Saturday’s conversations at SMB3 was about blogger outreach programmes (the theme was set way before I received the email) and I think it’s apt. I’ve had conversations with people from various companies asking “How do you decide who to invite?” or “How do you decide who are influencers?” or “How do you quantify influence” and such questions. Clearly who the companies are associated with is a key priority by people both on the agency and the client side. The trust issues in the local blogosphere just means that companies who dare to venture into it, need to take note of some things.
First to the companies: It’s scary but this is not new. Any decision from which newspaper you associate yourself with to which celebrity endorses your product, runs the risk of external events happening and aversely affecting your company by association. Be cautious, not scared.
Here are a few steps you might want to take when deciding who to reach out to or associate your brand with:
1) Credibility & reputation over reach
Reach is an old metric. It doesn’t matter that a blogger (or for that matter, a publication) can reach tens of thousand of people, if no one takes that particular source of information seriously. In fact, associating yourself with a blogger who has a bad reputation that reaches out to tens of thousands online, may do more damage than good to your brand. In essence, you’re much better off finding a fledgling blogger with a solid reputation and small following, and allow the following to grow.
2) Follow the blogger for a decent amount of time
Seeing as how a blogger is viewed in the community can change literally overnight, it would be prudent to follow their blog for awhile before deciding if he or she is a good fit. A couple of good product reviews doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Consistency is the key.
3) See how he/she deals with conflicts
Issues and conflicts pop up every now and then, the important thing is to see how the blogger deals with it. It could range from name calling and personal attacks to open honest discussions resulting in agreeing to disagree. I don’t need to tell you which is preferred.
4) What does the community say?
Ultimately, I find this to be the true litmus test. It’s not really about what the blogger posts, but the community’s reaction to it. What they say in the comments, what they say in the forums, what they say in outbound links. It’s the easy and lazy way to just read a blogger’s content and gauge, but doing proper research means looking at what others say too.
These are just four points that came off the top of my head, I’m sure there are more so feel free to add on in the comments!
Everyone wants something “viral” these days. But the thing is you never really know when something is viral and truly will catch on.
Let me say it’s been two days after the HP TouchSmart PC Blogger’s Nite, and the song for the TouchSmart “Do You Wanna Touch?” has still been ringing in my head. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Check out this 1:29 video.
I’m going to be a little bit candid here. Of all companies, would you have expected one like HP to come up with something this catchy? Melvin blogged about it from Berlin and I hadn’t experienced it first hand and wasn’t convinced how “catchy” or “viral” it was until the blogger’s nite and how everyone is still talking about it:
I have to say, speaking as a social media blogger, that I give HP Singapore full credit for going all out with their blogger outreach programme. The first time they did it I wasn’t invited, but still gave them some praise, the second time they did it I was a part of it (full disclosure: I work with the PR firm that handles HP’s digital strategy and helped conceptualise and organise the event), and the second time I could really see first hand how the HP execs were willing to engage freely with bloggers. There was no “we are executives in the real world and you are bloggers” mentality.
My blog coverage with many many photos is up over on my personal blog if you’re interested. The one thing I wish could be better was to credit the band that did it, or make it available for download. Tying this in to my thoughts on social media in the local music scene, the right social media/digital tie up could just really make your song take off like wildfire. Do you like the song? Let me know!
Awhile ago I questioned whether bloggers with overlapping audiences is a good or bad thing. Last weekend at Social Media Breakfast: Singapore 2, I found out the power of overlapping audiences in conversations to be very powerful indeed.
Case Study: Tommy Print
I don’t know how it works in other countries, but in Singapore, everyone has a name card. So I asked Sheylara (one of the co-organisers) where she got her name card from, to which she said it was a place she didn’t recommend, but that everyone was using Tommy Print. So I asked around a little more and Jayden and Nadia were using it as well. Later on I also got a really nice namecard from Ennn and I asked where she got it from to which she said “some place in Funan” which turned out to be… you guessed it, Tommy Print!
Honestly, Tommy Print couldn’t have gotten better word of mouth if they tried.
So in these conversations you see a couple of things at work. People like me overriding the “blogger” category in the influencer scale, and reaching out to more people who share the same network helps to reinforce the message.
