Gary Andrews

Social media’s pretty well established now but the question of who should take ownership for activity is no closer to being answered. PR Week have recently been attempting to answer this, making an argument for a host of different disciplines, while Econsultancy have argued that social media shouldn’t be owned by a PR or ad agency. I tend to agree with them.

Social media is a multi-faceted beast. It can be used to break stories, promote campaigns and brands, deal with reputation management, drive sales, and nurture and develop an enthusiastic community of fans and followers.

Just looking at this list it’s clear that there’s a whole host of potential stakeholders all of whom could legitimately lay claim to be the right people to drive this strategy forward.

Marketing will certainly be happy to push the message or the brand but may not be the right people to respond to a crisis or issues that might arrive.

PR, meanwhile, will be perfect for this and would seem to be the most natural fit but, although you have some excellent social PRs, may not be the most naturally inclined to nurture or build a community, while the community person may not necessarily be the right person to completely get across the message on the occasions that are required, or deal with social issues out of the community.

Then there’s the analytics, something that those on the media side of things are generally less inclined towards. Then there’s always the temptation for some companies to give it to “the web guy” or the most enthusiastic member of the team. But if they’re doing this on top of their normal work and don’t get the support from the rest of the organisation then this negates any savyness they bring to the table.

I realise this is a somewhat simplistic overview of the whole area – some companies have very evolved social practices and are happy to work in the grey areas – but it still shows the dilemmas and issues ownership of social projects.

It’s why, increasingly, I strongly believe that any company, organisation or group that has genuine aspirations of working successfully in a social space should be employing somebody whose brief is solely social media and is comfortable with all these disciplines (and, in fairness, a lot of companies are moving in this direction).

Ideally this person will have some form of media background or knowledge – they’d need to be able to communicate with the PR and marketing sides, and also comfortable writing and commissioning blog posts. They’d also have the time to integrate with a community, appreciate the sensitivities and, if they’re really good, use this to feed back and potentially help their employers produce something cool and well-received.

The other aspect of this is the social person being happy to delegate social responsibility elsewhere in the organisation. One of the temptations for social media is to give it all to one person.

But if you’re going to have one person overseeing social media then they will need to facilitate and delegate. There will inevitably be co-workers who are better placed to run Twitter feeds or answer questions on this topic, and, most importantly provide guidance.

I’ve worked in plenty of places and heard tales from elsewhere where social strategy and cool ideas were held up because several different departments wanted to make a land-grab for the social media rights and this internal jostling often ended up slowing the whole process down.

And, as we all know, social media isn’t exactly an area that’s inclined to hang around.

It’s all to easy to have assorted departments squabbling over who should take charge of social media. Instead, treat is as a separate discipline and hopefully you’ll see the benefits.

written by Gary \\ tags: advertising agencies, PR, PR agencies, PR Week, social media, Twitter

What happens when you put a load of bloggers and PRs in the same room and get them to discuss their industry? Fight? Or consensus? Or both?

The most recent London Bloggers Meetup didn’t quite reach either of those stages but the panel / open floor debate was interesting, partly because it showed how little the debate, and indeed industry, has moved on.

The panel lined up with Cate Sevilla from Bitch Buzz, Chris Osburn aka Tiki Chris, and Pete Stean from The Londoneer, with Stephen Waddington (Wadds) from Speed Communications, Matt Churchill from Edelman and Laurence Borel (Lolly) from Mindshare on the PR side.

Two things were very evident in the debate. There were some interesting points but listening felt very much like déjà vu. I’d sat in similar panels, debates and training sessions two years ago. But then, as Wadds said, the issue of poor PR pitching has gone on from the year dot.

Secondly, there was a lot of consensus between the two sides that things could and should be done better. Although it’s also worth saying that Matt, Lolly and Wadds are three PRs who know what they’re talking about when it comes to social media. They’re the shining examples from their profession.

Sadly not all PRs are like these three. Lolly also pointed out that often clients will give PRs very little leeway when it comes to blogger outreach campaigns and can make near impossible demands.

Broadly, though, there was a lot of agreement both from the panel and the floor on PR and blogger relations, bar the person who asked – and hopefully this was just playing devil’s advocate – whether bloggers would be more likely to write about something if they were paid for it.

