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.

Last election Twitter didn’t exist, all the cool kids were flocking to MySpace and, while the political blogosphere was in fairly healthy shape (and, it has to be said, a lot friendlier), the whole area was seen as a niche concern. These days, political news is being discussed on social media before the speech has even finished, while somebody will already be plotting the inevitable Downfall parody. Yes, for General Election 2010, social media matters – both to the media and the politicians. And that’s both a good and a bad thing.

The bad covers a range of areas, the most obvious being that politicians and the media will try too hard to woo and give credence to what is, in all honesty,  a small percentage of the voting population by focusing too heavily on what Twitter users and bloggers are saying. That’s not to say they shouldn’t, but us social media types may not be representative of the areas of society who a change of government will make the biggest differences to.

[Facebook, incidentally, is a completely different proposition and one where there is are genuine possibilities for breaking down barriers between the public and politicians and enhancing democracy like never before.

My feelings on YouTube and politicians, though, generally falls under the same category as the words "let's do a viral."]

There’s also the unsightly and rather depressing sight of grown adults indulging in petty point scoring across these networks, and the media breathlessly reporting this like IT MATTERS. It possibly does, but maybe not to the level it gets elevated to. I’m more interested in working out if the sums add up, or there’s a commitment to, say, democratic reform of Parliament than seeing a schoolboy-like putdown that serves nothing other than mutual backslapping from that team.

Then there’s the gaffes. With social media now firmly entrenched in our lives, it was inevitable that there would be plenty of political gaffes, fails and misunderstandings on how to use it all.

Us social media bods across the media or in brands engaging online have just about got the hang of what works and what doesn’t, by and large, although are always learning. We’re adaptable to the needs of our audience because we’ve been listening and engaging with communities for a while now.

Politicians, with some notable exceptions, haven’t. There’s a reason why companies are prepared to spend thousands on pounds in training their staff on how to use social media. Sure, they can use Facebook and Twitter for personal use, but that’s a very different thing to acting as a representative for your brand in a public space, where anything you do can be attributed to your paymasters. The list of companies who’ve committed brand-damaging social faux pas grows monthly.

Stuart MacLennan could have probably done with some of this training.

And it’s why there will probably continue to be many more social media gaffes as the election campaign carries on. If MacLennan is the only political online casualty over the next month, I’ll be a very surprised man.

Yet these sort of fails also highlight the good side of social media and politics. For a start, it enables us to get an insight into prospective candidates, many of whom you’ll never have heard of, and have at least something to judge their suitability for office on. And if they fall up short, then that helps inform your vote.

This is something that, the few blogging MPs that existed in 2005 aside, simply wasn’t available at the last election and anything that brings politicians closer to the public is a good thing, broadly, in my book.

In many ways, this reminds me somewhat of a post I wrote almost a year ago, on the criticism around Gordon Brown’s YouTube video, and Hazel Blears’ comments that YouTube was no substitute for knocking on doors.

While I was critical of Blears, perhaps I was also a little disingenuous, although probably not in the way she was meaning. Yes, it’s good that politicians are experimenting with social media and using it to campaign with, but it’s not really a substitute for talking to the electorate. Fortunately social media allows just that.

But it’s a two way conversation and those politicians and political parties that get it right may reap the benefits. Lets not forget, 12 votes can be enough to swing a marginal, so engaging online could just be a seat-winner.

That is to say, those who talk with rather to to the electorate will help their case. A politician could just be on Twitter broadcasting his thoughts, on YouTube, blogging away, and encouraging people to become a fan on Facebook, but all this activity, while making the politician appear a bit more switched on, means nothing if said politician doesn’t get engage.

The really good ones will chat back and forth and listen over Twitter, respond to comments on their blog, answer questions on their Facebook page, and be an active member of the YouTube community. Now that becomes a bit more likely to get a precious few extra votes. But more than that, it shows the politician is prepared to listen, engage and respond. A bit like a 21st century version of door knocking.

It’s also one of the reasons why, in my mind, the whole Cash Gordon debacle wasn’t the greatest of ideas. Many of the most effective or notacable online campaigns tap directly into the zeitgeist of that particular moment. Think Trafigura and Jan Moir.

They are a swift, sharp, popular movement that gains traction because people feel strong enough to, at the very least, Tweet about it. The story or campaign then takes on a life of its own from there, and becomes a story in itself.

But trying to tell somebody on a social network what they should be getting angry about is unlikely to go beyond the traditional supporter base unless it touches a nerve, and the Labour / Unite issue wasn’t enough to get worked up about. Had the Conservatives done something quick and cheap around the hiking of cider tax or the Digital Economy Bill, then they might have got more widespread support.

