A friend of mine recently emailed me to say that she has a new client but they’re wary of doing a blogger outreach program, and do I have any metrics about outreach ROI, especially for driving sales?

I wrote back: You’re asking for the holy grail.

However, while linking ROI to blogger outreach is not simple, it’s also not impossible. Think about the decades (centuries?) of PR people who have gone before us. How did they determine ROI on media outreach when all they had was “impressions” (a very fuzzy number that was, and is: self-reported from print and broadcast media)?

Blogger outreach is in many ways the same, and perhaps even easier, to track, than traditional public relations. Here are some ways you can add tracking and metrics to your blogger relations programs which will help you quantify the results of your efforts. These ideas are more or less in order of easy to complex; doing all five will really juice up your blogger outreach measurement.

1) Set Goals

While some of my SME colleagues advocate that you can have success without defining upfront ROI goals (and I agree with that in some situations), I find that giving clients some expectation of an outreach program’s capabilities sits better with them and helps me and my team stay focused. Note that I said “some expectation” – I never sit down with a client and say something like, “we’re going to deliver 10,000 clicks to this product page which will result in $1,500 in sales.” Instead, we talk about what success will look like to this client. Are they looking for awareness of the brand in general? Engagement in a coupon or promotion? To drive sales of a particular category or product? This is a give-and-take: we may have suggested blogger outreach to them, in which case we have to help them understand where we can measure our efforts. We then set some broad goals based on some of the measurement ideas which follow.

2) Measure Online Activity

We’re marketers, not necessarily web developers or analysts. But if our client’s (or company’s) goals include tracking online activity, we have to have a direct line to understand the online activity our efforts, including blogger outreach, are generating.

One of the first things I ask a client for (as an agency – if you’re internal, you as a social media person need this too) is access to their Google Analytics (or other analytics package). I want to be sure that their analytics tracking is set up properly to really capture all of the traffic and conversions our efforts are sending to them, and I don’t want to wait for their internal team to get back to me to understand how our efforts are performing. Yes, I know, Google Analytics is scary for some, but there are some great tutorials out there to help social media marketers learn to segment their efforts; I promise if you spend a little bit of time with it, it won’t be nearly as scary.

I recommend setting up Advanced Segments in Google Analytics to track the bloggers you’re reaching out to, keeping in mind that their traffic could also come via their Twitter accounts or Facebook pages (or Pinterest, or Google+….). You can put all of the blogs you’re courting into a single segment, or divide them up in some way that helps you understand the activity in each. For example, if you’re an iPad app for kids, you may have separate segments for tech blogs, app blogs and parenting blogs. If you track your outreach time and costs for each segment, then assign a value to the segment’s activity (keep reading), you’ll begin to understand where your time is best spent.

3) Compare Blogger Outreach Activity With Advertising

My colleague Nichole Kelly advocates for treating social media activity like other forms of media; again, if you’re the social media person this may not be second nature to you (vs. if you’re also well-versed in media buying, etc.), but this is an important place to stretch your knowledge. Follow Nichole’s advice and consider ad-like metrics for your outreach efforts and compare that against other marketing spend the company is doing. For blogger outreach, consider your time, payments to bloggers, cost of coupons or promotions, etc. in the total cost, and then divide that by the impressions, clicks, leads or sales you get from those efforts.

Get with your media buying counterparts to compare your numbers to theirs and see where you can improve, and where you’re ahead. If they’re still spending on television, I’m pretty sure you’re kicking their butt with blogger outreach.

4) Track Coupons

Everyone loves a coupon, right? So do many bloggers. If you’re mounting a blogger outreach campaign to a segment of blogs for whom coupons are appropriate (typically frugal, parenting, app/tech/gadget blogs, plus others), consider setting up exclusive coupons for the top bloggers you’re trying to attract. Not only can you get more attention from the blogger if they feel they’re getting something special to share with their readers, those coupon codes are gold in terms of helping you to track ROI. When they’re redeemed online you ought to be able to get a report (from your e-commerce folks) on redemption rates and total sales against the coupon, so figure out which bloggers sent the most traffic and at what dollar value.

Some marketers can take this through to offline, particularly if they control the whole channel; if you’re a retailer you can track a coupon distributed online all the way through to point of sale. However, for product or service companies this may be more tricky – getting third party retailers to report coupon metrics back to you is a pretty complicated process. So consider this for driving online activity through blogger outreach first, and then get creative translating your efforts to offline programs.

5) Affiliate Programs for Bloggers

Your company may already have an affiliate program: an online referral program whereby affiliates (often websites or blogs, sometimes emailers or other online marketers) get paid a flat dollar amount or percentage of sales for every sale they send through to your client’s/company’s site. You can use an existing affiliate program for blogger outreach too; or, if you plan on doing a lot of blogger outreach and you don’t have one, ask your company to set up an affiliate program to help you with your efforts.

The beauty of affiliate programs is that you typically only pay for success….success in whatever way you define it. Looking to drive sales? Connect to bloggers and give them a VIP (top-dollar) affiliate commission in order to drive sales. Combine that with a coupon and you could really drive ROI. Know that some affiliates will take time to put your company, product or offer into their queue; also as with any blogger outreach effort, some will hit, and some will miss. Bloggers who are most likely to want to join your affiliate program are frugal/coupon bloggers and those that write about “products” often: craft, tech, shelter/home, travel etc. Though don’t hesitate to suggest it to any bloggers you work with, if you have an affiliate program available.  You can also track sweepstakes entries, video views, anything really – as long as the value to the affiliate is worth their traffic (which they could send to you or to someone else who will pay them more for their efforts).