There are several issues with this, which I’d briefly like to touch on.

1. It probably borders on the illegal, due to EU regulations. Darika can tell you more about this, as she knows the topic better than me.

2. If the PR is offering cash then chances are the subject of the pitch isn’t very good. An exciting, well-done pitch will snare the recipient’s interest regardless. Cash offers look desperate.

3. The sums on offer are often insultingly low. On the rare occasions I’ve been offered cash to post on this blog, which I’ve turned down, it’s generally been between £10 and £40 and often come with a lot of strings attached. My view is that if you’re offering cash in return for me writing then you’re commissioning a piece from me and I’ll charge according to the relevant NUJ rate.

Another point that could easily be coupled to this is advertising. Lolly, emphatically and correctly, said that PR is not advertising. However, offering payment for blogging on a topic definitely blurs a line between the two and it’s hard to view it as anything other than advertorial. But it’s worth emphasising again: PR is not advertising.

But although the general discussions weren’t new, the idea of the blogger-as-professional, as mentioned by both sides, has changed over the past few years.

It’s easy to lump all blogs into the same grouping, but that would be like lumping all TV programmes into the same category. Yes, the broadcasted medium is the same for all, but there are differences, both obvious and nuanced.

Broadly speaking, you can probably divide blogs today into four categories:

a) The professional blogger. This person blogs for a living and depends on the blog to some extent to support them financially, or has aspirations that the blog will earn them money one day.

b) The professional amateur. This person spends a lot of time blogging but will run their blog alongside their day job. However, they also take great pride in their blog and look for it to be as professional as a mainstream media organisation. Money is probably secondary to content.

c) The amateur professional. This is somebody who works in the media, possibly involving blogging, but runs a blog in their spare time (usually on a free template rather than paid hosting), which will be well-written and probably known within the industry. I’d probably say this blog comes under this category. They’re probably indifferent about money, unless needed, due to their job elsewhere.

d) The amateur amateur. They blog for themselves and / or friends. They are unlikely to realise or care if people other than friends or a few randoms read their blog. Would be surprised at any offers to making money. Will always be hosted on a free template.

Of these, the top two categories start blurring the line with journalist, although would as likely resolutely call themselves bloggers. These are the two types of blogs PR would be most interested in, while, unless the amateur amateur had an influential niche following, it’s unlikely PR would ever pitch to them.

Put simply, many blogs have got more sophisticated, and will either be collective efforts with an editor or writers, or sit as part of an over-arching (usually niche interest) banner, albeit with a free reign on topics (and it’s why I don’t think blogging is dead or dying, it’s just consolidating, just as the radical press did in the early days of print journalism).

But then, not all professional bloggers and professional amateurs will be open to pitches of all kinds. It’s always a case of ensuring they’re correctly targeted.

Does this make them journalists? Yes and no, depending on the blog and the individual. Should the PR be treating them as journalists? Yes and also no again. It’s just a question of adjusting your strategy to take in the medium. Just as you wouldn’t pitch a story with poor or non-existent filming opportunities to a TV journalist, so you wouldn’t pitch like a print journalist to a blogger.

The desired outcome and the pitch may not be wildly different, but it has to take into account the medium it’s being pitched to, regardless of the professional status or otherwise of the recipient.

So where does this bring us to? Well, not much different than the start of the debate. Everybody thinks PR could do better, while those journalists who open themselves up to PR pitches could be a little more understanding. The debate, arguments and conclusions aren’t exactly new, although there are detectable groundshifts.

But for all my scepticism on whether the blogging and PR debate has moved on at all in the past two or three years, it’s worth putting that to one side to say the debate was fun and interesting, and to congratulate all involved in putting their heads above the parapet. And also to say thanks to Andy Bargery, who continues to organise the London Bloggers’ Meetups and ensures everybody has a fantastic night (I know I did).

And of the debate itself. Well, as Cate Sevilla, probably the most impressive of the six, said as she rounded up, “It’s not frickin’ difficult.”

