In Defense of PR: View from A Blogger / PR Practitioner

When I was 24 I got my first real PR agency job. The agency was one of the hottest and fastest growing in the San Diego tech sector. We had red walls, a fully stocked refrigerator and "team-building outings." The CEO had her slew of 20-something girls in little business suits, lined up in their cubes pitching, writing and trying to figure out what the hell a 802.11 repeater was. 

Let me tell you a little about Public Relations... see, there has always been a misunderstanding of what it really means. 

Public Relations is the forward facing communicator for a company, brand or product. This department writes the news of the company and spins it to make it a good story for public consumption. PR professionals are paid to get news to journalists in such a way that a journalist wants to write about it.

But the reality is that for every piece of news, you are lucky if you get one - five publications to cover it. So you constantly build your list of contacts through journalists who write similar stories, cover your client's competitors or look to understand the space you are in. And part of an overall plan is keeping journalists informed on news information and story ideas by "blasting" pitches to lists. Are the lists perfect? Never. Does a PR person try their hardest to keep the lists as clean and relevant as possible? They should.

A common complaint I hear is that the pitch isn't personalized enough. PR people use massive data bases - Cision and Vocus to name a few - to form their lists. These databases have very, very basic information listed about journalists and, more recently, bloggers. Mainly keywords and a snippet from your bio. When a PR person searches through the system to build lists, they will search for general phrases. A shampoo company may search for things like "beauty products" and "reviews" - so if your niche is organic-only products, your name may slip through the cracks and your name added to the list. Why? Because the bio on the database may make you look like the IDEAL CUSTOMER for this shampoo and there is a chance - maybe only a slight one - that you will want to write about their story/brand/product. 

And journalists write these articles at no cost to the company/brand/product. 

Yes. Journalists write for FREE. 

Well, kinda. See, it's the job of the journalist to fill the publication they write for with valuable news and information to get people to buy and subscribe to their publication. In the PR world if you want to pay for content, that's an advertorial, or a straight up ad. Technically, it's considered unethical for traditional journalists to even get gifted with products and services.

Here is where PR people and bloggers don't see eye-to-eye.

Bloggers see it as "I have this amazing platform that I've worked my ass off to get to the point it's at, why would I talk about your product, post pictures of your brand and include links to your sites for free?" To a blogger, it's like Revlon asking Vogue to run it's ads for free.

But honestly, in traditional PR, the company would never think of paying for journalistic coverage at publications like Wall St. Journal or Allure. And there is the tipping point. 

So what is a blogger and a PR person to do?

First, we need to keep in mind that both of us are humans, prone to mistakes. How would a blogger feel if a PR person blasted them across social media, or sent an email to 300 PR reps about the professionalism of the blogger? Another thing bloggers need to keep in mind is that today's PR associate is tomorrow's Marketing Manager with a $500,000 blogger relations budget. 

Additionally, as the blogosphere is growing and as we bloggers are trying hard to make a dime, many of us will become the brand/product/company. And we all know who the bloggers are we would want to work with... if you are negative and bitching, would you want to work with you based on what you've said on various platforms?

The thing we all need to keep in mind is that daily, our scope is is changing and morphing into something it wasn't yesterday. We all need to figure it out together, to get us all to the point where we think we should be. 

But this change isn't going to happen overnight. So we all, Bloggers and PR reps, need to work together until that day comes. And I have a few suggestions for bloggers to ease the frustration.

1) Check and see if you are listed in PR databases. If so, contact them with the information you want noted. If you don't like getting press releases - you can put that in your bio. Make sure the databases have the information YOU want noted.

2) Have a full disclosure sheet and few sentence information about how you work with brands easily found on your website. Figure out for yourself what you will do on a straight publicity front, and what you charge for. 

3) NEVER ask for money to review products. Both the integrity of the brand and the blogger are hurt by paid reviews. Obviously you need product to even write a review, but  be up-front with the PR person that just because product is sent, they are not guaranteed a review or mention. 

4) Be professional. Don't take on everything. It's OK to just delete emails that are not right for you. It's ok to email back and asked to be taken off a list for a brand you don't gel with and most of all - it's ok to just say "No Thanks!" 

While I don't want the comments to turn into a bitch session on either side - I would love thoughts from bloggers and PR peeps on this! Did I miss anything? Have you had a great experience you want to share? 

 

Teh Lame: Why do your crap posts get the most attention?

A change is in the air in the blogosphere. I don't think anyone really knows what it is, but something is brewing. The status quo for the life of a blogger isn't cutting it anymore. The pennies being paid to the blogging masses for content and sidebar ads are just not equaling the amount of time and vested interest one has in their posts anymore. Becoming brand ambassadors, working with agents and {GASP} actually being paid for our thoughts is the talk of the town. Dare I say a blogosphere revolution is at hand?

Like most, what I started in 2006 as a creative outlet is now a business and a personal brand. While I once hid my blog from prospective employers, my various blogs are now proudly displayed on the top of my resume. It's no longer about free drinks. Its now about how I can successfully support my family using my talents. I'm not kidding myself into thinking I'm the only one out there with that goal. Hundreds of other bloggers out there share my mindset, and hundreds are actually doing it. In this business I talk a lot with people all over the nation about what we are doing, where we hope to go - goals, aspirations, etc. I always come back to content. I've always thought that good content was the key to success, but honestly, that's not the case. 

