Disruptive Dialogue Special - 7 Deadly Sins of Pitching Bloggers

A special episode of Disruptive Dialogue is now available.  It is a brief 15 minute summary of my 7 Deadly Sins of Pitching Bloggers white paper that was released a couple of weeks ago. This episode of the Disruptive Dialogue Podcast was recorded in Washington, DC and is 14:53.  You can download this podcast as an MP3 or subscribe to the RSS feed to make sure you never miss an episode.

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Transcript:

Chip Griffin: Hello, and welcome to a special edition of the Disruptive Dialogue podcast. I am your host--Chip Griffin. Today I am bringing you a special presentation on the seven Deadly Sins of Pitching Bloggers. It is a white paper that I wrote, and CustomScoop published a couple of weeks ago, and I think that's it's something that a lot of the listeners to this podcast will find very useful.

The seven Deadly Sins tries to encourage you, as a communicator, to be reaching out to the blogosphere, but doing so in a smart way. Doing so in a way that won't get you into any trouble, and in fact, will deliver real results. I think if you are listening to this podcast, you probably already have a general sense that the blogosphere is an important place to be, and can provide real value to PR and marketing pros alike. But perhaps you are not aware of some of the potential pitfalls. So, I want to try to cover the seven big things that you want to try to avoid doing when you are pitching bloggers and trying to get them to pick up on your company, your product, your organization, or your issue.

The first and foremost thing that you have to remember when you are pitching bloggers is that you need to be transparent. Failing to be transparent is the cardinal sin of pitching bloggers, and of interacting with the blogosphere. It's a pitfall that far too many companies have stepped in, in recent months. In particular, we have examples of the Edelman-Walmart situation.

For those of you who are not familiar, Edelman had set up a blog for working families for Walmart. And as part of that effort they had two individuals--a couple--who went RV'ing across America and stayed in Walmart parking lots. Throughout their trip they sing the praises of Walmart, obviously. Unfortunately, it was not disclosed that Walmart had underwritten the effort, and that in fact, Edelman was behind a lot of the promotion for the effort. This is something that the blogosphere reacted to very poorly, and in fact, spent a lot of time flogging Edelman and Walmart over their 'flog' (fake blog).

That's just one of the examples. Another one would be PayPerPost. PayPerPost is a company that got into business about a year or so ago, and their objective was to pay bloggers to write reviews on their blogs. Unfortunately, they did not insist upon disclosure, and the blogosphere, again, reacted very poorly to this. They felt that it was a shady effort aimed at improving search-engine rankings, and deceiving readers. PayPerPost ultimately ended up changing their disclosure policy earlier this year, and now requires disclosure.

However, many bloggers still are upset with the company. And in fact, think that the company needs to go further with its efforts to achieve transparency, because the disclosure policy currently in place does not require disclosure on the individual blog post that has the paid review. In fact, it may just have a blanket disclosure on the site, that the blogger occasionally accepts such payments.

So these are mistakes that you don't want to make. You want to make sure that you are living by the word-of-mouth marketing association guidelines that say that you will always be clear about whom you are speaking for when you are dealing with bloggers.

The second deadly sin that you should avoid is: Appearing to bribe. Now, we know that you're not actually going to go out and bribe a blogger, it's simply not going to work anyway, and of course, bribery is indeed illegal. But what I'm talking about here is the appearance of bribery, particularly when giving out free samples of a product or service. Bloggers--some of them are very receptive to these things, others would prefer not to receive them. You need to make sure that if you are handing out free samples, that you check in advance with the blogger. You don't just send things unsolicited. Make sure that they are open to it, and that they do not have a problem with it.

In particular, some bloggers recently had difficulty with an effort by, again, Edelman; and I'm not picking on them, but they worked with Microsoft to hand out laptops preloaded with Windows Vista, in order to allow bloggers to try it out in advance and post reviews. They didn't insist on a positive review, in fact, they didn't insist on a review at all. They simply made the equipment and software available. Unfortunately, a number of bloggers felt that this was indeed bribery, because the laptops and software cost in excess of $2,500 to $3,000. I would argue that in order to test the product, that that was entirely necessary. But nevertheless, the companies involved got a lot of bad publicity off of it.

So, you want to be very cautious when you are handing out free samples and tickets to events and those sorts of things. To be sure that you are doing it in above-board fashion and that the bloggers are receptive to it before you send them.

The third deadly sin is: Lacking your own blog. If you are going to engage in a conversation in the blogosphere, it certainly helps to have your own blog; and many bloggers, frankly, expect it. Now, there are real advantages to having your own blog, beyond simply having good relations with the bloggers themselves. It provides you with an outlet for your information and messaging, so that you can start the blog conversation in a form that you control entirely, and is completely transparent. You then need only work with bloggers to link to your post or talk about it, rather than having to get them to write something original.

It is often easier to get bloggers to join an existing 'meme', as it is called, (in other words a topic of discussion online), rather than starting from scratch. So, not only will it improve your relations with bloggers, it will actually help you get your message out more clearly.