Savvy bloggers will take an affiliate commission over a sponsored post payment if they think your product/offer will resonate with their readers, and then they’ll push it harder than they would for a sponsored post.

In the end, don’t forget: with any blogger outreach effort, do what you can to go beyond the standard pitch (you all know I don’t believe in pitching, I consider bloggers as marketing partners), and you’ll see better engagement which should lead to greater ROI.

Have You Registered For Explore Minneapolis?

Don’t miss two days of intensive learning with some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the digital marketing and social media marketing space. Join SME’s Jason Falls and Nichole Kelly, The Now Revolution co-author Jay Baer, Edison Research’s Tom Webster, Ad Contrarian Bob Hoffman, Neil Patel of Kissmetrics and more at one of the leading digital and social media marketing events of 2012, August 16-17 in Minneapolis, Minn. DON’T WAIT TO REGISTER! Seats are filling fast! Reserve yours today!

 Image source: flickr (Charlyn W)

I returned from the Blissdom blogger conference about 10 days ago and am off to Dad 2.0 Summit this week. There’s a lot of blogger love happening out there, and it’s wonderful to be in the middle of it, helping to connect brands and bloggers in creative and fruitful ways.

Lately, though, I’ve been coming home from parenting/lifestyle blogger conferences both inspired and dismayed. There are some really cool ways in which brands are engaging with these bloggers, and some of those efforts come through at blogger conferences. For example, at Blissdom, ConAgra launched their Child Hunger Ends Here campaign, encouraging bloggers to add the hashtag #childhunger to their tweets to donate one meal per tweet sent during the conference. The hashtag was flying and 20,000 meals were donated, with ConAgra matching to get to a total of 40,000 meals. Bloggers for a cause … I love it.

Microsoft Office and Windows worked with a well-known parenting blogger, Janice Croze from 5 Minutes for Mom, as the host of a live webcast from their Blissdom suite on time saving tips with Office products. Janice was exactly the right host for the busy mom audience they were trying to attract, and choosing to broadcast from Blissdom gave those viewers a peek into the conference.

So that’s the good. But there’s some ugly too.

Every time I go to a blogger conference I meet new bloggers, and of course I always ask them what they blog about. Every time, at least a handful of newish bloggers say, “oh, you know, I write about products and do giveaways and stuff.” And I cringe. It’s not that there can’t be good review blogs. Look at Cool Mom Picks, HighTechDad, or DadLabs, blogs which have been around for a long time and have a very clear point-of-view and target audience; they all do reviews really well. It’s the new breed of “review-giveaway bloggers” (at least that’s what I’m calling them) that gets to me.

Over the years, it’s become clear to many people that some bloggers earn some money through their blogs. Advertising is rarely a good source of income for new bloggers, but payments from brands can be, and so a new crop of bloggers has appeared who want to get their slice of the pie. These new bloggers rarely have a well-defined niche or point-of-view. Some are poor writers. Their content is nothing but review after review, giveaway after giveaway. And to top it all off, many of them take payment for reviews – something which is anathema to most legitimate bloggers and, in my opinion (and many others’), should never be offered by a self-respecting PR agency or brand.

You all know these low-quality review-giveaway blogs; I’m not going to name them here. They’re the ones which have “reviews,” “giveaways” and “pr friendly” as their main navigation points on their blogs. They’re also the blogs that are turned on by the “make money fast by blogging” or “blog from home” come-ons in Google or Facebook ad results. And if you’re on the brand or PR agency side, you’ve no doubt encountered these bloggers pitching you – with their hands out, looking for you to pay them to do something with your brand.

I think these review-giveaway bloggers are giving all other bloggers (parenting and otherwise) a bad name. I’ve encountered dozens of clients and potential clients who, when I bring up the possibility of creating blogger integrations for their brands, say, “why would I pay for a review?” – as if that’s all they think bloggers do. It’s very hard to convince them that a creative blogger relationship can be an extension of their marketing efforts and reap rewards for both parties. Sadly, the blogs they find in searches and the blogs that reach out to them are mostly the ones looking to make a quick buck or score some product. Because brands get turned off so quickly, they never have a chance to meet or work with blogs who can bring their audiences to bear in an ethical and holistic way to help build a brand’s profile among their communities. And that’s really a shame. As a social media agency, it’s my job to help them understand that there is a better way – that true marketing partnerships with a small number of quality bloggers can yield great results. I’m working hard to do that.

So how can we stop the proliferation of these kinds of blogs and this “pay-for-play” mentality? I feel the answer lies primarily with the PR firms. As I’ve said before, agencies need to step up their game, and realize that “pitching to bloggers” does not mean paying for reviews, paying for giveaways, or paying for links. Blogger relationships can and should be marketing partnerships: use bloggers as spokespeople, have them write content for you or appear in videos, bring them to headquarters to talk to your staff, have them conduct informal focus groups or product parties in their hometowns. Pay them as marketing consultants and expect professionalism from them. If you don’t get what you expect from your relationship, be sure to give them feedback so they can do better; many of them don’t come from marketing backgrounds, which in no way diminishes their power to connect and deliver their communities to you.

If you’re an agency who uses a “spray-and-pray” pitch approach, sending mass emails out to dozens or hundreds of bloggers at a time, or if you’re ready to hand any blogger $50 to do just about anything – stop. You’re really the ones creating the breeding ground for these poor quality blogs.

