Mike’s Points

I’m fascinated by human nature, how and why people interact, and the processes of how successful results come to be.

If you’ve done any social media outreach — and been successful — then I assume you’ve also been involved in traditional, offline media relations — and been successful.

While there are many similarities, I’ve found that there are enough differences in the process of suggesting stories to media contacts — whether offline or online.

The similarities should go without saying, like:

• Know the media outlet and person(s) you want to contact. Know what topics are covered, who the audience is, how the people like to receive story suggestions/ideas, etc.
• Know that — no matter if you’re talking to your client or employer about “hits” or “getting placements” — you are still dealing with people.
• While you have some level of influence — you do not have anywhere near the final say as to if a story idea is published. After all, it ain’t an ad you’re suggesting — it’s much more valuable.

But the differences are subtle.

Generally speaking, when dealing with offline media, you’re dealing with a professional. Someone at his/her job. Someone getting paid.

When you are dealing with social media — I’m mostly talking bloggers here — you’re dealing with people with a passion about a topic. While more and more bloggers seem to be making a career out of it, there are still very much elements of dealing with an every-day person who is blogging more out of passion than profession.

The subtly comes in how you contact the two types of media outlets.

Assuming personal preferences don’t dictate otherwise, it seems:

With offline, traditional media, you give them the materials that will make it easier for them to write a story about your suggestion. Materials like sending images or links to images; sending a well-written, AP-Style news release; and coordinating an interview between a reporter and your client/employer.You’re definitely not writing the story for them, but you are doing as much of the leg work as possible.

With online, social media, you are providing access to information, images and people. You direct bloggers where to get the information, and what you can provide (like contact information for a company official, and information that you can’t link to).

While the decision whether or not your story idea is published is ultimately up to the reporter or blogger, it seems more important that the blogger maintains an air of independence and separation from the subject than the reporter. It’s not a huge separation, but because it is the job of reporters to get information, there’s a closer relationship between professional media and PR/media relations personnel.

With bloggers, generally speaking, they didn’t start blogging because they wanted to inform. So, my feeling is that PR/media relations personnel need bloggers way much more than bloggers need PR/media relations personnel.

I definitely don’t mean to impune the objectivity and independence of professional media, but it seems there is a stronger need and desire by bloggers to remain untarnished by PR/media relations professionals.

Thoughts?

-Mike

Often, one of the best results from reading blogs is that it spurs other, related thoughts.

The judgement and weight given to how you differentiate your brand and the need for clarity in communication came to mind after reading the Mark Cuban/BlogMaverick post on Branding and Newspapers, a Lesson in How Not to Brand and Market.

He makes several noteworthy points about the value of differentiation in branding. For example:

Never, ever, ever consider something that any literate human being with Internet access can create in under 5 minutes to be a product or service that can in any way differentiate your business.

If you feel that you must offer this product or service as a means of “keeping up” or as a checklist item that you must have for competitive reasons, then do everything possible to brand the product or service in a manner that segregates it from the masses. Perception is reality. If you can leverage your existing brand to create the perception that yours is different from the masses in some meaningful way, then you must do everything you can to do so.

Creating a perceived differentiation can take the form of promoting better execution or quality of the product or service, or it may be something as simple as just branding it with a different name than the mass product or service.

Failure to do so will pull your brand down to that of the masses or elevate the masses to a position of being better able to compete with you.

For the most part, the emotional ties around a brand are what make it a success, a failure or just mediocre. The strengths of the brand are what allows the company to survive a crisis, and what propels the company to continued growth beyond competitors. And, for weak brands that have no emotional ties and rely on other activites like low-end pricing and commoditization, they struggle in times of crisis and the regular, cyclical market downturns.

But, part of that branding is to clearly communicate what’s so different. Educating the market is often unnecessary time and costs spent away from effectively marketing the brand — and communicating what’s so different, so special, so unique, so in-demand about it.

Sure, education plays into the branding process, but it can be an up-hill climb and distracting from the core message.

Just because someone can quickly, easily duplicate the appearance of what you’ve done — copy a blog like the one you have — it doesn’t mean the content and the quality are also copied. A blog is just a platform. The content is what makes it different.

I’ve been working on this post in my head since Friday. Before finishing it Tuesday evening, I checked back on Mark Cuban’s blog. Lo and behold there was a comment on another post that makes my point — and makes it better. It comes from NYTimes Sports Editor Tom Jolly:

[T]he defining difference among all news sources has been whether the reporting is reliable - and that has been the case since the beginning of time. When you need information - real, trustworthy information - you go to the source you believe in, whether they are distributing their content by word of mouth, on a cave wall, via pamphlet, newspaper, magazine or through a digital format.

We call our “real time” news reports “blogs” because it’s a term our readers have become familiar with, but what we do with our blogs is different than, say, Deadspin or BlogMaverick. The convention is popular because of the ease of posting, but that doesn’t mean the content of our postings is the same as other sites that also describes themselves as “blogs,” any more than the content of our newspaper is the same as other newspapers.