As we grow and begin to analyze our traffic we are all noticing the same thing - the crap posts are the ones that get read. 

Half asleep, we throw up a rant about Starbucks, desperate for content we write about fall nail trends - and these are the posts that catch fire. Whether they were Stumbled, Pinned or Shared on Facebook, we watch these posts rake in hundreds and thousands of hits. Meanwhile, the beautiful ode to your life-changing decision sits stale, dust gathering on the hit counter. The poignant post you threw your day into about the state of the Mommy Wars goes unnoticed while people are STILL reading about fall nail trends well into the winter months. 

So I ask. Why are the lame posts getting read and the good posts not? 

Is it that the Internet, like the general population, just seems to be getting dumber? Is it that more and more people read blogs from work or from mobile devices - where they only have a moment to decompress, thus leading to the mindless fodder? Honestly, I don't know the answer. But as a blogger and a writer and a professional, it's a little sad to see. Since our pay is based on traffic, as bloggers are we dumbing ourselves down to a traffic generating level? And if we haven't yet - is it only a matter of time until we do? And then what? Then what does the blogosphere become? 

On the flip side, when it comes to actually making decent money from our blogs, we are only as good as our traffic. Retail stores don't carry items that don't sell, so why shouldn't you offer the public what they want? 

So I'm throwing it out there to fellow bloggers - do you notice this same trend on your blog? Are you mindful of this when you write posts?

The Trust Factor

As many of you know, I have an interesting perspective on the whole marketing-to-bloggers thing. Being a PR/Marketing person by trade, I straddle the fence and can truly understand both sides of the coin. {Apparently I can also write sentences that contain multiple cliches - now that's talent!} I can see why brands and companies want to align themselves with bloggers, engage with bloggers and work with them.  And being a blogger, I can tell you that it's really exciting when you are pitched to review a product or attend an event put on by a cool brand. 

A few weekends ago I had the opportunity to attend Bloggy Boot Camp in San Diego. For those of you not familiar with this conference, it's a one-day symposium aimed at helping female bloggers learn more about blogging, refine techniques and gain new ideas to reach their maximum potential. One of the points of topic that left me thinking was the concept of the Trust Factor: do you trust bloggers' opinions?

As the popularity of my other site, the SDMOMfia, continues to grow, this is something I've been thinking more and more about. Right out of the gates, we attracted the attention of local businesses and large brands. I won't lie - it's extremely flattering. When you get an email from a restaurant you love, a gym you've been wanting to try, a spa that wants to treat you to a free massage, you go for it.

But here's the thing. The PR person representing the brand sought you out because they feel that you fit the criteria of their "ideal customer." And since you are a person they want to impress, the experience on a whole is probably better than it would it be for the average Joe on the street. As a senior PR pro, with 12 years of experience (including having the world's largest producer of consumer electronics as a client), I can tell you that the PR person has two goals. The first: to make their clients look good. The second: to impress you.

Does this mean that the bloggers are not being honest in their reviews? Not at all. What it means is that we were wine and dined; all the stops were pulled out. If anything, we are posting an honest reaction to what may be an above average interaction. It's like having people over for dinner. You straighten the house, use the "good china," trade in your sweats for jeans and prepare food that is probably a little higher brow than what you normally would serve. Basically, you're not serving the Kraft Mac 'n Cheese off paper plates. And it's not just bloggers that get this treatment. This is the same treatment professional journalists have been recieving for years. You don't think that when Auto Week reviews the new BMW they send out the base model - no, the reviewer gets the top of the line version with all the bells and whistles. Same with food reviewers.... they are given the best bottle of wine to compliment the meal, they are given multiple dishes to taste and the every item on that plate is perfectly arranged. 

Being in the realm of "mommy bloggers" means that brands and businesses want to reach out to me, and they want me to experience what they have to offer. In return they hope I write about them and tweet about them, thus encouraging others to experience them also. We are a voice - the voice of the main household purchaser, the main decision maker (sorry guys!). But when are we, as bloggers, crossing the line of trust with our readers? At what point do our words mean less because it's unclear if we are just saying what the PR people want to hear or if we really feel a particular way?

It's a very fine line. And one that I hope I don't cross. As a blogger, recently I've had the chance to do some really fun things. I've had free lunches, met interesting people and even gotten new hair. But I do strive to always be open and honest. If I write about something, it's because it's sparked something inside me. I aim to write about things I bought and paid for myself and places that I discovered on my own, as well as the ones I am asked to review. Yes, you will see things that were pitched to me, but I also hope that you know me well enough to trust I'm being honest. Because this is my reputation, both as a blogger and as a professional, and this is my person that I put down for the world to see, and while I may not share every thought that goes through my head, the ones I do share are true. 

A big criticism of bloggers is that we are not trained journalists - most have no education on the ethics of journalism - and we just give positive reviews to get more free things. And yes, that may be the case with some bloggers. Some bloggers have opted to not even do reviews to not tinker with the trust of their readers. But for those of us that do, how does blogger create honest trust with their readers? And as a reader, what builds your trust in the blogs that you read?