June 28, 2012

Integrity is inherent in earned media but not paid

Yesterday I wrote a post called Blogger outreach is earned media not paid, right? wherein I asked if earned media was a think of the past and whether payola, pay-per-post, pay-per-link, sponsored posts, and site sponsorship were the new de facto in digital PR. This morning, Gail Gardner wrote a post in response, accusing us digital PR professional of stealing from bloggers since we agencies do get paid for doing blogger outreach only to “talk bloggers into working for free” on our behalf:

These companies want to argue they deserve “earned” media coverage when what they are really doing is BUYING that awareness by paying PR agencies to go out and sell it for them. They aren’t earning it by some good deed or being awesome – they are spending money to get a PR agency to talk bloggers into working for free on their behalf.

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June 28, 2012

Your social media plan needs to shut up and start listening

I know you. You’re spending all of your social media marketing budget on promoting your brand, products, and services; that’s fine except you’ve either forgotten — or never knew — that social media is a two-way street. It is.

And, something you also didn’t know: social media is two-thirds defense and monitoring — listening — and only one-third promotion and publicity — speaking. Most marketing folks not only don’t get PR but they revile it; sadly, this is what social media is, no matter what you call it: public relations, all aspects of it: publicity, of course, but also crisis management! Continue reading →

March 9, 2012

How to get over social media writer’s block

We’ve all had it. Writer’s block. You need to write something and there’s nothing there. No idea. Nothing seems like the right approach.

Why does it happen? There are six reasons why you’ll have chronic writer’s block when it comes to producing content to feed your social media dragons: blog, Twitter and Facebook. Once you recognize some of these reasons within yourself, you can break out of writer’s block and let the world know what you have to say.

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February 29, 2012

The quantum method of reaching out to bloggers

Look for the cumulative power of the long tail

My long tail blogger outreach strategy is periodically challenged or criticized as being too aggressive.

The argument generally goes as follows: If you send thousands of email pitches to topically and demographically relevant bloggers and online influencers in one go, you’re spamming. The real way to do it right is to reach out blogger by blogger, with each pitch being lovingly and relevantly written in series over time after investing months of time, previous to actually initiating a pitch, becoming best friends.

In my opinion, it is virtually impossible to resource enough time, talent and treasure to engage meaningfully with enough people, enough influencers, enough bloggers, to result in the sort of impact required to move the needle with any level of immediacy or timeliness. Continue reading →

February 22, 2012

How one author won over the gun buff message boards

In order to mine social media marketing gold, you really need to roll up your sleeves, put on a pair of sturdy work boots, get into that little elevator, and descend that deep shaft into the gold mine yourself, pick in hand, and get to work.

Message boards and forums are full of marketing gold, but if gold were that simple to collect, everyone would be loaded.

Instead of walking you through the boring pedantics required to be an effective message board marketer, I will instead share with you an exemplar using the author and journalist Paul M. Barrett, author of the new New York Times best-selling book about the cult and culture of the Glock handgun, Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun.

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February 16, 2012

Round two for forums and message boards?

The problem with most social media marketing agencies is that we’re fickle. We tend to keep rushing into the future, adopting anything and everything hot and new and overlooking the rest. In our constant hunger for the latest and greatest, we have mostly abandoned working class heroes like forums and message boards, preferring exciting new money to boring old money. But isn’t any kind of money good?
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