As with any branding effort, there are judgment calls in how to proceed. Yes, you need to set your brand apart from others in the marketplace — but you can’t confuse the marketplace with your communication.

There is no right or wrong answer in the process — until you start getting results and you see where you need to better differentiate or more clearly communicate.

–Mike  

BusinessWeek’s Stephen Baker has some excellent recent posts that let us into the inner workings of how professional media work, and even a preview of the mergence of journalism and blogging.

For the Jan. 23, 2006, issue he authored the cover story, “Math Will Rock Your World.”

His first post talked about how his blogging style crept into his journalism style.

I think blogging strongly influenced the development of the story. When it came time to write, I wanted to write it in a looser more conversational style, like the blog. What’s more, I wanted to be clear with readers from the very start that I knew very little about math, that I was an outsider visiting this world. That sort of disclosure is much more common in blogs. In traditional journalism, by contrast, we usually write as though we know what’s going from the start.

Somewhere I read recently a predication that blogging would be dominated by journalists. I think that’s correct. Like journalism and other products and services, if a blog is lacking in quality and value — however readers define it — no one will read it. The quality and value of blogs will increase as more and more journalists blog — and adopt the tone and even individualistic spirit of blogging.

At the same time, the conversational tone and openness you see in blogs will move into professional, or main stream journalist writing. This is true even for broadcast journalism as podcasts grow in popularity.

Baker also had a couple posts — here and here — in answer to questions and comments about why he didn’t blog about the story while he was researching and writing it. (Baker’s were the result of a post and some comments at BuzzMachine.)

If you want to know about the planning and process behind story development in professional journalism, Baker gives some excellent insight. The jist: It’s about competition. While opening up the story to others for collaboration, it also would’ve opened it up to BW’s competitors.

You wouldn’t ask an engineer to blog about an important new product he or she is developing, would you? (Hopefully not.) So, don’t ask a journalist to tell his or her competitors what’s in the next issue.
– Mike

Technorati tags: journalism, BusinessWeek

Will history repeat itself?

Well, Forbes‘ Daniel Lyons felt the wrath of bloggers with his story “Attack of the blogs,” on Nov. 11.

I wonder how the blogosphere will react to Kathleen Parker’s piece about blogging. (Thanks to Ryan McGrath for the heads up.)

Parker is a bit heavy in some of her comments about bloggers:

“[O]ur new enemies–that interests me most. I don’t mean Al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden, but the less visible, insidious enemies of decency, humanity and civility–the angry offspring of narcissism’s quickie marriage to instant gratification.”

She seems more than a bit offended at the “journalist” tag given to some bloggers: “Bloggers persist no matter their contributions or quality, though most would have little to occupy their time were the mainstream media to disappear tomorrow.”

A self-proclaimed “blog fan since the beginning,” Parker, in all fairness does point out that some bloggers “offer superb commentary” — me? — and some are even “brilliant.” But, she lays in to what I assume she feels are the majority of bloggers: “spoiled and undisciplined.”

While she is overly harsh and brandishes the majority of bloggers in a bad light, she does have a good point. If you don’t like a blog, don’t read it. That’s the same as you can do with any newspaper columnist (like Parker?), talk show radio host or TV program.

“But we should beware and resist the rest of the ego-gratifying rabble who contribute only snark, sass and destruction. We can’t silence them, but for civilization’s sake–and the integrity of information by which we all live or die–we can and should ignore them.”

If you don’t like a blog, ignore it. And, likewise, I’m sure many bloggers will ignore Parker’s future colunns.

Now, the caveat for PR and other communications professionals: You can’t afford to ignore bloggers you don’t like. If they are pertinent to your client or your company, you must monitor them, and react accordingly in the best interest of your client/company. (How you should and can react is another post.)

So, while there is validity in Parker’s “ignore them” point, that can be a costly mistake for those who protect the brands of businesses.
– Mike

Technorati tags: Blogs

The Internet is all about information, right?

Okay, you can make an argument that it’s about communication as well, but you mostly type in www dot something for information. So, here are a couple good sites I can point you to. One is an eye on citizen journalism and other interactive media. The other is for pro bloggers.

Being a journalist by early education and career (and, at heart), I always enjoy the Poynter newsletters and site. While Romenesko is always a good read, I’m becoming a fan of Steve Outing as well. He often writes on “citJ,” as well as other interactive media and newspaper topics.

Thanks to BusinessWeek’s Stephen Baker for pointing me to Performancing. The site is a blog about helping professional bloggers blog. Now, I’m not a professional blogger — I have a life and a real job — but it looks like there is a good deal of information . . . even for us “amateurs.”
– Mike

Technorati tags: Poynter, Performancing, blogging, information