Corrupt Bloggers Kvetch - Where’s the Swag?

There’s a very revealing guest rant by professional ’lifestyle’ blogger Krizia in Pro Blogger: PR People Getting Pushier with Bloggers Since the Recession.

Krizia is perturbed that PRs are now asking questions about the value of all their free giveaways; the cash, the swag is drying up for product placement on Krizia’s EatSmartAgeSmart blog. Before bestowing gifts and favors PR people are asking pesky questions like: 

• “How many unique users?”
• “How many page views?”
• “How fast can you get our review on your site?”
• “Have you won any awards in the past?”
• “Send us links to past reviews you’ve written.”
• “What angle will you take with this feature?”

In other words, publicists were getting hip and demanding the same standards they apply to legitimate media. When we get a hit inthe Daily Newswe know the circulation, target readership, ad equivalent value - in print and on the web.  Why not with bloggers? 

EatSmartAgeSmart has all the markings of a commercial enterprise that treats ‘content’  like ad-filler. Where’s the PR value in editorial in an outlet that obviously crafts stories as thinly-disguised ads to pump individual blog traffic and ancillary business for a larger blog network? (see Glam Media description below).

I know this is beauty/fashion/lifestyle blah blah, and that’s the way it’s done in these industries. But these sprung-up-on-the-web media properties are competing with established, verified, legitimate media outlets that are converting their readers to the web.  If you’re a publicist you’ll choose mass media or Trade pubs before spending billable time on corrupt bloggers who publicly kvetch about the lack of swag coming from PRs. 

Blogger Relations - a credible pitch

A few days ago I got a perfect pitch. I hope Alex doesn’t mind if I reprint it verbatim here:

Hi Mark,

My name is Alex King and I’m the Director of Marketing at a small MIT startup called WebNotes. Thanks for your post on Mandy Stadtmiller- I just read her column and thought it was hysterical!

Anyways, my firm is building research tools for PR firms to help out with the daily news scan process and I was curious if you might be interested in writing about us. I’d love to show you a demo and even give you access to the software.

I hope all is well,
Alex

We did a Go-to-Meeting Demo. I asked questions and I signed up for the same two week free WebNotes Demo vailable to everybody. No free giveaway. No PR. No hustle. No quid pro quo. No money changing hands.

A couple of days after the Demo Alex followed up with email to see if I needed assistance.  Be professional, be personal, be persistent. In PR, media relations, blogger relations, bottomline, that’s all you can do. If you do that, you’re way ahead of the game.

EatSmartAgeSmart is in the Glam Media network.From the Glam Media site: Glam Media is the pioneer and global leader of Vertical Media—a revolutionary new media model that connects premium brand advertisers with millions of consumers with like-minded passions online through large and growing vertical content networks. With more than 1400 publishers worldwide, we cover the topics people are passionate about. We know how to find and engage these audiences with the right content at the right time—and brand advertisers are taking note. In the past year, 23 of the top 25 brand advertisers have engaged with passionate consumers on one of the Glam Media Networks. With a reach of 55 million unique monthly visitors in the US and more than 125 million uniques globally, it’s no wonder Glam Media is in the comScore Top 20 Web properties and a Top 10 AdWeek Display Ad Publisher.

FTC Forces Bloggers to Get Real

As expected, the Federal Trade Commission yesterday issued new guidelines for bloggers to disclose freebies or payments they receive in return for reviewing products. Although the regulations are still vague and will be judged on a case-by-case basis, this is a big step in cleaning up the blogosphere from the proliferation of content trash floating around.

Social media guru Brian Solis argues that the FTC is not showing bloggers respect because “traditional reporters and journalists have long received products and services to review.” Yes, with several key distinctions. Real reporters are schooled, apprenticed, trained, and are usually part of an organization that has adopted standards and oversight. News organizations have guidelines about accepting gifts and returning products they review. Bloggers are not reporters and, in the case of those who stoop to write positive reviews on products or services they receive without disclosing the relationship, they are hardly behaving ethically.

There is a mad rush to get exposure on the web and game search results - hence pay for play bloggers. Blogging is hard work. It takes thought, research, and a bit of tech savvy (not much), and understanding of basic journalistic principles. Bloggers don’t usually do ‘original’ research - we comment on what has already been reported. Bloggers can have value, the same as any op-ed contributor to a news organization.