It’s  slogan that should be printed out and posted on the monitor of every aspiring PR, social media or otherwise.

written by Gary \\ tags: blogger engagement, London Bloggers Meetup, PR and blogging, PR pitching

If anonymous commenting on the internet had a users guide, then one of the more sensible pieces of advice would be “Don’t do it from your work PC.”

It’s advice a commenter on the previous post would have been good to consider. I don’t make a habit of running Whois searches on the IP address of every commenter but, given that this place doesn’t get that many trolls or sockpuppets, and given the subject matter, I was a bit curious. Turns out the IP address was from one of the (many) PR agencies who’ve pitched me this World Cup.

Fail.

My first instinct was to blog about it. Look at me! I’ve found another PR person not getting online! I can call them out and it’ll add to the legions of PR fails!

Yes, that would have been fun. But what would it really achieve, in all honesty?

I’m not in the habit of naming and shaming – it’s always struck me as a little counter productive. And, frankly, it the grand scheme of things immature PR leaves childish anonymous comment on insignificant blog isn’t really up there with war crimes.

After sleeping on it, I felt less comfortable with the idea of outing the agency. After all, one employee isn’t representative of the whole company.

The thought also occurred that if this had been a piece of journalism for publication I would have at least made an effort to get the accused’s side of the story before going anywhere near the publish button. And if, as I’ve often said, bloggers aspire to be journalists, then they should hold themselves to the standards journalists have as well. Even if journalists regularly fall short of these themselves.

So I emailed the director of the agency, who emailed back promptly, with an invitation to talk over the issues on the phone, which I did.

And I now consider the matter to be at an end, and I’m really satisfied with the response (and no, I didn’t demand any action against the perpetrator. It’s not my place to tell a company how to conduct their own HR).

Why? Because ten minutes on the phone was productive. The director came across as very switched on and took the issues seriously. I came away with a very favourable impression.

What’s more, we both agreed to keep each other’s contact details. They’d contact me if they thought it would be useful, but would also take me off the general mailing list, and I know that there’s somebody at the agency I can contact if I’m writing stories on certain topics, which I may well do in the future.

A win-win situation, really.

So, what’s the lesson (other than don’t try and post childish comments on a blog during work time).

While there’s a lot wrong with PR, there’s also a lot of good, sensible people working hard in the industry, doing their best to make connections with bloggers. And to a certain extent they have to tread on eggshells while doing this.

A wrong move with the wrong blogger, no matter how well meaning or unintentional and you can find yourself passed around Twitter, mocked by all and sundry. There’s no guarantee that if you catch the blogger on a bad day with a bad move, they won’t take umbridge and blog about it.

Not that there’s anything wrong with calling out bad practice, when appropriate.

But it did make me stop and think. How many bloggers have burned bridges or got themselves a reputation for being difficult for happily blogging PR fails.

Yet could they have improved things and actually developed a good long-term relationship with a good contact if they’d taken a step back and tried to resolve things behind the scenes first. It’s not as if anybody was going to beat them to publishing it, in a lot of cases.

One line from an old news editor of mine always sticks in my mind – “[Competitor x] may be first. But we’re always going to be right.” In other words, I’d always prefer to take a while longer to establish and verify the facts rather than rush to publish. Today was no different. I’m glad I did.

I consider today’s conversation confidential, although I think it’s worth quoting one line from my conversation. As an agency, I was told, we’re committed to treating bloggers the same as journalists.

I like that, I think it’s a good attitude. It’s something I’ve said roughly the same in the past, although you obviously have to make allowances for the different medium you’re working with.

And although bloggers are very good at calling out bad journalism, both blogs and journalists can be even quicker to call out bad PR – whether it’s justified or not – or calling out anything they consider wrong in general.

I’ve seen plenty of examples over the last couple of years where bloggers and PR have got into very public spats over something that has always struck me could have been dealt with without having to go public.

There’s a lot to be said for making an effort to build contacts and relationships rather than losing it quickly (although equally you can say that PR in general could avoid a lot of these issues if people from the industry didn’t continue to make elementary errors).

I’ve always maintained that others should be treated with the same respect you’d hope to be treated. I’d like to hope that, God forbid, should I make a similar fail one day, that the blogger has the good grace to contact me and give me a chance to talk over the issue before hitting publish.