The future of blogging, at least in the lifestyle/parenting category, will have to be defined by more and better: more actual content, better content, more focus, better writing, more ethical behavior. It’s always great to see new high-quality blogs, but I’d like to see the the blogosphere grow less rapidly, if it means low-quality blogs will go away as their authors realize that there’s no such thing as easy money.  Agencies, you have the power to help make that change.

Big thanks and welcome to Full Sail University, a new sponsor here at SME. Their online master’s degree program for public relations professionals is just a click away. Hit their advertisement over there in the sidebar and sign up to get some free information about it.

Frankly, I was impressed by the course offerings for the degree. There’s a fair bit of new media and social media learning to be had there. If a master’s degree in PR is something you might be considering, it’s certainly worth a look-see.

While I can’t speak directly to their faculty’s experience and didn’t attend the institution, Full Sail is an accredited U.S. university which has garnered a number of distinctions as a distance learning provider over the years. It was founded 30 years ago and is headquartered in Winter Park, Fla.

Related articles

• Full Sail University Launches Creative Writing for Entertainment Bachelor of Fine Arts and New Media Journalism Master of Arts Degree Programs (prweb.com)
• Full Sail University Announces New Sports Marketing and Media Bachelor of Science Degree (prweb.com)
• Why Should You Get a Master’s Degree? (tringradstudies.wordpress.com)

A new influencer identification tool has emerged that has quite a bit of promise. Socmetrics, a one-year-old company out of Boston, is similar to mBlast in that it looks at influencers through a topical filter. While Tom Webster may very well be influential in the worlds of social media marketing and market research, he is also an influential voice on wine. And mining his conversations and those around him shows that if you’re looking for it. Tools like Klout, which look at influence in more of a reach-based formula, don’t make topical distinctions very well. Socmetrics does.

Added to the topical focus is the fact that Socmetrics also offers pre-curated lists over over 100 categories. So you don’t have to start with a broad, keyword search that tends to push back a lot of junk data. Instead, major categories have been culled for accuracy and many broad topics (social media, automotive, moms, etc.) have already been cleaned to ensure the data is good.

Using Socmetrics you can still do a keyword-based search, like that I recently did for “banking.”

I like the fact the search returned not just news media and bank brands, but also bloggers and other influencers that talked about the topic. It also didn’t just give me a list of those with the top number of Twitter followers and call it a day. Socmetrics takes into account multiple channels and reach including YouTube, Twitter, blog readership and the like.

When I drilled down to a singular person on the list, Anna O’Brien, you might think the tool is flawed. O’Brien is the director of social media at Greenlight, a London-based marketing firm. What does she have to do with banking? Well, she was formerly the Vice President for Social Media at Citibank, North America. So she carries some weight of influence in the banking world.

This indicates to me Socmetrics’s algorithm credits a bit more stickiness to influence than tools like mBlast do. Unless O’Brien writes about banking regularly, the short-attention span of an mBlast tends to leave someone like her off a list. While public relations professionals certainly want to reach influencers who are most influential now, there’s an argument that even someone who hasn’t taking to writing about a certain topic in a few weeks is still an influential person to that audience.

Socmetrics topical influencer platform looks at three primary factors in determining its rankings:

• Peer Validation – Does this person interact with other influencers in the topic and are they followed, retweeted, etc., by their peers.
• Topicality – Is their content on-topic or close to it consistently versus diffused and scattered around other subjects. Are their followers interested in the topic in question, too? This would account for an influencer who blogs strictly about one topic versus someone who mixes personal and other topics in that might attract an audience perhaps not as interested in the core topic.
• Ability to Drive Action – Does this person get shared? What is their engagement rate relative to each platform, then overall. Does their audience respond with comments, shares, likes, votes, etc.?

While each are interesting data points in an overall influencer identification program, there will always be debate as to which is most important or if other factors belong. This is primarily why I’ve always said that each service out there — Traackr, Klout, mBlast, etc. — is just one way of looking at the data. None are necessarily better than another and all are valid points of consideration. Socmetrics is yet another. I like the way they score and rank and the ease of use of their tool. But it won’t ever be the only way to organize or find influencers. If it is, you’re not looking at enough information.

Socmetrics is primarily focused on agencies and brands. It’s pricing starts at $400 per month for total access to its database. For that price you can track a list of up to 25 people. Tracking more scales your price upward. You can do scans and export data without tracking, though, so with some manual labor, you can get lots of use out of the system without having to pay more. Socmetrics doesn’t limit your ability to search the database or the number of seat licenses that can use your account. But if they have to store more data, they charge for that.

You can save multiple lists as well, though your 25 person tracking limitation will kick in at some point. When you find an influencer in your searching, a hand “Add to List” button is there to easily sort and track the individuals in question. The system pulls in their latest content, Compete.com data on web traffic and more. There’s a lightweight CRM system on top of the tool as well, so you can keep notes about outreach or preferences in each influencer’s profile.

Perhaps adding the icing on the cake value to the tool is its monitoring and ROI reporting. With your lists of influencers, the system will monitor and index all of their content and flag any that mentions your product or brand. So PR firms doing blogger outreach to a targeted list can produce a report that says, “Reached out to 25 influencers and landed placement with 22 of them.” Plus, with the monitoring function, you can easily see what they’re talking about now, which aides in your ability to reach out with relevant information that’s top-of-mind with them.

Socmetrics is online at socmetrics.com.

What do you think about this approach? Are they missing something? Do other tools like Traackr, mBlast or even Klout have something they don’t? The comments are yours.