This goes back to that big question - what is more important, content or SEO. I argue that content is more important. If you produce articles that have insight and value to the market, search engines will pick it up and you will receive deep, long-lasting benefit. If you’re out to game the search engines through slick SEO tactics and prostituted bloggers, then you will always be at the mercy of Google’s next algorithm that boxes you out and government regulations. 

For bloggers, the FTC stopped short of specifying how they must disclose conflicts of interest. Rich Cleland, assistant director of the FTC’s advertising practices division, said the disclosure must be “clear and conspicuous,” no matter what form it will take.

PR/Media Week in Review 05-24-2009

Twitter scams are proliferating like wildfire on the Net- 100FOLLOWERS A DAY! they promise - and this one, TwitterTrafficMachine, a couple of bozos who say they invented a system to automatically increase your Twitter followers. mytweetfollowers.com is another one that automatically controls your Twitter with re-tweets to their site - @Stock_Tweets is having a hard time turning off those malicious auto-Tweets.

All this supports the false notion that hundreds or thousands of Twitter followers lends you credibility, popularity and the power to influence others. Twitter is easily manipulated and tends to gravitate toward the fleeting inane comment generated by obsessive compulsive Twits whose only purpose is to generate more followers, no matter who they are.

On the other hand - the media is really taking to Twitter and it is proving to be a viable alternative wire service.  Some journalists troll for sources through Twitter: APRealEstateLooking to interview someone who bought or sold a home in the Dallas metro area in April or May. Email asainz@ap.org. Some journalists, who have a conversational style and an underlying mission, manage to convey a real personality in 140 characters or less. My favorite is Nicholas Kristof:

NYTimesKristof @Kholmpartiet Poverty of spirit: people who express themselves not by personality but by displaying the latest i-Pod. 18:15 PM 19th May | NYTimesKristof It’s odd to return to the U.S. from African villages. So much wealth here, yet often accompanied by a poverty of spirit. 16:18 PM 19th May.

Twitter is also proving to be a resource for what journalists are thinking and doing: mattbish Had editorial lunch with JP Morgan ceo Jamie Dimon who was surprisingly upbeat (Matthew Bishop, The Economist). As one client astutely observed- journalists are now openly offering opinions trough social media.

The exploding popularity of Twitter and its usefulness as another information stream is forcing companies to hire in-house or freelance Twitterers. See NYTimes “Tweeting Your Way to a Job“. Wells Fargo is the latest to launch a customer service Twitter stream, complete with several real-life Twitter personalities who answer basic banking questions. Others in the banking business have jumped on the bandwagon: See USA Today story about customer service and banking on Twitter. 

JournalistTweets is the the first (claims Cision) Twitter journo aggregator. You can follow tweeting journalists according to segments - Business | Entertainment | Health | Technology

Follow me on Twitter: @markrose

More and more, my conversations with journalists includes a survey of the PR job market (can’t be worse than journalism!?). This week, editorialists and bloggers debated the blurring lines between public relations and journalism. See Reason magazine column arguing that PR could become the next investigative journalism| And there’s The 21st Century Journalist: PR by Day, Reporter by Night? by Renay San Miguel.

 NYPost: Portfolio.com taken over by American City Business Journals | Worth magazine re-launches June 1. See story here.

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Chevron’s Aggressive PR Challenge - ‘buying’ bloggers?

Chevron is throwing down the gauntlet - conducting a bare knuckle PR campaign the likes of which we have rarely seen. At stake is a $27 billion judgement in an Ecuadorian court that, if leveled (a decision is expected this year), and if it sticks (it is not clear if an Ecuadorian court can extract payment from an American company with no current operations in its country), would be the largest environmental lawsuit in history.

Such a judgement could severely hamper Chevron and impact its stock. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is demanding a full accounting from Chevron (the state, through pension funds, is a shareholder). Dozens of blogs and web sites are devoted to slamming the company and generating a consistent stream of negative news -  including accusing the company of buying off bloggers. Chevron is aggressively fighting back.