Again, this shows the value of listening and responding – and is possibly why having something cheap and ready to go isn’t necessarily a bad idea. It’s easy enough to spot something developing on Twitter if you know how to listen, and if it ties in with a political party’s ideals, then there’s certainly possibilities, providing it’s not done in a completely top-down manner.

And if the online campaign is very top-down and has an indifferent response, you’re much more likely to see the politically agnostic hijack it for a bit of fun (leaving the page open to a very simple barely-even a hack is just stupid. As is claiming it’s still a victory. Sometimes it’d be nice if political people were prepared to say they made a mistake).

Those MPs who understand the sensitivities of a social media environment and listen and respond are those who may well benefit. My own MP has gone up in my estimation for a very quick response to my email about the Digital Economy Bill, although it’d be nice to see them on Facebook and Twitter. It’s little things like that which can sway where an individuals vote will go.

Social media, as with its relation to most aspects of life, isn’t the be all and end all when it comes to politics, but it is an incredibly useful communication channel to get an insight into the person behind the politician, as well as a chance to ask direct questions, something we so rarely get the chance to do.

Come the end of the election, it’ll be fascinating to see how the three main parties – and the other parties – have harnessed social media and how well they’ve done, on both an individual MP level, and a party level.

There will undoubtedly be more mistakes. But there may be triumphs. And with the possibility of a hung parliament very real, that could make a huge difference. Or at least a difference between me actually knowing who I want to vote for in advance of polling day, as opposed to my usual dilemma of not being impressed with any candidate and having to resist the temptation to draw something rather crude on the ballot paper. Not that I’ve cocked up my vote yet, mind.

DISCLOSURE: I’m not a member of any political party and have no idea who, if anybody, I’ll be voting for come May 6th.

Funnily enough I was thinking of posting something similar myself. But it also got me thinking.

Part of this also stemmed from a colleague asking for a list of bloggers for area x earlier today. My list was a bit small. “That’s great,” came the response, “but, er, is that it.”

I checked. Yes, that was indeed it. And, what’s more, it was probably a bit smaller than the last area x blogger list I sent over.

Which neatly melds these two lines of thought together. This isn’t a sign that the blogosphere (sorry) is getting smaller, nor are people stopping blogging. But they are consolidating.

Plenty of people still have personal blogs, but it’s kind of inevitable that blog activity tails off at some point. It takes a lot of time to run and maintain a blog, especially if it’s just you running it.

You know those blogging advice guides that tell you to blog every day. Great, but you try blogging every day on your own blog, plus having a job, plus having a social life, plus having a relationship, plus writing for all those other blogs you promised people to. Why, you’d almost think blogging was a full-time job.

It’s one of the reasons I’m quite a fan of Posterous.

It’s somewhat inevitable that, if you’re any good, you’ll either try and flex your muscles and write for blogs for bigger audiences, or group blogs that carry more prestige. After all, it helps you get more writing and blogging work, and so on.

So, I can either say: “Oh yes, I blog at Gary Andrews.net,” and people may expect a wonderfully daily updated site. Or I can say: “I write for Soccerlens, twofootedtackle.com, and Pitch Invasion. And I have my own blog.” Kind of sounds more impressive really.

If you’re really good, others will pick up on your work and you might even get a mainstream publication or two pick you up for occasional pieces. Plus you flit between half a dozen different blogs. Before you know it your personal blog is looking a little forlorn or serves merely as a place to dump everything you’re working on.

It’s not like it’s a surprise that blogging, and websites, and group blogs ape more traditional publications really. There’s only a small percentage of bloggers who have the time to consistently post, and these tend to be the ones who set up blog networks.

But this brings us to another point to briefly touch on – online PR. If blogs are consolidating, and bloggers are moving between online and offline publications, where does this leave your online PR specialist?

In times past, your non-online PR (no, I have no idea what the best name to label these as is) would take care of the press, the magazines, the TV, the radio and your online PR would beaver away looking for bloggers or cool websites.

But now your blogger is writing for the newspaper, and blogging as well, and that reporter you’ve got labelled as a star contact is spending more time updating his blog for the newspaper, while another journalist has set up an online magazine, yet the hot young blogger has launched his new news and opinion site for the same topic and, now you come to look at them, they look remarkably similar in terms of content. And they’re all on Twitter.

I’ll be shocked if online PR is still considered a separate discipline in five years. And I think I’m being generous in timescale here.

Yet you’ll still find people who insist online PR is a separate discipline; an area that only online specialists can deliver results. Yet, increasingly, your online and not-online PRs are pitching the same spaces and, if they’re doing it well, it’ll be in exactly the same way.