Related articles

• SocMetrics Leads Growing Cluster of Boston Startups Trying to Cash In on Social Media Tech (xconomy.com)
• Traackr Makes Influencer Identification Easy, But Not Cheap (socialmediaexplorer.com)
• Topical Influence Tool: SocMetrics (conversationagent.com)
• 17 Alternatives to Klout (readwriteweb.com)

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Matt Polsky, the  Social Media Manager as well as the Reputation Manager for Veterans United and VA Mortgage Center. 

The rise of social media and content creation has brought on new challenges for businesses of all shapes and sizes, especially when it comes to managing one’s reputation. Reputation isn’t a single stationary object, but an equation that includes many pieces, such as being known for quality products or services, being likeable, actively engaging customers, or the ability to offer valuable and relevant content.

Social media gives you the ability to communicate in real-time with your customer base and gives you a chance to build strong interactions. With social media you can provide special incentives, promotional codes, as well as sneak peeks at upcoming products.

Since being a social media manager as well as an avid user of most forms of social media, I have a hard time seeing any reason why a business wouldn’t want to use social media. However, with all the plusses, it still seems like the perfect PR tool is still highly underused. So why would a company not want to use social media?

Image via CrunchBase

After looking deeper into the issue, I realized some companies just can’t handle social media. Take Netflix for example, the first day they announced they were hiking up prices and splitting the comapny, their Facebook page received 66,000 negative comments, 5000 comments went to their blog, and the #DearNetflix hashtag received a hit almost every five minutes. Netflix had no clue what to do with this flood of comments and it took them a whole three days for a single response. In that three day period there was no “we understand” or “sorry for the inconvenience” or even a single explanation, nothing, which outraged fans even more.

After this fiasco, Netflix has had to do some major reputation repair that could possibly set the company back and give Blockbuster a chance to gain a solid chunk of market share. Still, could this problem have been avoided if they didn’t have their social media channels? In all likelihood, no, and it could have been worse.

Customers still would have sent emails, called customer service lines, and wrote letters expressing their discontent. Of course, these types of communication are all one-on-one, which would eliminate members from feeding off each other’s comments; but even at that, it still wouldn’t stop the millions who subscribe to different social media outlets from blogging and posting on their own platforms. At least with social media outlets, you have the ability to send a mass apology in conjunction with apologizing personally to major influencers.

In a perfect world, I would like to think most companies would take a more proactive approach and have their PR department ready for any negative reaction, especially when any sort of news would outrage the customer base; however, the business world is far from perfect and there are slip-ups similar to Netlix’s occurring all too frequently.

From my experience, even if you produce a great campaign that promotes a positive reaction, complaints will still happen at some point, so it’s best to be prepared in advance. Social media sites allow customers to tell companies exactly how they feel by posting on their wall or by shooting them a tweet, and when businesses run into negative comments, handle them with speed and care. Show the customer you are doing all you can to rectify the situation or at least are acknowledging the discrepancy.

Matt Polsky is the Social Media Manager as well as the Reputation Manager for Veterans United and VA Mortgage Center. Matt keeps a special spot in his heart for military veterans and enjoys working with the nation’s leading provider of VA home loans. Connect with Matt on Twitter @mattpolsky.

As a business owner, do you care what people think about your business and the decisions you make? More specifically, do you care what your customers think? Perhaps the short answer is, “yes,” however is that holding you back? With the onslaught of social media and review sites, everyone has an opinion, and it is easier than ever to be a critic. The plethora of social media platforms has provided folks with a megaphone to chant their dislike about this or that. The adage of “The Customer Is Always Right” burrows into our fear factor and may stifle innovation and necessary change to your business model.

You Need to Fix What is Broken

To be clear, if folks are posting that your service sucks, and that is a pattern, you need to fix what is broken. We are not suggesting that there isn’t something to learn from reviews and customer complaints. Arguably though, many times business owners already know what is broke before the negative reviews but are slow to react. Fix what is broken. Beyond that, break away from mediocrity and innovate and lead. And frankly, maybe upset a few apple carts along the way.

Rarely Listen to the Customer  

But what about the companies that are well run, the ones who do fix things that are broken, they can get just as much negative spewing. Think about the attack and rhetoric that Netflix has received the last two weeks. Every Tom, Dick and Harry has an opinion about how Netflix delivered the message, and what they should have done differently and how they have made a mess of things. Really, what about the other umpteen years they have delivered a stellar product at a radically low price point. The social media pundits come out of the woodwork for these occasions spouting off about “user experience,” when we should hail Netflix for innovation and forward motion.

 Your Customers Don’t Know Your Business

Perhaps we can all do a better job delivering news, however no one knows or sees what that Entrepreneur, CEO, or Business Owner sees. No one has the information he or she has to know why they made the decision they made. And here is another dirty little secret, your customers haven’t a clue about what your the next innovation or product release should be. Even the best evangelist, if they really exist don’t know the next answer, otherwise they would be the Entrepreneur.

In our own businesses, our best ideas were pushed back, almost squashed had we not just jammed them through to get the product to market. Your customers do not want change. Your employees do not want change. And typically your investors don’t really want change. A free service called Facebook rearranges the deck chairs and everyone freaks out, right. Many times those that are the most critical have little to no knowledge of business even, except that their little world looks or feels different. Strong businesses and brands become stronger because they do what THEY decide.

How about your business, do you hand over the innovation and wheel of change to your customers? Or do you persevere as the innovator at hand? Radical thoughts or foolish musings? The comments are yours.