Anybody who does not believe that high-profile civil cases are fought as much through PR as they are in the courtroom should study the Chevron case.

The latest flame-up in this story was the May 3, 2009, ‘60 Minutes’ segment titled Amazon Crude. Silvia M. Garrigo, Manager, Global Issues and Policy for Chevron, was in the unenviable position of facing the 60 Minutes grilling from Scott Pelley. Garrigo’s performance on ‘60 Minutes’ was ridiculed by many anti-Chevron groups although, from my perspective, she is a strong and credible advocate for her client.

Chevron responded to 60 Minutes by hiring former CNN correspondent  Gene Randall to narrate a ‘News” report that tells the story from its perspective. The video, Chevron Texaco Ecuador Lawsuit - Behind the Scenes, is on YouTube and a company web site devoted to the case.

Smack in the middle is a blogger called Zennie62, who, ChevronToxicoclaims, is a paid shill for Chevron. ChevronToxico offers no proof and Zennie Abraham, the blogger, does not confirm or deny payments in his blog posts. He posts prodigiously about the case and seems to have a wealth of information that would only be available to an insider. His blog posts and YouTube videos rank high in Google searches on keywords Chevron, Texaco (acquired by Chevron), and Ecuador.  Daryl Hannah, right, visiting environmental disaster site in Ecuador.

In 2008, Amazon Watch disclosed that Bay Area blogger Pat Murphy was a paid to post pro-Chevron comments on the Ecuador case in his small online newspaper.  Murphy has publicly acknowledged he accepted fees for control of editorial content, according to Amazon Watch.

Chevron’s Garrigo has acknowledged that this is a PR battle. The company claims that it cannot get a fair trial in Ecuador and they seek to sway public opinion in the U.S. if the case is brought here. This is not a ‘cut and dry’ case, despite the entrenched certainty of the opposing forces. There is plenty of villainy to go around. The Ecuadorian government has an atrocious environmental record - the big U.S. oil company is an easy target that reaps enormous political benefit, even if they don’t realize a dime from the lawsuit.

 “Paying so-called independent bloggers to post is just one part of a wide-ranging fraud designed by Chevron to cover up the company’s enormous exposure in Ecuador,” said Prieto. Prieto said Samson, Chevron’s public relations director, has built an “empire” of consultants in the U.S. and Ecuador to put out misleading information about the case.  Chevron’s environmental problems in Ecuador have become the company’s largest worldwide public relations problem. Samson has retained the New York office of the global public relations behemoth Hill & Knowlton — the same firm that represented the tobacco industry for decades– to manage Chevron’s image problems stemming from the Ecuador case. Chevron P.R. Director Donald Samson Behind Secret Payments to Bloggers to Hide Ecuador Liability

PR/Media Week in Review 04-26-2009

 Die! Twitter! Die! Die! Die!  Twitter Twaddle amps to record level last week - is the end near?

Over three years ago Tom Foremski fomented social media revolution with his seminal post Die! Press release! Die! Die! Die! - confirming and articulating a mass perception and setting many of us on a mission to find the next stage of public relations. Blogs, RSS, widgets, video - we could get information, entertainment and news straight to constituents and ‘relate’ to the ‘new’ media in a much more efficient manner through a myriad of free distribution channels.   A blog post can be a press release, Brian Solis said.  He was/is right. Then came Twitter.  Annoying, invasive, addictive, self-destructive Twitter. I didn’t think Twitter would last - then I didn’t think Barack Obama could win the election.

The obscene pervasiveness and inevitable flame-out of Twitter should be evident. What is not is how Twitter corrodes our communication. There are now two kinds of Twitterers: 1) inane 2) self-promotional. I am in category 2 (at least that’s my self assessment) and follow other self-promoters, whether they are journalists, news oraganizations, shills for products or services, consultants, flacks or flack service providers. My Twitter stream is like a Times Square news zipper with tips and news I can hopefully use. It has some value for time wasted sifting through the dreck.

It is category 1 that frustrates and will be the death of Twitter. Many social media gurus fall into this camp. ‘Just stopped into Starbucks for double soy latte.’ ‘Tied my shoelace and buckled my belt.’ ‘Bought a magazine - wow.’ Most of Twitter falls into the “Too much information” category and the rush to build ’followers’ leads to silly behavior, blatant prostitution (link whores have ceded to Twitter sluts), and obsessive non-sensical Twittering. Twitter is not about communication - it is Ashton Kutcher trying to build his brand and infiltrate as many minds as possible with the least effort.

