IN THIS ISSUE: July 30, 2003 To Archive Index B*tching About Blogging NEW! How to Pick the Right PR Firm Webinar August 21 Blogs That Aren�t Blather Why the Topic Doesn�t Matter When You Pitch Radio The Best Resources Online

PR FIELD�S RESISTANCE TO CHANGE SHOWS IN WIDESPREAD B*TCHING ABOUT BLOGGING

By B.L. Ochman

The attitude of the PR industry toward blogs is so head in the sand that I gotta rant about blogs today.

Columns I�ve read on the topic and whining posts in I-PR (the 12,000-member Internet forum I moderate about online PR) reminds me of a Bette Midler standup routine called �Why bother?� in which the Divine Ms. M lamented, �It�s so hard to empty an ashtray. Why bother? It�s so hard to clean your ears. Why bother?�

Sean Carton, wrote in his ClickZ column, �As bloggers know, maintaining a blog is a lot of work. Paying people to keep on blogging can cost lots of money. Eventually, many private bloggers will move on to other things. Corporate bloggers will become too busy (or bored) to blog. As someone who ran a proto-blog for six years, 364 days a year, I know first-hand that at some point, you just run out of steam. Blogs are wonderful innovations. They emphasize the powers of the Net, personality, and instant publishing. Just don't count on them remaining the phenomenon they've been over the past year or so.�

Carton could be right, but the bottom line is still the same: if you work in PR and there are bloggers who are influencing the public and the media, you need to (a) follow what these bloggers are doing and saying (b) learn how to bring your clients to their attention.

Going the way of the buggy whip
Posters in I-PR noted that many blogs are �filled with foolishness and silly ideas and thoughts, � and �what is next? What do we have to look forward to having to

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worry about next year?" Here�s what�s next. Change will happen even faster online in the future and those in PR who don�t keep up will find themselves in a scrap heap populated with buggy whip manufacturers who decried the invention of the horseless carriage.

It doesn�t matter if you like blogs. It doesn�t matter if you agree with the opinions of the people who write them. What matters is that there are now more than 2 million blogs worldwide according to blogcount.com. And some of those have become quite influential � meaning that journalists read them and write about what is in them.

Not all blogs are rantings or diaries. For PR people, the ones that count are business, media and marketing blogs, particularly those like Up2Speed and Boing Boing which digest the contest of other blogs and traditional media worldwide and comment on the content.

Bloggers delight in scooping traditional media outlets with news, rumors and opinions. That�s one place where PR opportunity can be.

There are a growing number of influential blogs that have a huge number of readers (for example Boing Boing has in excess of 350,000 unique readers per month) and offer some opportunities in terms of promoting your client�s ideas or products.

Don�t be a Raging Cow
One case that illustrates the wrong way to approach bloggers is the ill-fated recent PR campaign of Dr. Pepper/Seven Up who launched a blog called �Pasteurize This� which follows the adventures of a fictitious cow to promote its flavored milk drink, �Raging Cow.�

The PR firm, Richards Interactive, flew half a dozen well-read 18 to 24 year-old bloggers and their parents to an all-expenses-paid tasting event. The bloggers were given samples of the drink, T-shirts, hats and Amazon.com gift certificates, then sent them home to start pumping Raging Cow to their friends on the Web � without disclosing that the company had put them up to it.

Some of the bloggers wrote about Dr. Pepper�s attempt and called it a scam. Word flew around the globe and pretty soon bloggers were calling for a product boycott. A message on the British site bloggerheads.com raged, "The people who make the cash decisions need to know that charging into our arena expecting it all for nothing is a very bad idea. If people want to reach us, they need to know that it's going to be on our terms, and that we will not be insulted by offers of cheap freebies."

Max Valiquette, president of the Toronto marketing firm Youthography, told the Globe & Mail �The inherent problem is that we're living in such an unbelievably media-savvy age where young people are so incredibly media-literate that eventually they find out," if anyone tries to deceive them. Dr. Pepper�s real problem, he maintained, is that they were not up front about their intentions.

Frankly, I think the wrong marketers handled the project because they didn�t understand the online non-affiliated journalist (NAJ) atmosphere. The same campaign in the hands of more savvy marketers might have been regarded as campy and funny instead of missing the mark.

It�s time to stop bitching about blogging. It�s here and we need to deal with it, not whine about how hard it is to learn one more thing. If there�s another new outlet for PR next year, we�ll need to learn that too.

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BLOGS THAT AREN'T BLATHER

Here are some of the blogs -- on topics other than PR -- that have importance to PR people because their writers have influence among other bloggers and they are followed by journalists:

http://www.thefeature.com/
www.coudal.com
www.poynter.org (by and for journalists)
www.up2speed.com
www.blogstreet.com
http://www.smartmobs.com/index.html
http://www.instapundit.com/
http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php
http://boingboing.net/
www.ventureblog.com
www.scripting.com
http://contentbiz.blogspot.com/

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Guest Article

WHY THE TOPIC DOESN'T MATTER WHEN YOU PITCH RADIO

By Bryan Farrish

It doesn�t really matter what your topic is when you pitch radio. What matters is how much you understand about how radio works. (Hint: It�s not like print.)