We’ve covered a number of tools that help marketers and brands identify influencers here. From Klout to mBlast and event the influencer identification tools in social media monitoring platforms, there exists a variety of methodologies, interfaces and price points to help you find the right bloggers and online voices to target with your company’s outreach.

One product on the market that has always intrigued me is Traackr. The San Francisco-based (by way of Boston) startup is inching up on four years old. At first, it focused on allowing individual bloggers to see their reach and influence. But as many a social media tool has discovered, making a tool for the tools isn’t profitable. Since refocusing its efforts to produce top-10, -25 or even -50 lists of influencers in a given niche, the service has taken off. Brand marketers and public relations folks looking for a sophisticated and automated way to find out who they should focus on are quick to subscribe to the service.

Image via CrunchBase

Traackr is keyword-based and the team stresses that setting up the keywords correctly is critical. They work with customers to fine tune the set up so you get what you’re looking for. While other monitoring services and online research tools may offer a topic-based approach, searching the web in a more advanced, non-keyword dependent, approach, none are solely influencer tools.

I took Traackr for a test drive recently and entered a string of about six keywords related to banking, personal finance and home mortgage loans. Within a matter of seconds, I had a 1-10 ranking of the top blogs I needed to focus on, including The Simple Dollar‘s Trent Hamm, MarketWatch‘s Andrea Coombes, Miranda Marquit from Financial Highway (among other blogs) and Tara Kuczykowski of Deal Seaking Mom, all of which have considerably large audiences with their blog readerships, Twitter followings and the like.

But Traackr also revealed Philip Taylor of PT Money and Kenneth Mages from Near Field Communications Data who don’t have huge audiences, yet nail the keyword topic relevance I’m looking for. As it turns out, Mages — as an example — doesn’t appear to have a huge blog following (he’s listed as an author on two blogs according to Traackr), but has a nice Twitter and LinkedIn following. His reach and resonance scores (more below) are low, but he nails relevance because these are the topics he’s been talking about recently.

Traackr combines three qualities when finding and ranking influencers. Reach is obvious: how many people does this person reach when they write something online? Resonance is the tendency for those posts to be repeated, linked to, retweeted and the like. Does this person get amplified by his or her network? The last one is relevance, which Traackr measures based on the keywords you’re targeting and how recent, often and important they are in the blogger/influencer’s content.

Certainly, one could argue relevance is only worthwhile with a certain reach and resonance, but unlike most other influencer tools, Traackr scores and prioritizes quality over quantity in this regard — certainly something worth considering.

Other tools, like mBlast, also offer dynamic results and incorporate a number of factors into their rankings. For gits and shiggles, I pumped the exact same keywords into an mBlast search. It revealed 25 “influencers.” None of them were in Traackr’s list. Most of mBlast’s results were certainly blogs and influential sites in the space, and ones I would certainly investigate and prioritize for an outreach project. In fact, I’d really like to use Traackr and mBlast together to ensure I’m getting influencers from a couple perspectives. But a closer look at some (not all, but some) of the mBlast results revealed blogs or websites I wouldn’t consider worth reaching out to. Traackr’s list only produced Mages that made me wonder. I’m not sure I’d put him in a top-10 list and not a blog like NetBanker, but that Twitter and LinkedIn list might reveal some heavy hitters.

However, the comparison in results only proves one critical point: You cannot trust algorithms alone. Regardless of the tool you use, you must add a layer of human analysis and investigation to verify the lists, ensure the results you’re working with are legitimate influencers in the space and, of course, none of these tools will do your outreach for you.

To effectively use an influencer identification tool, you must do some actual leg work yourself. Sorry … automation only goes so far. If that revelation disappoints you, step back and reassess whether or not you’re too lazy to do this.

I like Traackr for the simple fact that it’s incredibly easy: Put in good keywords, hit search and voila! You get your top-X list of influencers. And frankly, their algorithm produces a high quality list. You can add your own influencers to ensure their posts are considered and the dynamic nature of the tool allows you to see who’s talking about the topics in question now and how influential they are.

But there is a big drawback to Traackr. You’ve got to be series if you want to play. A single search to yield one top-25 list will run you $499 per month. There’s also a one-time, $2,500 setup, training and lifetime support fee. Influencer identification is a very small part of an overall marketing or public relations effort. You’re looking at $8,500 per year or so just to walk in the door with this tool. That alone means one thing: Big brands or big budgets only.

The tool its good. And if taking the manual labor of identifying who you should reach out to — not the outreach itself, just making your list — is time you’d rather spend doing other things, then Traackr may be for you. But for most public relations and marketing efforts, the price tag is going to be prohibitive.

Do you use Traackr? What are your experiences? The comments are yours.

Related articles

• Traackr Closes $1M Round (xconomy.com)
• Traackr Releases Influencer Platform (prweb.com)

I’ve been ranting for some time about the disconnect between PR and social media, and particularly between PR and blogger outreach. In the evolution of social media, somehow blogger outreach became equated with public relations’ pitching to journalists, and so for years it’s been largely the domain of PR coordinators and account executives.

That’s seems wrong. I feel that PR should not be primarily responsible for blogger outreach. And likely not for other types of social media either.

I know, PR people, you disagree. You know how to do relationships, and you believe that social media is about relationships. You are communicators, and social media is communication. You diligently polish and protect brand reputations, and you can do the same in social media. I get all that and I’m not for a minute discounting all the hard work you do in all of the above.

Here’s the problem: Bloggers are not journalists. Blogger outreach programs are, most often, not earned media. Blogger outreach programs are actually paid media (even when no money exchanges hands). And therein lies the rub.