 Tweetle dee and Tweetle dumb:  The week’s Twitter news roundup

• Maureen Dowd tweets a big one in her NYTimes Opinion piece: To Tweet or Not To Tweet 
  (Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
  The Tweets of outrageous fortune
  Or to Twitter against a sea of troubles)
• Land Rover Pays for Tweets - Is tweetola the new payola? from Advertising Age
• Which celeb will dominate the Twitosphere? http://tweetrace.com/
• Twitfit! Restaurant reviewer calls in lawyers to claim Twitter identity - NY Times 
• Twittering a recipe is now a twecipe
• Twitter now accepts telepathy - scrambled brain on Twitter, The Escapist
• Oprah pumps Twitter traffic - USA Today

Web Video of the Week / Evil Side of Twitter

The Seattle P-I online edition dropped off the top 30 list of newspaper sites in March, according to Editor & Publisher magazine. There are all sorts of prognostications about why this has happened - they no longer have a print edition to support the online presence - but the reality is that the online P-I is a poor excuse for a news source. Hearst eviscerated the P-I news bureau and essentially turned the seattlepi.com into a bottom feeding web aggregator, not a ‘news’ source. The P-I web edition illustrates the difficulty of grafting a new media venture on to an old media property.

SHORT TAKES: Police Working With PR Firm in Shift Toward More Communication - Washington Post | Evidence and PR spin collide in Vioxx courtroom battle - The Australian | Negative press hurting Kaylee’s family, PR rep says - Jason Wallace and his public relations consultant lashed out at the media yesterday, saying negative publicity has threatened the family’s financial stability, globeandmail.com, Canada |

Online Newsroom Practices to Attract and Satisfy Journalists, Investors and Analysts - Thurs, Apr 30, 1:00 PM EDT, Bulldog Reporter’s PR University, $299 per phone site. Seems relevant. Productive?

So you want to break into public relations?

This is a difficult and confusing time to break into the public relations business.  As  traditional media continues to disappear at unprecedented speed, and the acceptance and use of social media increases exponentially, the PR landscape becomes radically altered.  How do you promote a service, product or person in 2009 when the rules of engagement have shifted so far that nobody can say for certain what they are? How do you judge success when you have no verifiable way to measure it? Why on earth would anybody want to break into this business now when there are no jobs and nobody can agree what public relations is anymore?

I faced a room full of mass communications students last weekend at VCU and tried to answer these questions. The short answer is:  Uncertainty brings opportunity and this is a thrilling time to be in the communications field.  It begins at the top, as Barack Obama re-defines how government communicates with and interacts with its constituents.  And it comes down to us - never before have the methods of communication - the ability to package and distribute news and information on a mass scale - been in the hands of ‘the people.’

All the news and info distribution sources we now have at our disposal - including web sites, blogs, Twitter, Flickr (or any web photo platform), YouTube (or any web video platform), RSS, widgets - are absolutely free. All it takes is imagination and time and you can shout to the world. 

The PR business still treats social media as a curiosity, an add-on. They generally still don’t get that  PR needs to lead the communications mix (PR/marketing/advertising) and PR needs to follow media into an Internet-based, digital distribution system. Instead of pitching the media we become the media.

Writing has always been an important, and sorely under served, element of public relations. Now that we can’t complain about lack of avenues for publishing, writing is even more important.  Check out Emily Valentine’s blog Cultural Anthropologist. Emily was one of the 50 or students from the 10 colleges and universities at the VCU PRSSA event last weekend.  There are also links to writing samples on Emily’s blog, including Microfinance: social networking meets social enterprise on the Young Professionals in Foreign Policy web site. Coming into the ‘new PR’ landscape, Emily is honing her writing and social media skills, and engaging in socially optimized PR. It make take some time for PR employers to understand the value of writing, blogging, and social media literacy - but the smart ones will soon enough.