I’d be interested in hearing your views on this one. Do you think bloggers hit publish too quickly? Should they blog first and ask questions later? Or is it only fair? What would you have done?

I don’t think there are any right answers, personally, but I’m very glad I took the time to contact them. Given the chance I’d much rather try and work on developing a relationship rather than kill it before it had the chance to succeed or fail.

written by Gary \\ tags: blogging, journalism ethics, pitching bloggers, PR

Ding! Another day, another poorly worded and conceived pitch arrives in my personal inbox, and my heart sinks a little further towards despair. If it weren’t for the Germans, and Portugal’s goal fest against the North Koreans, I’d have received more useless pitches than goals this World Cup.

Quite simply, judging by the majority of pitches than have landed in my inbox, general PR from companies looking to take advantage of the World Cup has ranged from poor to truly shocking. Most have made no attempt to remotely engage.

At least one email has been so laughably bad, I’ve sent it on to friends and colleagues so they can marvel that, yes, some agencies are still much worse than had previously been imagined.

I’m not in the habit of naming and shaming, but at least one agency has come close to me breaking this general self-imposed rule. Not that they’d know – judging from their emails I’d be shocked if they’ve even ever bothered to read anything I write.

Here’s a few selected highlights:

• An email starting with the words: “Hi, we’ve created some virals for your blog.” No, no you haven’t.
• An fairly obvious copy and paste email email urging me to cheer on England three days after they were knocked out.
• A general assumption that I was a fanatical England fan. I support Wales. This is fairly obvious.
• An email asking me to send a copy of my publication to agency x if I ran a piece on the product they were hawking.
• The PR who sent a pitch during the opening game. We had better things to do at that stage.
• Several emails that had nothing to do with the World Cup, other than a hastily added sentence to include a reference. You’re fooling no-one here.
• All bar two emails started with ‘Hi’. Not ‘Hi Gary,’ or any attempt to make it personal. Just ‘Hi’.
• One insinuating I would be so desperate for content during a two day break of football that their pitch was the only way I could keep my readers hooked.
• Hardly any emails made any reference to the fact I write for half a dozen places at the best of times. It was always ‘for your blog’. Do they mean this place and its five readers?

There have been two exceptions to this general trend – two well-crafted, engaging pitches where the PR had clearly read the type of things I write about, read my profile and made a general effort.

They were the only two I replied to – and if they’re reading, you know who you are, and I’m sorry I’ve not been able to write about the information in your pitch. It was simply a case of lack of time. But I really did appreciate your emails and the personal touches. If I was using good examples of how to pitch to bloggers, these would be among them.

Speaking to other bloggers, the trend seemed to be depressingly similar. They too had received endless pitches from PRs labouring under the illusion that we were so excited about the World Cup, we’d write about any old tat that mentioned it.

They were half right. We’ve all been very excited about the World Cup.

I’d even go as far as to say that once the World Cup kicked off, unless the pitch was something very pertinent to the general narrative of the tournament, then football bloggers should have been the last people to pitch to.

The reason: we’ve all got more than enough to write about. With three games a day for the first two weeks, and then a couple more a day for a week after that, it’s really not as if any football blog is struggling for content during the World Cup. And as most bloggers generally have day jobs, unless it’s a pretty spectacular, the pitch is likely to be deleted, assuming it even gets read.

The really smart PRs – and there have been a few – would have got their campaigns and pitches in at least a couple of weeks in advance of the tournament. That stage is a bit of a deadzone, with a lack of any content or decent talking points.

And – on a small tangent – twofootedtackle’s Chris expressed amazement that I’d received so many general PR pitches. I’m such an infrequent writer, and aren’t fixed to any specific publication that I’m not an overly easy writer to target. Quite often the editors of the places I write for receive the same release, which is a bit of a waste of an email. There’s really not a great deal of point sending me a general release at the moment.

I’d like to stress that I’m definitely not PR-unfriendly – quite the contrary, if it’s a well-written, personalised and targeted pitch then I’ll make an effort to write about it, although this isn’t always possible. I’ve written some very interesting and enjoyable pieces off the back of good pitches.

