At this year’s BlogWorld and New Media Expo, I found myself in the hottest session with the panel of experts, Brian Solis, Chris Brogan, Jason Falls, and Lee Odden, all discussing blogging and PR. The panelists used a hashtag, #pr2, in the session to capture feedback, reactions, and general thoughts real-time through Twitter. Besides being a great idea, the hashtag created a buzz, encouraged audience participation, led to a truly interactive session, and helped me write this follow-up post. Speakers everywhere should learn from this example: create a hashtag and find a way to display the tweets to your audience.
Be Human, Build Relationships with Bloggers
A number of important ideas were discussed in the session, including the widely accepted social media mindset that “pitching” a blogger is less about the press release and more about the relationship between the blogger and the PR professional. The conclusion being that the PR folks need to take the time to professionally befriend bloggers, make connections, and be human if they’re seriously interested in getting their companies blogged about.
Blogger Relationship ROI?
When the panel opened things up for questions, the audience was stunned by a question from Michelle Evans, Marketing Services Manager for Grouse Mountain, who said the following (this is a paraphrased version)…
Why should I take the time to build relationships with bloggers who don’t have a ton of readers? Where’s the ROI?
She went on to talk about the time it takes to build a relationship—time being a commodity that she, and/or the PR people she works with, have to justify to senior management—with time spent to build a relationship being disproportionate to the value that a blogger can provide, given most bloggers don’t have a TechCrunch-size audience.
A member of the audience said…
Her tweet tries to clarify a bit…
It seems to be a question that Evans is really trying to explore, she states the following in a blog post dated before BlogWorld…
The challenge for people like me (marketing types) and our cohorts (PR people) is to figure out where the line is drawn between giving people free stuff just because they write a blog and putting out meaningful pitches to influential bloggers in our area of business.
and then she asks…
Where do you think that line should be drawn? Subscribers? Alexa rankings? Google page rank? Technorati? Which bloggers make the list of desirables? Tell me…
Rethink Your Strategy; From PR to Community
Michelle Evans isn’t wrong. She’s thinking like a traditional marketer. In many ways, her challenge is the challenge that many marketers and PR professionals face. She blogs, she tweets, but where does she find the ROI to support blogger outreach to the people that write her checks? I talk to people everyday who have the same challenges.
This is how I would advise a client of mine:
- Take a step back. Stop thinking about which bloggers to give free stuff to or send meaningful “pitches” to, and start thinking about why you want to reach bloggers in the first place—to get more customers/clients. Stop trying to find the line that separates the influential bloggers from the non-influential bloggers. That line doesn’t exist.
- Find your customers online. If the goal is trying to get more customers, start thinking less about bloggers to pitch and more about the people who could belong to a broader community. In the case of Grouse Mountain, the broader community would probably consist of locals, action sports enthusiasts as well as the everyday traveler. How do you reach these people online? Instead of finding bloggers with alot of traffic, search for people, blogs, and twitter users with action sports and travel interests. Listen to them. Engage them in real conversations. This is where the relationship building comes into play. You can’t measure each relationship, but you can track the % change of company mentions across the web, or even across social sites.
- Make your customers feel like rock stars. Give your customers a platform, and give them a reason to talk about you. All the activities that Grouse Mountain offers are inherently desirable for people to capture and share with their friends online and off. Focus on finding ways to make it easier for visitors to share their memories online. Maybe the average customer doesn’t use Twitter or doesn’t blog, but they will likely take digital photos. Wouldn’t it be cool if the company encouraged visitors to tag their photos with “Grouse Mountain” and used their website to display these photos, or make postcards (contact creator, give them credit and % of sales) out of the truly phenomenal photos like this one? Even better, Grouse Mountain could display all “Grouse Mountain” tagged content online or in the lodge. What a cool way to make customers for life. People love to see their name and/or their content on display, just reference #pr2 effect for an immediate way to prove this.
- Take baby steps to prove ROI. The bottom line is that management is never going to green light resource heavy endeavors without proof. I get that. You have to start small and with something measurable. Pinpoint the things you can measure and measure change: online mentions, tagged photos, twitter followers, blog comments, and, of course, ticket sales and return customers. Ultimately it will come down to management being open to try something new and understanding why it’s important to inspire the community to talk about them online. Not everyone is ready to rethink their marketing strategy.
These are just my thoughts, I’d love to hear what you think. Do you face the same challenges in the workplace? How do you show ROI? How do you demonstrate the value of social media and/or blogger outreach efforts to management?
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