dave Taylor and Halley Suitt, RSS and Feeds: Monitoring the Blogosphere and the Buzz
  • Ben Edwards, Nicki Dugan and Betsy Aoki: Corporate Blogging Policy
  • Betsy Aoki, Korby Parnell, Jeff Sandquist and Jana Carter: Microsoft and Social Media: Lessons Learned from MSDN Community Blogs and Channel 9

I’ll try to live blog each of these sessions (surely there will be Wi Fi). If I get a good connection, I’ll post after every session. Otherwise, they’ll come in a bunch whenever I can get a connection.

I hope you’ll follow along

Aeroplan: This is no way to run a customer loyalty program

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OK. I’ve been a member of Aeroplan since the year the program was founded in the mid-eighties. And I’ve never strayed. CP Air flirted. Wardair came calling. Westjet entices. And Porter Air makes me an offer I can’t refuse.

AeroplanBut I do. I’ve always been faithful to Air Canada and Aeroplan.

And how is my faithfulness rewarded? Well, last Tuesday I posted about my disappointment at reading in the Globe and Mail that Aeroplan had changed the rules applying to the million miles that I had earned by being a faithful Air Canada customer. The miles I have earned over the past 20 years will now have an expiry date applied to them.

I’m one of those people who travels a lot for work. And I just don’t have the time to use my miles now. But I look forward to the trip in the future. And now Aeroplan has changed the rules RETROACTIVELY.

So, let’s add insult to injury. Did I mention that I read about the change IN THE NEWSPAPER? So, where was my personal message from Aeroplan? Well it arrived last night – one week after I read about the announcement IN THE NEWSPAPER!

Sheesh. Aeroplan, get an email campaign manager. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that you can notify all your members simultaneously.

But, heck. I guess I matter one heck of a lot less to you than the shareholders. And after all, you want to raise your share price. Service to members is just an afterthought.

And for those who are still with me, here is how Aeroplan opened their belated communication to me – one of their VALUED members:

Go to aeroplan.com

October 24, 2006 Dear Joseph,

Aeroplan recently announced changes to the program’s terms and conditions affecting mileage expiry. We have received calls and emails from our members asking for greater clarification of these changes. Aeroplan would like to take this opportunity to apologise for any confusion created, clarify these changes and explain what they mean to our members.

…

Best wishes,

Rupert Duchesne

Rupert Duchesne
President and CEO
Aeroplan

Well golly gee Rupert – (I hope that my million miles and twenty years of loyal travel entitle me to call you Rupert) – your apology is accepted. But holy shades of Edelman! You took a whole week to think it would be nice to communicate with your members directly?

Aeroplan, I’m disappointed in you. It seems that customer loyalty goes only one way…

UPDATE: The Aeroplan program  clearly arouses strong emotions in its detractors. I’ve continued to receive comments on this post for more than a year after I originally published it. Unfortunately, many of the comments use very strong language and make claims and allegations that I cannot verify. Others come from email addresses that I cannot verify. So, I have decided to close comments on this post.

CPRS speaks out on Canadian Government procurement practices

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Marketing Magazine reports that a task force of the Canadian Public Relations Society has made representations to Canada’s Minister of Public Works and Government Services, Michel Fortier.

According to Marketing, “the PR industry is seeking a transparent and fair process in the selection of PR firms and an end to a bidding system in which ‘you’ve got to reinvent the wheel every time there’s an RFP.'”

CPRSI am a member of the Task Force. And I believe that the issues discussed are of importance to all practitioners. All members of the community, not only the members of the task force, should have an opportunity to consider and discuss these issues. So, to that end, I’m making the full Task Force report available for downloading. I invite anyone interested in this topic to download the complete CPRS Task Force Submission.

Read it. Think about it. And tell me what you think about the issues it raises.

A must-read post for all marketers and public relations practitioners

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Eric KintzI’ve only recently discovered Eric Kintz’s blog, but I’ve quickly discovered that he’s writing some of the most thought provoking posts around.