Where does the “paid” come from? Well, first of all, I am certainly not advocating for a blogger to get paid to write a product review. That seems wholly unethical and, as with any type of product review such as that which might appear in a magazine, is payola at its worst (though it does happen). However, with the exception of product reviews, everything else a blogger does to assist a brand in promoting a product or service is a promotional partnership. That’s right, bloggers are promoting, and therefore should be partners. Paid partners. Or fairly compensated in some other way (barter, donations, travel, whatever makes sense to both parties). And not only in product.

[But wait!, you say. Many bloggers are blogging for entirely personal reasons, and they don't want to nor expect to get paid. You are correct - I know of plenty of bloggers who blog about their kids, their travels, their hobbies or their industry and none of them would ever think to take payment from someone to promote a product.  My question then is why is a PR person pitching them to promote a product (and especially if that product isn't a 110% perfect fit for their audience) in their personal blog? I'd be pissed if I were such a blogger and was inundated by requests from PR people. And it most certainly does happen, all the time. Pitching bloggers appropriately is another topic I rant about a lot.]

So here’s the disconnect: Marketing budgets put the most money into media. Huge percentages of budgets are devoted to paid media. And PR firms rarely get OOPs (out-of-pocket) budgets beyond events, spokespeople or day-to-day operational costs. So when PR people go to the blogger and ask for them to help promote a product, and the savvy and deserving blogger replies with his or her standard charge for that type of promotional partnership, the PR firm has to say no, because they usually don’t have the budget for it.

That’s right: PR firms (most of them, anyway) do not have the budgets to do effective blogger outreach. They don’t typically know how to budget for it, how to ask for the budgets, and they’re not set up to pay bloggers effectively even if they have the budget. That’s why it’s not working, and why it won’t work, unless there’s a huge mind shift on both the client side and the agency side, and soon.

One tragedy of this dynamic, which has been playing out for a few years now, has led to the perception of bloggers (and particularly “mommy bloggers,” who should henceforth be referred to as parenting/lifestyle bloggers) as always having their hands out. And it’s also led to the recent tsunami of new bloggers who have entered the space just hoping to make money, without necessarily having a true passion for the craft. And when you’re a new blogger with a dozen readers, most of which are your book club, you don’t deserve to be a paid promotional partner for a blog.  Grow your readership, and establish your value, before you stick your hand out. So yes, recently it’s become a bit difficult to listen to all those bloggers who are whining about wanting to get paid, because many of them should not be paid.

But when a blogger becomes the media, when they are publishers who create informative, entertaining, touching or important content that reaches thousands or millions, they have power. And that power can and should be harnessed by brands in a professional way. By professional, I mean paid.

So PR firms, if you haven’t figured this out yet, here’s what you must do: you must convince your clients to give some of their media budget to you. To do that, you have to learn to budget differently, and then you must learn to manage it (because those media-like payments will turn your accounting department on its ear). Then, with those budgets, you must create smart and clever (and measurable – but that’s a topic for another post) promotional partnerships with bloggers. Because if you cannot, you will not be able to effectively play in the field of blogger outreach. And the digital agencies are going to eat your lunch.

(Authors note: Apologies to a few very savvy PR people I know who really, really get this. You know who you are. You guys (well, gals, mostly) are on the cutting edge. From where I sit, at the intersection of bloggers and clients, it seems most of the rest of the industry is not.)

img source: flickr (Amagill)

Related articles

• When did PR firms become digital marketing firms? (hottubcrimemachine.com)
• Five Blogger Reactions to Review & Endorsement Compensation (prbreakfastclub.com)
• The PR Guide To Email Pitching (socialmediaexplorer.com)

If you’re a public relations or communications person who works with bloggers, you’ve probably figured out by now that every blogger is unique. Pitching bloggers is not the same as pitching traditional journalists, because every blogger is motivated differently, whereas journalists are generally motivated to write because they’re being paid to do so and with a (usually) clear editorial direction.

Bloggers, on the other hand, work mainly for themselves. (For the purposes of this post, we’re talking about non-corporate bloggers – those that create and maintain blogs for their own personal use, or as a small business in and of itself.) So determining the motivation of an individual blogger is the key to pitching them successfully, because if you can address their needs, you can often get them to write about your product or service.

One of the best ways to determine what motivates a blogger is to ask. Develop relationships and once you get to know a blogger well, ask flat out what they want from brands. But assuming that you can’t do that for every blogger, or that you don’t have time to build those relationships (it can take months, if not years), consider what type of blogger they are. If the blogger you’re seeking to engage with fits into one of these four types of bloggers, you might be able to better meet their needs by being aware of the following broad (very broad!) categories and what can motivate bloggers within each of them.

1. Lifestyle/Personal Bloggers

These are bloggers who are primarily writing about their lives, their passions, or their communities. Lifestyle/personal bloggers could be blogging about parenting and family, about religion, or about travel. They might maintain a blog about model trains, about being an army wife, or about living with Multiple Sclerosis. These bloggers are sometimes difficult to pitch, as anything you pitch that’s they think is not 100% related to their topic will make you look really ignorant, even if you think there’s a connective thread. They can be motivated by stories: perhaps pitch them an interview with a spokesperson for your product who has had the same experience they have had (such as a breast cancer spokesperson for a blog about living with breast cancer). Give them something personally relevant: invite a local family to visit your family-friendly museum or event. Or ask them to contribute their viewpoint to your company blog or website, by writing a post or creating a video which will help your audience understand their point-of-view.