I do, however, suspect that it worked so well in this instance because
1) It happened in real time, face to face as opposed to online
2) The product was a suitable one.
Do you think this is an accurate case study? Are there other variables that should be included?
Without doubt the podcast of the month for April goes to For Immediate Release which I usually have problems keeping up with (it’s released twice a week, one hour each), but the content for April was excellent and I found myself listening to it first among my podcasts.
Live call in show #5 highlights: How should companies reach out in social media without offending the people in it? Great analogy of standing at a party table and interjecting about insurance while they’re talking about something else.
#338 highlights: Kami Hyuse Seaworld case study and talk of the virtual internet
#339 highlights: Dan York & Sallie Goetsch take over. Lots of Twitter news and I have a comment left via Twitter!
I have to say, hands down, if you’re doing anything in the digital/social media space, you need to be listening to this podcast.
Other notable listens this month:
Inside PR #106 - Live episode with a great question “Who owns the social media space?”
Marketing Over Coffee - “Captcha and Turk“, lots of stuff on startups as well as a whole slew of Wordpress plugins I never knew about.
Shill #6 meandered a little this month, but still a worthwhile discussion about whether there’s any value in re-posting news.
Six Pixels Of Separation #98 (interview with Collin Douma), #99 (very interesting, almost counter-intuitive information regarding online reviews) and #100 (long conversation between Mitch, Brian Eisenberg and Avinash Kaushik).
Did you listen to any of these podcasts? Are you listening to different podcasts? I’m always on the lookout for great social media related podcasts, recommendations always welcome.
Final point from my post-IDC Conference thoughts: Are companies interested in social media? If yes, are there some companies who are better suited than others to be involved in social media?
If you are interested in social media, are you suited for it? If you do have a product and it’s good, the benefits are there. Favourable reviews on Google that money can’t buy, brand advocates and a permanent presence on the internet. I only own a printer by HP. But by their blogger outreach programme as well as my positive Snapfish experiences, I’ll keep that brand in mind the next time I’m in the market for a PC.
The question these days doesn’t seem to be “how to” (ie how to use social media) because companies have been hearing a lot about that. Rather the question is “who has”? Who’s taken this big jump into the social media landscape? Have they benefited from it?
I don’t know a lot of case studies locally, but I’m relatively surprised from the few that I do. When first learning about social media, I thought it would favour the smaller players: not a whole not of specialised knowledge required, can be done with a relatively small budget, less concerns over control etc.
But we’re seeing with HP and Starbucks and Microsoft and GM (who will spend 1.5 billion on online advertising, a different story.
Wayne commented that it seems to be happening around the B2C businesses involved in technological products and it also seems to me that it favours the companies with the bigger pockets. Does that mean that the other industries or smaller companies are left out? Absolutely not.
I’d like to hear a little bit more on the case studies you may know of (locally or not) of companies who are actively using social media and what kind of companies they are. Who do you think is a fit? Who’s not? Let me know.
Haven’t had time to really get online after the IDC Conference, because of a night out with my two closest friends Rubin and Reuben with some grown up talk (jobs and marriage). But I really wanted to squeeze out a real quick post on today’s IDC Panel discussion and give you a sense of what I’ll be talking about over the next couple of days.
First, a big thank you to @litford, @byzantin3 and @ridz84 for watching the live webcast and sending me nice messages on Twitter. I’m sorry I didn’t reply because I switched off Twitter on my phone for the day. Didn’t want to be distracted while on stage. Again, thank you for taking 45 minutes off your busy lives to hear what I had to say!
Second, an even bigger thank you to Geek Goddess Estee for coming down in person to support me there and for passing me a book on New Media. Can’t wait to read it!
I’m going to mention @litford twice because he has a recap of the topics and questions and answers on his blog as well as posting the live feed. If you missed it, check out the discussion over there.
Next, I have 5 points that I’m going to blog about in detail over the next few days, but I want to throw them out here first.
1) Advertising and blogging.
Again, Brian has talked about this in his thoughts from the panel. I was listening to a podcast on the way home and coincidentally it serves as a great case study for how to do advertising/sponsorship in the blogosphere. It’s a North American example, but I think it applies pretty well.