Recently, Eric pulled together a top-tier panel of marketing thinkers to reflect on the implications of blogging for marketing. His discussants included:

David Armano – Creative VP – Digitas – Logic + Emotion
Peter Blackshaw – CMO – Nielsen Buzz Metrics – Consumer Generated Media
David Churbuck – VP Global Web Marketing – Lenovo – Churbuck
Dan Greenfield – VP Corporate Communications – EarthLink – Bernaisesource
Eric Kintz – VP Global Marketing Strategy – Hewlett-Packard – Marketing Excellence
Will Waugh – Senior Director, Communications – ANA – Marketing Maestros 

Dan GreenfiedlDan Greenfield’s comments on public relations and blogging in particular caught my attention – in part for their departure point portrayal of PR as an outdated top, control-oriented discipline, but mostly because Dan captured the essence of the opportunity that blogging offers for public relations.

“…blogging and PR complement each other. Companies are looking to find new ways to reach media saturated consumers who are tuning out more traditional forms of communication. With blogging, PR is no longer beholden to traditional media to legitimize a story. Corporate blogs can be used for the “long tail” of news that does not warrant a press release (or would not get picked up). And because real estate in cyberspace is infinite, you can escape the time or space restrictions of a news broadcast or publication. …

“Unlike the one way communication of a press release, a blog posting is two way, allowing for comments and feedback. As such, blogging lets companies personalize the news. It provides a platform for individual perspective and permits an informal tone that may be “inappropriate” for a more traditional news story. Blogs are more about opinions than just the facts. But that’s ok. People can contextualize the information and adjust their expectations accordingly.

“We are living an age where boundaries are collapsing, definitions are changing and roles are combining. Blogging and PR need each other, belong with each other, even though they can sometimes appear to be working against each other. I don’t think blogging will replace PR, especially when the news is financial or material in nature. As in life, there is always room for both formality and informality. The key is to understand when each is appropriate.” 

I think that Dan is right on. But I’d go farther.

Six degress of perspective

Public relations has always been about conversation. In the past, we have prepared ourselves for the crucial conversation with media gatekeepers. We have studied their interests and previous writings. Then we have drawn out those aspects of our client’s story that would dovetail with the interests and perspective of the journalist we wanted to reach (and good PR practitioners would recognize when they had a story that would not fit a media contact’s interests and not bother that person). Once we were sure that we understood the interests and perspective of the media contact, we’d make the all important call – hoping that our homework would cause him to want to stay on the phone past the crucial first 20 seconds. Talk about the ultimate in permission marketing! Case by case. Call by call.

I believe that this perspective gives PR practitioners a head start in the conversational conventions that underpin social media. We have been “other focused,” spending as much or more time trying to understand the interests of our media contacts as we have framing the messages of our clients. And we have understood that our job wasn’t done by simply blurting out the messages. Instead, we have prepared ourselves for intensive and challenging questioning about what we were saying and what lay behind it. We were successful only to the extent that we could successfully engage in a two way conversation.

Sound familiar? You’re right. We have lived in micro form the cut and thrust, the free flow of conversation in the blogosphere. We have the skills. We have the aptitude. But we must open our eyes to the potential that this represents.

We must be prepared to step out from behind the veil of ghost writer or spokesperson and take ownership of our communications.

Of course, this means that the social media communication practitioners will work only for clients that we genuinely support and causes that we sincerely support. And isn’t that a good thing? Won’t that strip away some of the cynicism that causes people to believe that PR practitioners will work for anyone willing to pay their fees? I know that’s not true of the people I’ve worked with. The new era of social media will expose any mercenaries who persist. And it will restore pride to the vast majority of public relations practitioners whose client base consists of companies and causes about which they are passionate.

The era of social media: let’s embrace its potential.

Heading to Seattle for the Blog Business Summit

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Blog Business SummitI’m travelling to Seattle this week to attend the Blog Business Summit. They have a great line up of speakers this year, including Buzz Brugeman, Chris Pirillo, Dave Taylor, Jason Calacanis, John Battelle, John Furrier, Jory Des Jardins, Maryam Scoble, Matt Mullenweg, Ponzi Indharasophang, Tara Hunt, Tris Hussey and Robert Scoble.

I plan to blog about the sessions I attend. So, I hope that you’ll subscribe to my feed and follow along with me.