Some lifestyle/personal bloggers will accept “traditional” offers of sponsored posts or product giveaways, but many will not. Tread lightly and don’t be obnoxious. These people are passionate and usually very focused.

2. Reviews/Shopping Bloggers

These blogs (and bloggers) are about stuff. They may be very niche-y, like gadgets for women, or they could be about fashion and celebrity. Many will review product, either product that they’ve been given to review or product that they purchase themselves. In the case of fashion and shopping bloggers, they may be focused on fashion as worn by other people – like celebrities or models. Review and shopping bloggers are often motivated by two things: stuff, and access.

Stuff is pretty obvious – if you want a review blogger to review something that’s in their niche, you can usually send it to them and they’ll review it. Note that ethical review bloggers will mention both the good and bad of a product and will give a fair review. And most review bloggers will not take paid compensation for a review – they will only accept product, and some will even send the product back to you (if it’s practical to do so). All review bloggers (all bloggers, actually) should have strong disclosure statements about their policy with regards to product (and payment).

Access is great if you can provide it: to backstage at a fashion show, to a celebrity who represents your brand, to the R&D team who created your product, to the chef in your new restaurant. Or access could also be stuff – be the first to review our product. Either way, helping these bloggers to get a scoop or first look may motivate them to write about your product or service.

3. Resource Bloggers

I love resource blogs. These are the savings, recipe, craft, and tips or how-to blogs that I read daily. Resource bloggers are truly amazing to me: they spin out tons of fantastic new content every day (often multiple times per day) and many of them generate terrific traffic. And why wouldn’t they, when they’re such a big help?

In my experience working with bloggers, I find that resource bloggers often have a stronger business model than most other bloggers.  Many of these blogs monetize well – they’re making money either through advertising, sponsorship, or, more often than not, affiliate marketing. So motivating these bloggers can be pretty easy – offer them an appropriate product (or coupon or service) to promote, with an affiliate link generating commission for each sale, and they’re likely to write all about it (with proper disclosure, of course).  Or get their attention by buying advertising first, then later coming to them for editorial coverage.  They’re much more likely to notice you if you’ve already been a supporter of their site (and you advertising there indicates that you think they have just the right audience for your product, which also makes it an easier sell for you).

4. Business Bloggers

Since we’re talking non-corporate blogs here, when I say “business bloggers,” I don’t mean bloggers who are writing for their business, I mean they’re writing about business-related topics.  These could be blogs about software development, blogs about running a small business, or even blogs about social media (yes, just like this one!).  This is a tough group to outreach to, as they’re often very focused on their niche and very wary of looking too commercial (as they are often monetizing their blog through a different venue other than advertising or product sales).  In my own case, I’m a social media consultant, and therefore my social media blog (and my writing here) establishes my thought leadership in my field. I never take paid sponsorships or promote products unless I’m doing an independent review which I decided to undertake on my own.  I know a great many business bloggers who feel the same. So as with Lifestyle/Personal bloggers, try to pitch only stories, products or services that you think are 100% connected and, even then, pitch lightly and be ready for rejection (or no answer at all).

Important Reminders

Not every blogger can be pitched, or should be pitched. Many are blogging for themselves, not for anyone else, regardless of what category you think they fall in to. So when your pitch gets rejected (or doesn’t get an answer at all), don’t take it personally. But know that with real blogger relationships, comes success (most of the time).

So as I said at the outset, these are broad generalizations, but it’s at least someplace to start. Now go forth and talk to bloggers. Hopefully these concepts will help you begin and sustain better relationships. And, particularly if you’re a blogger, please give us your thoughts on these categorizations – close? far off? helpful? not? The comments are yours.

Related articles

• Reaching Out to Bloggers: Hello, Five Facts You Need to Know (jamiedunham.wordpress.com)
• Connecting With Super Bloggers? Think Content. (socialmediaexplorer.com)
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Public relations professionals responded en masse to last week’s post offering some guidelines for email pitching. My assertions that PR outreach via email is, indeed, a commercial communications and, thus, falls under the regulatory purview of the Federal Trade Commission and the CAN-SPAM Act was polarizing.

Many did not agree with my opinion that the CAN-SPAM Act also encompasses public relations communications, particularly when a PR person is reaching out to a media outlet or blogger to just establish that all-important relationship. Honestly, I do think there are a lot of gray areas here, but when it comes to following the letter of the law, can we really afford to play in an unclear pool?

My recommendations to include opt-out instructions or links and clear statements the communications is advertising or commercial in nature are not based on what I personally believe is the most appropriate approach. They are based on what I believe to be the most appropriate approach in light of the law. While the courts have yet to interpret or consider cases that fall into this part of the gray area of CAN-SPAM actualization, I believe we should err on the side of caution. Hence the recommendations.

Image via Wikipedia

But those were my thoughts for the public relations side of the aisle. I have some thoughts for the media or blogger side as well. It is my hope these ideas will further spread understanding of what the law asks for. On a parallel path, we’re enlightening those who perform media and blogger outreach as to best practices for us. (I’m assuming the role of blogger/media outlet for the sake of the rest of this post.)

Instead of filing FTC complaints, launching public wikis of email spammers and outing PR pros for bad pitches or even potential CAN-SPAM violations, we should do our part to make things better. We should first understand that while social media and bloggers as media have been around a while now, we’re still in the infancy of this new marketing landscape.

