Track: Social Media Outreach Best Practices

Real-live outreach programs from our attendees. A panel of experts offer constructive improvements...to creatives, calls to action and blogger targeting. Advertising exec and momblogpreneur Liz Gumbinner moderates a panel including Susan Getgood, Mir Kamin and Maria Niles. All of these fine panelists have been on both sides of the marketing/blogger equation...and can feel your pain, even as they hope to help you not get blown up in the future!

Welcome to Improve This Pitch!

Introductions -

Susan - 20 years in software industry experience, strategic marketer with her own company (getgood strategic marketing), well known in mom blogosphere
Maria - CEO of Consumerpop marketing, background working with Kraft, Kleenex, Campbells, Contributing Editor to BlogHer, writes entertainment blogs, contributes to 5 blogs
Mir - pro blogger with 7 sites, first blog was wouldacouldashoulda, and she privy to lots of pitches.
All three have backgrounds in advertising and marketing as well as being bloggers, so can speak to both sides.
Liz - writes mom 101, also cool mom picks, a review blog for parents for products, background in ad agency

Liz: Why are we here? Because the old PR paradigm is not working anymore. It seems we're hearing that a lot, but PR people don't get it. They still use the traditional model of taking a press release and blasting it out and seeing what sticks. Susan got one recently that hhad been sent to 30,000 people. There's no personal touch, and that approach is not working anymore.

Liz sharing a pitch that she received:

"Dear Liz: I'm in a bind. Want to talk to you about great tasting food and regularity." Blah blah, it went on, to the tune of 12 paragraphs about why she should write about colon health cereal on her blog (where colons are not normally discussed.) Normally she would just delete something like this but it was too funny, so she saved it for this conference. Sadly, she is getting more pitches like that are like this than not. This session is to help figure out the difference between bloggers and journalists, and how to have your efforts NOT blow up in your face, since bloggers are a volatile bunch and we love to bitch about bad pitches.

Mir - Admits she is very passionate about pitches she gets and is very vocal about ones she doesn't like!

Why wouldn't you just ignore and delete bad pitches? She does sometimes, but she's frustrated: She's being pitched on her personal blog for things that have no relevance, like events in countries she doesn't live in and things she never ever talks about. The pitch claims they know you, but the content makes it very obvious that they don't know you. She and Liz often talk to each other about the bad pitches they get, and will also often respond to the company about how bad their pitch is and give them advice.

It feels insulting as a personal blogger to receive these pitches because they approach her like a journalist. Journalists exist to disseminate informaiton, that's their job. Mir blogs because it is passionate for her, she wants to do it. To be treated like a number devalues what she is doing. They ask her to pitch for them for free, and they don't pay attention to who she is and what she does. if you're going to approach on a personal level, know her on a personal level.

Susan - There is a huge difference between being personal and being personalized. In most of these cases, the pitches aren't personal: they have your name but the pitch is generic. They forget that the blogger is not a journalist, they are not the intermediary like the journalist is. The blogger is not *just* the delivery medium, not just the voice: the blogger is also the audience.

At her blog at getgood.typepad.com, Susan has written a manifesto including four Ps of what marketers should do to approach bloggers. Marketers need to keep in mind that blogging is Personal, and it's about Passion. Bloggers write because they care about a topic, they are passionate about it. Even if they monetize it, they still started out with a passion, and that's why they are there.

One of the four Ps is Prepare. This is the step most agencies don't do as well as they should: getting to know the person they want to talk to. It is a huge message: *read the blogs you're targeting*. Yes, it's time consuming, but it's probably the only way to get it right.

Second P - participate. You have to be a part of the community you're talking to. Get in there and be a part of the conversation. If this is your product or your service, then I can't imagine why you wouldn't want to talk to your customers. Once you've done that, then you can send the pitch.

Maria - when you're blogging about TV you're not selling a product, you're getting the audience to watch the show. If you want to pitch Maria, read the blog, see what shows she is interested in, find out what she's watching already, if it's a new show, would she be interested in that kind of show? etc. Great way to reach the right people. All TV pitches she's gotten have been personalized. They used her name, and from the content she can tell they read her blog. The pitches offer something useful for her and her readers- exclusive content, pictures, interviews. What they offer enhances the blog content she already provides and her readers will appreciate this. They get it right in terms of being friendly, respectful, not insistent or demanding, offering and allowing her to choose whether to take it up on it. Maybe Hollywood folks are used to egos!