When PR firms (or especially, clients) try to secure radio interviews, they many times come up against the audio-wall of radio: Radio producers many times do not care what your topic/angle is, and thus they give you no booking interest.

The publicist is often taken aback by radio personnel�s lack of enthusiasm for what the publicist (and client) thought was a killer topic/angle. After all, the print media (and even TV folks) responded, so the angle can't be all that bad, can it? How can radio be so different? Isn't the topic (especially when promoting authors) the prime driver for radio press? Answer: No

Radio does not like to read...
o Radio does not respond to printed press releases the way the print media does; radio requires phone calls, because that's how they live day-in and day-out.
o Describing your topic in your printed press release will fall on deaf eyes, that is,

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until the stations can be assured that your guest will sound great!

Radio people are audio people...
o If your pitch is working in the print media, then yes your topic/angle is good. If your TV is working too, then you probably also have great visuals, or, the presentation can be carried-along by the host. (TV can present the host and the guest together, and thus it can show the host WHILE the guest is speaking, thus the host can make up for lack of guest performance.)

o In radio, only one person at a time has the attention of the audience; thus radio's worst fear is that when your guest has this attention... he/she will be a dud.

o Radio producers need to be assured (or shown) that your guest can "carry" the audience with his/her voice, before the topic/angle itself will be dealt with.

o If you are pitching radio for the first time, the producers are not going to believe you when you say that "the guest is great." Stations will need to have worked with some previous guests of yours, or they will need referrals from other stations (regardless of topic).

Any topic can be interesting and/or controversial...
o Interesting/controversial is what radio wants, regardless of topic.

o Even sad (death in the family) or generic (lawn mower repair) topics can be made interesting by a good guest, by relating the topic to a personal experience, or by telling how the topic affected another person of stature (say, an actor).

o Any topic can be found to be controversial, by just finding someone in society that uses the topic in a controversial way (there is always someone.)

o If you and the guest are unable to find anything of radio PR value, then create a side-topic from scratch that does have this value. Then, near the end of the interviews, segue (..."by the way") into your product/service that you really want to push.

Listeners respond to the personality, not topic...
o The grand proof of this is the talk show hosts themselves; they have no particular topic, but they go from day to day accumulating listeners, by CONVERTING regular topics into interesting, controversial, or funny presentations (just the way your guest could.)

o If your guest's personality is liked by listeners, the listeners will follow the directions of the guest (i.e., listeners will go to a site, call a number, etc.)

o It's been long known by people in the ad business that the proper person talking about a product (celebrity endorsements) makes all the difference in the world in sales.... even though the product (i.e., topic) itself stays the same.

Mornings: It's a laugh...
o "Morning Drive" in radio is usually from 5am to 10am, and it is a prime daypart for anything that can be construed as being funny.

o Even boring topics (lawn mower repair), when mixed with incidental anecdotes by the guest ("The things I saw when repairing mowers"), can be very funny. The anecdotes have nothing really to do with the topic, but the point is that the name of the author (and name of the product/service) are mentioned again and again.

Radio really works...
o Even though it may seem difficult to pitch, radio is still the best medium for getting the personality of a guest out to the public.

o Unlike TV, radio allows it's guest to promote a site or a phone number.

o Since the site or phone number is spoken by the guest, it has a personal touch; people will feel be more inclined to call or log-on, since it's less likely that there will be an office or a corporate site to navigate through.

Bryan Farrish is president of Barry Farris Radio Promotion, an independent radio interview promotion company.

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THE BEST RESOURCES ONLINE

Google World There are so many things to know about Google that this site exists solely to organize all Google-related resources.

From Google-optimization guides to Google tools and alerts (created using open source Google code) to studies of the "Google Dance" (the quasi-monthly site update that causes rankings to fluctuate wildly,) it's all about Google.

Not only will you find links to explanations Google itself, like the latest features in progress or a rundown of how Google technology works, but you will also find links to dozens of sites and tools that exist solely to help you "work" Google to your best advantage.

Take a look at Google Page Rank Calculator which calculates a Web page�s google ranking with a grid; Joogle which translates your English text into Japanese and lets you search Google using the Japanese term; Adsense Tool which shows what ads AdSense will pick for your site; and even Google Fan for those who�ve fallen in love with the search engine.

Web search blog Gwen Harris, an information consultant specializing in Web searching and online education, offers a daily blog about search tools, current awareness resources, portals, browsers, awards, etc.

CyberJournalist.net Cyber Slip-Ups This site shows cautionary tales about what happens when journalists are too gullible about information they find on the Internet. It also offers advice on how to not get fooled.

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