2) On Gen Y not reading the newspapers.
MediaSlut as always has started a very good conversation about how this may be worrying. I was told from Debbie that @ridz84 agreed on the live chat with me that most of us don’t read the papers, and before I respond to MediaSlut, I’d like to take a straw poll just to give an indication if I am guilty of a gross generalisation, or if there’s some truth to it.
3) Trust.
I think this came up as a common underlying thread between all the panelists. How important is trust between you and a blogger? Does it even matter? Or is it just another one of the many, many fragmented voices online and there’s no differentiation?
4) Relationships.
I had the great fortune of meeting two brilliant people from HP who I could share myhugeenthusiasmfor Snapfish with as well as talk about the HP Mini-Note a little bit. Very smart people who definitely realise the value of engaging in this space and meeting them in person convinced me that they’re not just doing it because someone at corporate or their PR company said to do so. From talking to them I could tell that they truly believed it was a worthwhile endeavor and that’s the reason why they are doing it.
At the same time I had a couple of crappy experiences today too which I’m not sure I want to talk about in detail, but at the very least I will mention vaguely.
5) Corporate Interest.
I am genuinely, genuinely curious about whether companies are interested in social media/new media/web2.0/whatever as an option right now, (which is already too late). Or if they think this is going to be another fad that will pass through in a year. The reason why I ask this is because I think one big issue, corporate blogging, was brought up today, but it didn’t seem to generate much discussion after the panel. The other thing which is a smaller issue, was that we ended the panel on a note about microblogging, specifically Twitter. I’m sure companies in the audience could benefit from such a quick-action response mechanism, but again I’m not sure that was a conversation that was going on after the panel.
I just want to say I don’t mention #5 because I think they should be talking to me about these issues. I don’t claim to be the best person for them to talk to because after all, I’m still a student observing all of this from the comfort of the university. But is this conversation happening at all?
All in all, today was really great for me. I would’ve liked to have heard some questions from the floor and hear some of the real questions and concerns that companies have when thinking about engaging in this new space that is changing so rapidly, but unfortunately we didn’t have enough time. Was probably good that they timed us though because I think we could’ve gone on till tomorrow with no problem at all.
Well those are my quick thoughts on today’s discussion. If you have any please feel free to chime at the comments below, or if you like, drop me an email at uniquefrequency[AT]gmail[DOT]com.
My first thoughts? “Damn I need to buy an Xbox 360 just to play The Force Unleashed”, and “Damn that HP Mini-note PC would be sweet to carry while I travel”.
More serious thoughts: I think it’s great that companies like Microsoft and HP would reach out to our local bloggers in the blogosphere. And on top of that, I think it’s great that they didn’t just throw out a wide net and see who gets caught in it, but they really made an effort to engage in targeted outreach to reach the people who would be excited about their products.
Today I also met up with people from The Digital Movement for an informal discussion with a couple of execs from Google to talk a little about feedback and collaboration.
I think this is definitely signaling change in Singapore. No longer are these big companies thinking: We will just produce the product and people will just buy them. They recognise that there is a conversation taking place whether they like it or not, whether they want to take part in it or not.
And frankly, I feel they ignore this conversation at their peril.
I’m sure there are people who’re going to say “Well, how many of these bloggers who saw the HP Mini-note PC will actually buy it? Or how many people who read a blog entry on it will buy it? What’s my conversion rate?” in other words: How is this going to affect my bottom line?
I think from a very practical point of view, that has to be a consideration. But is it the only consideration? So many management case studies point to hotels who give employees a certain amount of money to make right customer complaints as a way of generating goodwill. Is this truly any different?
If the result of this blogger outreach means that the next time someone is searching for the HP Mini-note PC as part of research about whether or not to buy it, and the top few results on Google are these pages and reviews and feedback from the bloggers who attended the outreach, I think the cost of holding that blogger outreach has paid for itself.
I have a lot of other thoughts on the whole blogger outreach strategy and who it works for and stuff like that, but I’d really like to hear your thoughts on the issue. So… comment away!
I'm experimenting with different themes right now! If you have any to recommend (preferably 3 columns), please leave a comment! In the meantime, please bear with the frequent facelifts =)