Question: What are red flags in a pitch that automatically make you less interested?

Mir - When get a pitch that starts HEY, wouldacouldashoulda! (ie. they use her blog's name instead of her name) she knows she won't be interested. She received a pitch a couple of days ago. The very first sentence of the pitch said, if you want to write about this information please use the following sentence. (room filled with shocked gasps!) Bloggers don't really take well to being told what exact words to use. She has gotten pitches formatted in six different fonts, ones with carat marks that shows it's forwarded content, ones with the wrong name and telling her about something that she would never be interested in in a million years, ones targeting the wrong geographical location. She's often found herself e-mailing people back and tellilng her everything she did wrong. In one case, apparently so many people wrote this pitch-er back that she sent out a second email defending herself, which was worse ("I understand you don't live in NYC but you have friends who do!")

Liz - us bloggers are all smartasses. We tend not to ignore bad pitches, we respond to them or tell each other about them. It frustrates her to no end when she takes the time to tell a PR person what they did wrong and how to approach her and they don't write her back.

Mir - She once received an email where the pitch-er called Mir by her blog name and not her actual name. She wrote them back letting them know that this was an issue, and was responded to with "a lot of people like to be addressed by their blog name and not their real name". This was a big issue: Don't tell the blogger they're wrong if they take the time to correct you!

Liz -once got a pitch from a food company. "Since you've written about living healthy"...She wrote back, "where exactly do I write about living healthy on my blog? " Guy wrote back and dug his hole even deeper.

One example of good engagement - when "Charlie" outreached to Mir. His pitch had the following things going for it:

1. It was obvious that he read her blog, knew her, knew what she wrote about. When he contacted her, it was clear he knew her and her writing style.

2. Approached in a friendly manner. He offered his product up to her to say hey, I'm not exactly sure if you're interested but I have this if you want to try it.

The approach made Mir more responsive to anything else coming from him in the future. She'll now always read his emails adn take the time to respond. Even if she says she thinks the idea is a bad one!

Susan - one thing you need to remember is many bloggers have more than one blog. Pitchers need to understand that each blog has a purpose. Pitch to the right blog - and approach the person and not the blog.

Maria - Also remember that as marketing/pr people, you spend a lot of time with the product or service and you believe in it: the bloggers don't care like you do and neither will their readers. You need to tell them what is in it for *them*.

Question. Person in the music world, feels the bloggers are the snarkiest ones in the world, has had a bad experience with dealing with music bloggers. Knows why publicists are pitching you, all day long clients are screaming at them about 'what did this blog say'? Sucks to be a publicist sometimes when you have clients who really don't understand blogosphere. Many times when they read blogs - cannot find bloggers' names. Only info you can find is what on the website and often can't even find it there. How do you approach these people?

Mir: you don't need to address her as "Mir Kamen" Mir is good. If a blogger doesn't have their name on there, realize that it's possible that could be for a reason - they may not want to be pitched.

Susan - people are anonymous for different reasons. In that case, you could simply say "hi" and provide a really good pitch, not just "Hi, blog name". If you're using email blasts STOP NOW PLEASE.

Liz - or just say, "I cannot find your name!" be honest.

Question: blogger has background in PR, doesn't mind news releases. Why isn't there a "don't send me a news release" list?

Maria - most bloggers do not have a journalism background, and that's what PR people need to understand.

Liz - people's personal blogs are more like their home than their business. You're talking about very personal issues, revealing yourself, and then someone comes along and pitches you to pimp their product. It's offensive. It's the same as pitching the right audience in traditional media - you wouldn't pitch nine inch nails to parents magazine.

Susan - Once saw a pitch with a 1000 word email and a 1000 word attachment, blasted out without any attempt to make it relevant to the blogger.

Maria - There is one narrow slice where receiving a press release may be appropriate - went to a tech conference to cover it for blogher. She's on a list now from that conference where she gets press releases all the itme, but in this case was filling the role of a journalist, so in that role pitches are ok.

Question - If you've written negative reviews on products, does it make sense for the product folks to come back and comment on the review? Is it insulting?