See The Future of PR (SlideShow) | Mark Rose LinkedIn

Communication, Transparency, Participation

Those are the three by-words of Barack Obama’s PPR (Presidential PR) strategy.

Precisely the minute Barack Obama was sworn is as the 44th President of the United States (noon, Jan 20, 2009), Macon Phillips (left), Director of New Media for the White House, published his first blog post, titled Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov.

“President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history,” wrote Phillips.

Communication is the easy part. In the blog/twitter/text era anybody can ‘communicate’ with virtually anybody (but are they listening?). Transparency can be faked or at least the law can be complied with and a public display of ‘transparency’ can lead to the appearance of open government (an improvement over the previous administration).

The most difficult element of this new communication equation is ‘participation.’  To foster citizen involvement in the federal government Phillips announced in his first blog post that “we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it.”

It didn’t quite work out that way. The Washington Post  reported that the Obama administration did not heed its own mandate on recent legislation.  Of course, running a new media program to reach and engage 380 million Americans is a huge and seemingly impossible task (trying doing it with an organization of a few hundred with a few thousand constituents). They have run into technical issues, as reported in the Washington Post, and you have to wonder - is anybody really reading 5,000 character comments on pending non-emergency legislation, or is this simply a futile exercise in mass venting for the appearance of ‘participation’?

The White House YouTube channel currently has over 30,000 subscribers. The quality of the videos is excellent and they are nicely segmented into easy to search categories. The main White House social media communication channel is WhiteHouse.gov, a blog, or rather a blog portal that leads to many other blogs, according to agenda items, government agencies, etc.  The Obama Twitter channel has been mostly dormant since Jan. 20th, except for an alert on March 25th to join an innovative Open for Questions session through the Internet.  93,000 people submitted 104,000 questions and cast 1.8 million votes on which questions Barack Obama would answer over the net. Obama promoted the event through web video.

The White House has inevitably faced many problems in its rush into social media. By using YouTube are they favoring a third-party provider, rather than serving the videos themselves?  Why not use any of the other video servers? “It’s an ongoing experiment,” said Phillips. Our experiment in democracy has survived wars, economic depressions, man-made and natural catastrophes over the past 250 years … but hey, this federal government social media experiment is close to 100 days old. Where’s the results? Welcome to the 140 character or less, immediate gratification Twitter age. No wonder Phillips is burying his head in his hands.

PR/Media Week in Review 12-14-2008

It was the week of the swindler, the thief, the profane, double-dealing Governor, the blood sport of Illinois politics and the sociopathic Wall Street money manager. Marc S. Dreier, “one of New York’s most accomplished lawyers, brazenly swindled some of the city’s savviest investors,” (NYTimes), while Bernard Madoff was perpetrating the largest fraud ever (Wall Street Journal), $50 billion, making Dreier’s $100 million damage seem like chicken feed, while Blago Blagojevich was peddling Senate seats on the open market like bogus flat screen TVs (Washington Post). 

It was a week to celebrate unrepentant greed and corruption as the tightening vise of a deep recession forces dark dealings to the light of public scrutiny. As U.S. auto makers and the unions will attest - this is a great climate for crisis communications.

PR JOB: Seeking “spirited” PR pro who has handled media relations and strategic PR for premium wine and spirit account. Work with creative team of agency vets on high visibility brands. Seeking home-based, flexible, highly motivated, digitally proficient individual who can embrace the ‘new PR’ built for the digital age. Background & Links to: spiritjob@prblognews.com

PR WANNABES NEED NOT APPLY to the Spring Associates database assiduously compiled and analyzed for the The Official PR Salary & Bonus Report©. Spring queries nearly 20,000 credentialed PR corporate and agency professionals nationwide for proprietary insight into salary ranges, billing rates, geographic breakdowns, etc. 2009 Edition, the 13th annual, is available January, 2009.

The Drama of Public Relations continues through the week with performances of WHITE NOISE to December 22 at H-B Playwrights Theatre in New York City. Performances for the “Waiting Room” series of 10-minute plays are free. Comment by Karasma: PR and cruising on the traitorous sea meet in a therapist’s office…PERFECT!

Maintaining good relationships with donors or their descendants is not only good public relations but also could help avert legal messes down the road. … See San Antonio Express-News story

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