But as somebody who has done plenty of blogger outreach, and still does the occasional bit in this area, I’m far less tolerant of badly done pitches, especially because I know that this stuff really isn’t rocket science and really isn’t hard to do well.

And at the end of the day, I can just hit the delete button. The guys at the brand who’ve paid for blogger outreach – and have no doubt been told that x number of blogs have been hit – are throwing thousands of pounds down the drain for incredibly bad PR and probably don’t even realise it.

UPDATE:

And the day this is published, the PR company I’ve already requested remove me from their mailing list, sends me another email inviting me to something I don’t want to go to. In Manchester. Next weekend. It’s fairly obvious, that I don’t live in Manchester. Or Birmingham, where the same thing I don’t want to go to is happening, but the weekend later. I have plans both those weekends. Exactly how many bloggers do they expect to get to this event? Or are they just box ticking?

My bad. I misread the email. They’re not inviting me to go to the events. Just write an enthusiastic blog post about them. Which is even less appealing.

Also, Chris O, as a final post on the excellent – and soon to be departed – Some People Are On The Pitch blog has done a list of every company that’s pitched them to write about brands that, if you ever read SPAOTP, you’d know they’d have little or no interest in writing about.

written by Gary \\ tags: football bloggers, pitching football bloggers, pitching to bloggers, PR, PR and bloggers, World Cup, World Cup PR

EDIT: Since posting this last night, The Sun have since dropped the World Cup blogger sweepstake after Who Ate All The Pies and other blogs complained.

Look at the screenshot of The Sun’s World Cup Blogger Sweepstake above. If you were a PR who’s been pitching football bloggers recently you might skim the blogs and think “Wow, that is a pretty impressive line up of bloggers. They’ve even managed to get some notoriously hard-to-reach, popular and high-class well respected blogs on board. I wonder how they managed that?”

Short answer: They didn’t.

Sure, they spoke to some bloggers. And some bloggers said no, and left it at that. And then saw their blog in the pages and on the website of The Sun.

Chris Taylor from It’ll Be Off was one of those bloggers. He’s not best pleased:

“I ignored this email, hoping that if I didn’t respond, I wouldn’t be involved in all this savage wankery. But sadly I am. My blog is now apparently Chile, and The Sun have publicised this site in a YouTube clip and on their website. I received another email from them yesterday asking for a little coverage of all this on my blog. So here you go:

I want to make it abundantly clear to everyone: I have nothing to do with this. I want nothing to do with this. And I am furious that the good(ish) name of my little blog, that ceased to be a concern some six months ago, is being used by the worst of all tabloids as some fucking publicity machine for their horrendous sweepstake generating iPhone app, and their even more horrendous newspaper.”

Tom Dunmore at Pitch Invasion picked up on Chris’ post and it quickly became apparent in the comments that several other blogs, namely Unprofessional Foul, Run Of Play, Sport Is A TV Show, The Onion Bag, and Two Hundred Per Cent were all included without permission as well. And none of them are particularly happy about it.

The Ball Is Round and twofootedtackle (the latter of whom I write and podcast for) agreed to enter into a prediction league but not the sweepstake and didn’t give their permission to be included or to use their logos.

There may well be more.

So what, you may say. Surely the bloggers should be happy that The Sun’s giving them free publicity. Surely they’ll gain readers and make more money and the like from this?

Possibly in same cases, but that isn’t really the point.

I’ve got no problem with the blogs that were happy to take part and are publicising it on their blogs. It’s their choice and they’re happy to take part. That’s fine.

But for those who declined or didn’t respond there’s several reasons why they’re well within their rights to be unhappy.

First off, The Sun has used their logo and blogs without permission. There’s a huge irony here given their owner, Rupert Murdoch’s, criticism of Google for stealing content on their news aggregation pages. So it’s not ok for Google but it’s fine for News International.

[EDIT: Sian asks in the comments what the legality of this is. I'm not entirely sure. It may be that The Sun haven't done anything wrong, legally, in using the names of logos. I'd be fascinated to hear from anybody who is a little more clued in than me on this]

Also, it’s then incredibly cheeky to use these logos when permission hasn’t been given and then email said blogger and mind if they’ll give it a bit of publicity on their blogs.