Mir - Does almost no reviews, if she writes a review it's not because someone pitched her, it's because she has something she loves and wants to talk about it. However, if someone does respond to a negative review there's a wonderful thing that can happen - engagement. One example was when a rash of mom bloggers were having problems with Dell computers and writing about it. Dell people started popping in to the blogosphere and offering to help. Great example.

Maria - if someone tried to use the product and had difficulty, a great response is "wow, that's great feedback" and offer to help fix it. Take the opportunity to turn an unhappy customer in to happy customer.

Susan - writes both complimentary and non complimentary things about companies - and has gotten no feedback on either. To her it seems strange that they aren't reading the words.

Maria - if someone takes tthe time to respond to your pitch in any way, you should write them back.

Question - reviews business books, always floored at people who don't respond when they review books because it's additional presence for them. Sometimes an author will come on and say "thank you for the review", or ask to use the feedback in other PR. it's win/win, because the blogger is looking for personal publicity too.

Liz - Exactly, when they highlight you, it makes you want to do more business with these people.

Question - person works for food client, trying to engage bloggers. What about the idea of doing an exclusive interview with a top chef that would drive traffic, would this be something that might interest bloggers? What are unique things pr firms can do to engage bloggers?

Susan - one of best campaigns she's seen was for greenstonemedia - gave a bunch of bloggers exclusive access to Gloria Steinem. That has to be something that the blogger wants to write about.

Maria - Exclusivity is a big benefit. She got an offer from a show that has an amazing strong female character, one that was great for blogher readers. They offered the bloggers the chance to interview the stars, only 10 blogs would have these interviews, great to drive traffic.

Mir - You need to pay attention and need to be specific. For that idea, you wouldn't pitch it to every food blog, because every food blog is not the same. All blogs tend to get lumped in to a uniform group, but we're all different, different subjects, different geography.

Maria - For example, some food bloggers talk about food you eat, some talk about food you make. Don't confuse the two. And pay attention. One blogger was very vocal about her hatred of a certain company and their processed foods - then they pitched her. Ha.

Question - Do we as bloggers like association with mainstream reporters or do we like to look at ourselves as bloggers? Are we regular media or are we a different beast?

Mir - views herself as a journalist for some of her gigs. She writes a blog for a client about certain things - to get press releases for that subject is perfectly OK, but when they pitch her on her personal blog the same way it's insulting. They want her but they don't know why they want her, they just think she has a lot of eyeballs.

Maria - You can't just go to technorati and look at the numbers and find your bloggers that way.

Liz - the content is just as important if not more than the demographic.

Susan - I know we're talking a lot about the mommy blogger segment. These rules apply to any segment, but big consumer companies want to reach mommy bloggers, this is why most examples are coming from this group.

Maria - Some bloggers do some gigs as a journalist, yes, but you still have to pay attention and get it right. eg. at BlogHer - all the editors are women. Someone got all the addresses of the editors - pitched all editors on product for babies. Sent it to non- moms, sent to some men!

Question - March of Dimes - product is content for before/during/after pregnancy. They want to draw attention to the fact that they have information. How would a blogger feel if march of dimes commented on a post or emailed you saying hey, I saw you had this issue, here's some information? How would that come across?

Mir - given that it's information and not a product, Mir would leave the comment up and let people see it. However, a pitch out of the blue on baby stuff she would delete since it would be obvious that they don't read her blog, otherwise they'd know she isn't in a baby stage of life.

Liz - you can also consider framing it as helpful information - I know you write about this specific issue, here's information that we have that might help. When you're dealing with personal stuff, it would be nice if it felt like an altruistic move. Just tread lightly.

Maria - in even offering information, know your audience! See huge oprah blogstorm on thyroid issue for example.

Susan - When you approach them in this case, tell them you've noticed their issue, tell them you have more information and let them know you can send it to them.

Question: Jen is an artist, writes about creativity. As a creative person, she sometimes wishes people would write her and say "we love your blog, we love creativity, can we collaborate?" Turn it in to working together as partners as opposed to a push/pull thing. A great approach is to craft a relationship with the blogger.

Susan - exactly, this is a prime case for blogger relations. Traditional marketing can slice and dice and reach out to people because they match a certain demographic profile. But outreach to bloggers is like making friends.

Maria - We realize in this session that we're picking on the marketers, but we *are* marketers. We know both sides and we're trying to help.