The fourth deadly sin is: Making a bad pitch. Now obviously, this whole podcast is about bad pitching. But in particular, what I'm talking about is the pitch itself. When you write that email to a blogger, you want to make sure that it is personal, and not a spam blast email type approach. You want to make sure that you are really tailoring it to the blogger and his or her audience, and you're not merely sending a press release. You also want to make sure that you're coming across in a conversational tone in that email, and that it does not sound like what bloggers would call 'corporate speak'.

And finally, you want to make sure, just as you do in traditional media pitching, that the pitch you have is actually worth it. Don't go out and try to convince a blogger to write about something that's irrelevant. If you don't believe that it's a good pitch, it probably isn't. If you don't think it's not a good product or service, it probably isn't. And if you try to convince a blogger of something that is not true and not real, you will simply be hurting your own credibility. So, make sure that you give a good pitch, and that you will be able to convince the blogger effectively.

Sin number five is: Being scripted. Just as in making a bad pitch, you want to make sure that you pay attention to what you're saying, but you don't want to make it sound like it is out of corporate talking points. It's important that you have a candid conversation with bloggers. You want to make sure that you don't come across as someone who has over thought every word. You want to make it appear that you're just writing a casual email. Which in fact, you should be, because you should be comfortable dealing with bloggers, they're people just like you and me. In fact, they're very receptive to pitches when they're done in an appropriate manner.

You also want to make sure that when you're talking with bloggers, that you're candid in these conversations. There's nothing worse than providing a canned response to any question that they may ask. No doubt you have talking points from another department or from your client that will help you answer difficult questions about whatever you're pitching. Don't merely copy and paste those. Make sure that you're just engaging in conversation as you would with a friend or colleague.

Sin number six is: Forgetting that everything is "on the record." Years ago, I worked in Washington DC in the political universe. One of the things that I was taught very early on there, and was taught to most young communicators there, was the Washington Post Rule. This rule was designed to remind people; that anything you've put in writing, you need to be comfortable with having published on page one of the Washington Post. It was how you made sure that you did a reasonable job of making sure that whatever you're writing was not embarrassing to you or your employer. The same rule applies to communicating with bloggers. In fact, it applies doubly or triply to bloggers, because it is very common for bloggers to simply copy and paste an email from a PR person, and put it on their blog in its entirety. This can be embarrassing if you're not prepared for it.

Now, this doesn't happen all the time, but you need to be sure that you'd be comfortable seeing your email up in lights, as it were. It's something that bloggers do; not only to embarrass people, in fact, many times they do it simply because they're lazy, just as other people are. They simply post it in its entirety as a way to get your message out for you. They feel as if they're doing you a favor. Unfortunately, that doesn't always have the intended results. So, just be cautious and make sure that you are happy with whatever you put in writing being out there for the whole world to see.

Finally, the seventh deadly sin of pitching bloggers is: Making claims that can be easily disproved. My advice here is that no matter how much research you've done, it's likely that bloggers will be able to do it better and faster than you can. When you're talking to a bunch of people who are very familiar with dealing with the online world, they will find out if you are making a bogus claim. You may not even realize that it is.

Let me suggest that there are certain things that you should refrain from using in your pitches. Don't use a lot of superlatives; in fact, try to stay away from all of them if you can. Words like "best," "worst," "fastest," "cheapest;" these are things that all too often can be easily disproved, and you don't want to be the one to have it happen to you.

Let me give you a concrete example here. "First" is one of the most dangerous things that you can say. This is something that a company called Crayon found out not too long ago when they launched their company, and they did so inside of Second Life, a virtual world community. Now, Second Life is the hot thing these days, and Crayon is a company focused on social media promotion. They claimed to be the first company launched inside of Second Life. Unfortunately, their research was faulty, and bloggers quickly pointed out, that in fact, there were quite a few other companies that had launched there prior to them. That is not a mistake you want to make, because it's simply embarrassing. Of the seven deadly sins, it's probably the least offensive and the one least likely to cause you significant problems. But nevertheless, it's a problem you don't want to have.

Hopefully these seven deadly sins will help you better understand what you should and should not do in pitching bloggers. I hope that you've taken away that the blogosphere is a powerful place to engage. And as long as you avoid these common mistakes, you will be well suited to communicating on behalf of your company or client.

So go forth, pitch a blogger; just do sell intelligently.

That concludes this special presentation of Disruptive Dialogue. I hope you have found it interesting. If you are interested in a copy of the complete white paper, please visit www.customscoop.com and click on the Resources tab. There you can find the seven deadly sins white paper as well as a number of others that may help you navigate the blogosphere, media monitoring, and media measurement more effectively.

Until next time then, I'm your host--Chip Griffin.

For show notes and more information about this podcast, please visit www.disruptivedialogue.com or visit Chip's blog at www.pardonthedisruption.com. To share your feedback, you can call the comment line at (206) 424-4733, or you can email your comments as text or as an MP3 file to chipgriffin@gmail.com.

Transcription by CastingWords