Secondly, the sweepstake isn’t just a bit of fun. It’s being used to promote an iPhone app. The implication here is that these bloggers, by taking part in the feature, endorse the application.

This leads to the third point. Several of the blogs The Sun’s included have built their reputation on independent, thoughtful analysis and have positioned themselves very much as an alternative viewpoint to the tabloid football frenzy, often criticising these writers. They are a world away from The Sun and often don’t take advertising and will very rarely, if ever, accept PR pitches, especially for something like an iPhone application.

In short, it affects their reputation. Especially if, in Chris Taylor’s case, they have serious ideological differences with The Sun and are critical of their coverage.

Finally, aside from the above, the whole thing is massively patronising to the blogs involved, especially those whose analysis and writing regularly outdoes the national press.

The “aren’t you lucky to be taking part” attitude sticks in the craw, the taking logos without permission then expecting an uncritical link back is sheer chutzpah and the prize for winning this sweepstake – an interview with The Sun’s chief sports writer – is a piece of condescending bone-tossing from old media to new media, to remind bloggers of their place in the hierarchy.

It does a disservice: to the bloggers involved who said no to the original request, to the readers who will assume that these blogs endorse The Sun, and to any hardworking PR who has spent ages building relations with these blogs for a very tiny mention, especially PRs from other papers.

(Disclosure: I have, in the past, been one of those PRs. And I worked hard to ensure any pitches were respectful and non-condescending and were more than just “we’re a big company, write nice things about us”. And I know several PRs from other papers and similar companies and they also adhere to the above.)

The sad thing is, there are so many football blogs that with a bit of time and research they could have probably found 32 bloggers willing to take part AND promote it on their sites. And if their initial blogger outreach was better and there was a better incentive at the end of it, they may have even got more bloggers onside.

Hell, it could have actually been fun, if you were one of those who wanted to get involved. (I wouldn’t have been but it’s not my place to tell other bloggers who they can and can’t endorse).

Instead, we’ve got some very unhappy bloggers.

Not, you suspect, that The Sun care much. After all, they’ve got a World Cup Sweepstake app to promote.

UPDATE: Arseblog makes a pretty decent point in the comments of Tom’s post:

“I’m no huge fan of The Sun but it’s not like we’re being hugely exploited here. To be honest, I don’t think anyone who reads the paper gives the slightest shit about any of the blogs and they’re hardly using our logos to make money.”

Which is a fair point and it’s worth putting perspective on this. It isn’t the end of the world. But it’s also very bad practice, not to mention manners and it’s only by pointing this sort of thing out that you might (ha!) get a change of tune. It’s the principal of it all, innit.

He’s probably right that the majority of Sun readers probably don’t really care or read the blogs involved. I’d love to see them tackle one of Brian Phillips’ wonderfully cerebral pieces at The Run Of Play though.

UD 2: Brian’s pointed out that The Sun don’t even do them the courtesy of linking, so none of them have seen ay surge in traffic. It now appears that they do, through clickable images. Although I can’t find this, but I’ll take Brian’s word for it.

And, as Fredorraci points out in the comments below, despite this being billed as the UK’s top 32 blogs, several aren’t based in the UK. Brian’s site, for a start, is an American site.

It also seems that the total amount of traffic blogs have received through this has varied between nothing and not very much at all.

written by Gary \\ tags: blogger outreach, blogs and newspapers, copyright, ripping off bloggers, the sun, The SUn World Cup Blogger Sweepstake

Rather glad that Ben Goldacre chose to write about the “Facebook can give you syphilis” non-story from last week. It seems everybody’s got it in for Facebook at the moment and while there’s a lot you can complain about, some of the ridiculous stories written about the site take bad reporting to a whole new level.

When somebody who struggles with most forms of maths and science at the best of times (ie me) can spot huge flaws in the science and maths and correlations, then chances are the facts behind said story are pretty poor.

