Day: February 28, 2005

Successful marketing and Public Relations programs adapt to changes in their audiences.  Whether those changes are the adoption of new technology or changes in behavior, it’s essential that programs reflect those differences.

There’s a lot of hype online about blogs and RSS, which are both growing nicely, and they will ultimately become an everyday part of corporate and personal marketing campaigns. But there are other changes afoot.

The Cluetrain Manifesto has finally infiltrated marketing departments around the world.  Marketers are increasingly aware of the need to reach out and connect with consumers and influencers in a personal manner. Blogs are one of the tools which enable this person-centric communication, but it’s broader than blogs.

We need to think about how we engage with our audience.  How do they find information, how do they share that information.  There’s loads of opportunities for organizations that think through these issues.  The important point is that you need to be addressing these changes.  They still apply to a small proportion of the total market, but it’s growing fast.

James Cherkoff has published a ChangeThis manifesto titled “What is Open Source Marketing” which looks at many of these issues.  Just as James Governor over at Red Monk believes industry analysts can learn from the success of Open Source, Cherkoff tries to apply some of the same open source principles to general marketing practice.

“A new breed of marketers is emerging with a different vision of the world. Inspired by websites such as The Cluetrain Manifesto, they understand the mindset of the modern consumer and the influence of open source values.”

Cherkoff provides an interesting read and also offers some modern context for this growth in the number of consumers actively choosing what information they will use and where they will find it.

Although the original Cluetrain book is nearly six years old, it should still be your starting point on this journey. While the economy and technology have moved in the meantime, it still provides the best thinking on the need for organizations to learn about one-to-one communication.

Footnote:

Dan Gillmor‘s book We the media is another must-read if you’re interested in how your audience and media are changing.

Matthew Podboy calls out an untargeted pitch he recieved from an online service provider, regarding the possibility of a briefing for any future stories he might be writing on subject X.

I also received this pitch, as I imagine did many others.  They actually sent two similar pitches within a day of each other.

Now the very first lesson in pitching blogs is to read the blog you are pitching.  Get a basic understanding where the author is coming from, what subjects they’re interested in and what is the style of the writing. I can’t imagine you’d send a pitch to a magazine you have never read or researched. Maybe I’m wrong on that score.

Anyhow if the publicist in question had taken the time (probably all of ten-fifteen seconds), they would have realized that the product/service they are pitching is completely inapplicable to this blog. Completely. Mistake number one.

If they had taken the time to read even a week’s postings the publicist in question would have found a post I recently wrote on pitching blogs that would have saved him making this mistake.

However, the pitch was a mail merge which rather than being targeted was sent to probably a large number of bloggers. How do I know? Check out this paragraph for tell tale mail merge problems:

“Tom                 , we’d like to meet you and see where we might be able to serve as a source for future articles and offer some possible story ideas for your readers.  If you’d like to have a one-on-one briefing, we’d like to get on your calendar right now. Please drop us an e-mail with times you’ve got available and we’ll confirm your appointment and briefing.”

The spaces after my name point to the tell tale signs of an incompetent mail merge.

Looks like I’m not that special after all.

Now before anyone thinks I’m being overly harsh here, I get loads of pitches, some good, some OK, some awful.

If you need to promote your clients to the PR/Marketing audience and you have something interesting to say, then get in touch.  But for god’s sake do a little bit of research. This blog covers PR and Marketing related issues. That includes PR/Marketing services, useful applications, techniques, books there’s a huge rang eof subjects.  However it is not a blog about tax, legal affairs, politics or domestic cleaning agents.  You might spot that from the headline of the blog.

Footnote:

Thanks to Steve Rubel who points to Nick Wreden‘s 7 Habits of Highly Effective Blog PR:

• Never pitch, personalize
• Respect a blogger’s time and intelligence
• “A blog is not about you, it is about me”
• Quality, not quantity
• Feed the food chain
• It’s no longer just about the media
• Keep learning