Mir - When she gets a pitch that basically says "write about me so I can get publicity" she will write back and say "if all you want is space on my blog, then go buy an ad on the ad network." Do you want advertising or do you want to relate to a blogger? For PR folk, be clear about what you want before you go out into the blogosphere.

Question - Person is a blogger and podcaster - another suggestion would be sponsorship. She likes to podcast on her blog, if a company were to come to her and say hey, we like what you're doing, can we sponsor your podcast? She'd be very up for that. The marketers should realize they maybe don't have to be blogged about, but they can attach themselves in a different way to successful content.

Susan - Great point - marketers should ask the blogger "what can I do for you?"

Question - have you thought about taking your email address off your blog if bad pitches are too cumbersome? - do you think that bloggers will remove email addresses?

Mir - I doubt it. Blogs are conversations and people don't want to not give you a way to contact them.

Maria - Looks at it as spam management. It is so worthwhile to have the email address out there that it wouldn't be worth it to cut it off just to cut out the bad pitches.

Susan - And even if she wanted to take it down it's too late, she's on so many social networks that she's totally findable no matter what.

Liz - We want to hear from Maria about metrics and measuring the success of why you do this in the first place.

Maria - If you are pitching to a traditional journalist you know the success criteria. You can say X readers read something. If you get something in the NY times, you get demographics. You can't really figure that out with blogs. If you are smart setting it up, there are ways to measure it quantatitvely. Eg. give out a "code" to redeem, and give every blogger a different code to track. Set a fixed time period and measure your sales response. Test whatever it is you're trying to drive and see if it moves. If you want to drive awareness, then you look at the blog's metrics and see how the numbers change. Look at it as a way of doing qualitative research. Get ideas on how to best outreach and build your campaigns. It's tough to sell this non traditional approach to people who only know the traditional way.

Question - interested to hear about getting pitches in comments. Would have thought that would be a way of interrupting the convesation. If you have a conversation going about a topic, is it appropriate for a producer of a product to wade in to say I can help with X product?

Mir - tricky territory. if you leave it in the comments it sounds like a pitch and you're looking for publicity. Mir is much more likely to respond positively if it's an email.

Maria - if the comment adds quality to the comments - it's no problem, if it provides context and information. Something like that can be done. But the more personal it is the more tricky it is.

Mir - Don't pretend you aren't from a company if you are. Please be transparent, people will figure you out.

Susan - If I put a comment on someone's blog and mention a product, it's almost a guarantee it's not a client's product. If it's her personal opinion she'll do it in the comments, if it's a client's she'll talk via email. Only exception to this rule is correcting blatantly wrong information and even then be careful.

Question: You're saying initial outreach should be a personal email. She's heard of social media press releases with links and video. Should she be using that?

Maria - that could be a whole conference on to itself, lots of differing opinions on the social media press release.

Mir - Once got a pitch like that with links to youtube videos that were just awful. She could have totally torpedoed them on her blog.

Maria - Ultimately if it's just a fancy press release it will be about as successful as a traditional one.

Question - What if I just want to tell you about a promotion or a contest?

Mir - Sure, if it doesn't contain the line "if you want to write about us use the following sentence".

Susan - once you do reach out to someone and they write back and want to engage with you, you need to make sure you STAY engaged. If they reach out and you don't respond, you've lost the relationship and probably permanently.

Question - rules of engagement, what info do you want when you're sending out products?

Liz - understand that if you're giving bloggers products, there could be limitations and conflicts for the blogger. Ad networks like BlogHer say you cannot keep the product if it's over a certain value. Marketers should be aware these conflicts can occur.

Maria - And understand that when you say "I can't accept it because of my ad contract" you really can't accept it!

Question - She gets a lot of pitches from publicists and from people who "think" they are publicists! What percentage of pitches come from companies that should know better, vs. people who are just making honest mistakes?

Maria - 90% of pitches she gets are getting it wrong. The ones she has received from companies that are getting it right range from smaller firms to large ones.

Liz - keep in mind bloggers get solicitations from other bloggers all the time (let's swap links etc.) and these can still be done badly.

Mir - doesn't feel bad turning down PR companies, but does feel bad if gets pitched badly from fellow moms because she'll still turn it down.

End of session, thanks to all!