It takes a huge leap from a public health official stating that social networking sites are making it easier for people to have casual sex, and thereby increase their chances of catching an STI, to saying that Facebook causes syphillis because Sunderland has one of the highest useages of the site. But linking them together requires such a huge leap of faith and doesn’t take into account the possibility that you have a random cluster.

What annoys me on this, though, isn’t so much the reporting (although bolting on an unrelated report isn’t great), it’s the press release in the first place. These are PR professionals working with public health professionals. You’d have thought one of them might just pick up that the social networking line would be the one that the media would leap on. Or perhaps they intended it to be that way (“Go on doctor, sex it up a bit. Throw in a reference to social networking. That’ll get the buggers biting.”).

Either way, you’d have thought some kind of facts to back up the claim, even if the form of a few notes to the editor, backing up or explaining the statement would have been good. Or, if you can’t, let the professor throw out the idea in interviews, as his own opinion. At least you’re then separating opinion from fact.

As somebody who has, in the past, probably been guilty of spewing out some bad science stories (busy newsroom, no science background, easy press release for a quick bit of copy), it’s not helpful when press releases like this are thrown in our direction. If you decide not to run with the social networking angle, your editor sure as hell will.

I’ve long said that there’s no much thing as adding too much information on science and health press releases, even if you do this as notes and let the release itself be eye-catching.

Going from past experience, the best science or health stories I did was when the press release was clear, explicit and assumed you were a science-idiot (which I was; still am) and laid everything out in as simple a way as possible. And were then very good at explaining and expanding, quickly but clearly, when I rang. Those that didn’t probably led to misunderstandings and undid any work the press release may have done in the first place.

It’s easy to chide journalists for getting science stories badly wrong (and the other stats-bolt on does no favours for this story). But if you’re going to throw garbage into the news system, in the form of a poorly-thought through science-related press release then you’re inevitably going to get garbage.

written by Gary \\ tags: acebook, bad science, science reporting, social networking

All last week, the excellent Darika Ahrens at Grapevine Consulting posted a series of pieces on why PR was losing the social media battle. They were an excellent analysis of why PR could be owning the social media space, yet continued to make basic mistakes.

Darika also asked me if I’d be able to contribute and, er, well last week didn’t happen mainly because I was excessively busy and also because it’s so hard to add anything to her excellent pieces.

One thing to briefly say, though, is while social media has moved on, and PR and brands are more willing to engage, general attitudes are still stuck in the past a little. If these attitudes can change, then we could see a real shift in thinking. But it requires organisations and senior people to face up to this and make a conscious effort.

The two biggest social media attitude problems, and they’re not mutually exclusive and can frequently be found it the same office, is that social media is an area of specialised PR that only need concern a few digital people, and that it’s quick, cheap, and easy. Often the first assumption informs actions on the second.

First off, social media may have been specialised once upon a time, while those of us beavered away understanding niche bloggers and communities, but it’s no longer part a different world.

Social media planning should be built into the start of any good campaign. If you insist on separating out digital from regular PR (and I personally think the lines are blurred enough for the distinction to be nearly meaningless) then for heavens sake, include the digital team from the start, rather than realising you’d quite like to do something on Twitter a few weeks beforehand. If nothing else, you’ll get a greater sense of what’s realistic.

And therein follows the second part. Any campaign that has poor social media planning often seems to throw things together late in the day. I still get “Can we push this out to bloggers” a week before hand, as do, anecdotally, many others, it seems.

Darika says she no longer takes short-term pitching to blogger projects, and you can understand why. These are the ones that are cobbled together at last minute, often with ludicrous targets and expectations, and invariably require so much work around them with so little return that they’re more trouble than it’s worth.

If you’re building a strategy around bloggers – and it’s also worth asking ‘what is a blogger’, given that so many mainstream outlets are just as likely to stick it on their blog as in the paper – then these things take time, money and no small amount of effort. You would throw together a major plan for print media the week beforehand. Why do the same with bloggers?

None of this is rocket science. And none of these need be done at the expense of other media coverage (another traditional mis-assumption). It requires the same thought and discipline as any other campaign.

It’s nothing that can’t be fixed but, as Darika says, we have a long way to go.

written by Gary \\ tags: fixpr, social media, social media PR