Reacting like a spoiled child does no good. No one thinks of Chris Anderson or Gina Tripani as heroes for having hissy fits on PR people back in 2008. Bloggers who followed suit and copy-pasted awful pitches, outing and embarrassing the offenders, just showed their ass with their virtual temper tantrums.

What we should do is embrace and educate. While I certainly recognize that it is no media member’s responsibility, bloggers included, to respond to every bad pitch with soothing instructions and helpful pointers on improving their chances of being heard, I do think we can take some simple steps to improve things.

Here’s what I suggest:

Write a helpful canned response. Here’s mine:

Thanks for your email. I noticed you didn’t include an opt-out link or instructions. Did you know this may be in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act? Since your email was commercial in nature (promoting a product) not including opt-out links or instructions could subject you or your firm to fines.

Just thought I’d let you know. Please do remove me from your list. If you’d like to know how to get my attention better for future pitches, my “how to pitch” ideas are here: http://socialmediaexplorer.com/how-to-pitch-sme/

Keep that canned response in an easily accessible text file or even use a custom template tool like WiseStamp (email signatures) or even Tout that allows you to easily populate an email with your canned responses.

As you go through your inbox and find offending emails, click a button or two, copy-paste if needed, and send.

In just a few seconds, you’ve helped bring the CAN-SPAM Act to light for public relations professionals who may not be aware of it, politely responded to and dismissed the pitch and moved on.

Until the FTC further interprets the CAN-SPAM Act (it’s been around since 2004, so don’t count on that happening anytime soon) or an organization like PRSA or IABC comes down with a firm stance and recommendation for their members on the issue, this is the world we live in.

Public relations professionals are going to screw up outreach. Some will do it out of ignorance. Others may do it intentionally. But media members/bloggers are as much a part of the evolution of the current environment to something more amenable to everyone as the PR folks themselves.

So let’s chip away at the stone, gang. Eventually, it’ll be gone.

Related articles

• The PR Guide To Email Pitching (socialmediaexplorer.com)
• Canada changes its Anti-Spam Email Marketing Act (wrmmedia.wordpress.com)
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• PR in a blogger versus journalist world (pop-pr.blogspot.com)

I’ve always considered myself a public relations professional by trade. Even when the general perception of PR isn’t all that good, I still try to advocate for stronger ethics, better measures and more honorable tactics than those that give the industry an iffy reputation. But despite the last several years of trying to help many of my colleagues better understand that blasting and lists and impersonal communications is not only generally not effective but under certain conditions illegal, too many still don’t get it.

So let’s review … and this time pay attention:

1. If you email a blogger, media member or otherwise individual with a pulse and they do not know you and didn’t ask you to email them, you are — at most — introducing yourself. If you do anything more than that, you are spamming them.
2. If you email anyone for a commercial purpose — and outreach on behalf of a company or organization is for a commercial purpose — your email and company or firm is subject to the CAN-SPAM act. As such, among other things, your email has to have a “clear and conspicuous” explanation of how to to opt-out of your emails. By the way, you also have to clearly identify the communication as advertising. And if you think PR isn’t advertising in this case, roll the dice. I’m sure a judge won’t agree with your COM 204 professor’s definition. And PRSA is understandably nut-less, all but endorsing email spam, when it comes to their official reaction to this notion. (Thank you for prodding them, Josh.)
3. Media database companies cannot possibly update tens of thousands of media member’s contact information or preferences to the extent you can rely on them to not get you in trouble with a blogger who agrees with the first two points. Automation, even using companies claiming to have awesome data to drive it, is not cool.
4. Yes, this makes scaling your media outreach next to impossible. But that’s a good thing. Your “list” is supposed to be a list of personal contact information for people you know and have some sort of professional relationship or contact with. They should be glad to open your emails. Any list that is more than that is one that should comply to No. 2.

Yeah, I know it sucks. I used to think PR was easy, too. I’d download my list of 400 outlets that qualified under my target parameters, copy and paste my press release and hope like hell for some pick up. I’d follow up and call about 15 key media outlets and develop the relationship part, maybe get 5-6 of them to bite on the story, along with the 2-3 dozen small town newspapers that were so starved for content they copy-pasted my release, and made my clients or bosses happy.

You’re in the communications business. Communications wasn’t meant to be one to many. It’s unnatural.

You can build a list all you want, but call each person on it. Reach out to them. And reach out with nothing but getting to know them a bit in mind. If the list is too long for that to be practical, then the list is too long for that to be practical. Edit it.

And if your back is against the wall and you have to communicate one message to a lot of people you don’t know in a short amount of time, at least comply with the law with perhaps a little note like this at the end:

I’m careful to send emails to media outlets that serve audiences that may find the subject matter useful. Sometimes, media databases aren’t as accurate with the topics as I’d hope. To protect your inbox, I’m using an email software. If you’d rather not receive messages from me relevant to you and your readers, just opt out by clicking here. If I’ve sent an irrelevant message, I apologize. It was unintentional.

And while I’m not the know all and end all to PR or outreach and your response and feedback is not only welcome but encouraged, there is one thing I’d like to ask you to do in addition to share your thoughts:

1. Share this post on Facebook
2. Tweet a link to it asking your PR colleagues and friends to read it
3. Email the link to any PR people you know, especially since they could be fined $16,000 per incident of not complying with the CAN-SPAM Act.
4. Go update your information in media databases, or reach out to them as ask to be able to
5. Stop … and I repeat … Stop sending email pitches without an opt-out.

Once you’re done, you can go back to your regularly scheduled blog reading. Void where prohibited.

Related articles

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