I’ve said many a time before, it’s not a mystery on how to pitch blogs. To that, you can add, there’s no point drawing up a long list of blogs and websites to get coverage on if you’re not going to see the benefits or the ROI.

You wouldn’t invite the Glossop Advertiser to a national policy briefing that has little relevance to Glossop, solely on the basis that it’s the same medium as the Guardian. Similarly, why would you want to pitch a blogger on a topic that has little relevance to them, other than the fact that, like Blog Y, they’re also based on the internet. Great, it’s been covered by 20 bloggers. But that’s not much use if it’s only relevant to the audience of 2 out of the 20.

There’s nothing mysterious about contacting bloggers, and there’s no shame in going for the biggest blogs in that area if they’re the most relevant. But it’s also worth remembering not to forget the smaller individual bloggers writing in the same area. After all, they’ll probably be editing the bigger blogs in a year’s time.

Somehow, somewhere, one of the email addresses I use at work has got itself onto some kind of PR mailing list. How this happened I’m not exactly sure, but it’s the only explanation I can think of for the sudden influx of assorted press releases landing in the inbox each day.

Given that the address in question is a PR address, I doubt they’ll be getting coverage any time soon.

Interestingly, I’ve had a few colleagues and fellow PRs mention that they’ve been getting assorted press releases as well. There are clearly a few people out there in my chosen industry who haven’t done their homework.

It’s a tad depressing, to be honest, to see such bad PR first hand on a daily basis. I don’t want to indulge in a round of PR bashing – it’s not overly constructive for one thing – because I also see much more good PR than bad PR on a daily basis as well.

Nevertheless, my heart still sinks at the idea that there are PR people and companies who still think a mass mail out to all and sundry is an effective way of working. Sure, you’ll probably get a bit of coverage but, by the same token, if you throw a handful of tennis balls into a crowded street, chances are you’ll hit a couple of people.

Once, in a hurry, I did a mass send-out cobbling together a list from assorted sources. The pick-up was poor. I’ve since gone back to that list, made individual dialogue, established what form of contact and what type of stories they’re looking for, and the response has generally been a lot more receptive towards whatever I’m doing. I know, bad me for taking the lazy way out.

In many respects, I have some sympathy for Charles Arthur and others who’ve been known to lose it on occasions with PR. If you’re on several of these lists and constantly get an endless stream of emails, it can get very irritating. I’d never completely give up on emailed pitches though. During my full-time newsroom days, every now and then, amongst the dross, you’d find a little gem. Sure, it’s not substitute for actually going out there and getting stories, but it always a welcome surprise.

It still doesn’t excuse the arbitrary mail-out lists though. Part of me pities the companies who hire whatever firm it is that sends out these releases. The other part thinks that if they’ve chosen such a bad PR representative they deserve to see their cash go down the drain.

It’s so easy to do lazy, bad PR (then again, it’s also easy to do lazy, bad journalism). You wonder what they must do at work all day. Checking that you’re actually contacting the right person? That surely shouldn’t be too hard, no? I still wonder how this work email got onto the PR list. It’s not exactly easy to mistake for a journalist’s address.

Every now and then I consider emailing them back pointing out, politely, that they’re contacting the wrong person. Then again, I’ve had somebody insist I was the right person and got angry when I pointed out I couldn’t give his release coverage (reminding me somewhat of that woman from the Apprentice last night who insisted on arguing with the customer).

And then you occasionally get the truly impressive PR fails. Like today, when I emailed one of the random releases back, again politely pointing out they were going to the wrong place. I got an out of office. Ten minutes after we’d received the release.

Thankfully I know enough people in the industry who are doing inspiring stuff. My colleagues for one. Or the people I meet at varying networking events. But then it’s always the bad examples that drag down the industry’s reputation (justified or otherwise), and cause journalists to tut and sigh and roll their eyes and declare PR to be useless.

Generally speaking we’re not useless. But when, as a PR, you get pitched with hideously bad PR you wonder how these people managed to land a job in the industry. Or if they’ll still have one in a couple of years.

Whether or not that was one of the reasons behind Skittles taking their home page all social media-like, we’ll never know. But they are one of the more high profile brands to experiment with the various tools online. Whether it’s worked or not is another matter.

To recap: anybody logging into their Twitter last Monday would have probably found a slew of tweets with the hashtag #skittles. These were then fed into the Skittles home page which was updating all mentions of the sweet on Twitter.

After a while people started cottoning onto this and includes tweets about paedophiles and the like to watch them get onto the home page. Social media types are a nice bunch, but we do have a somewhat borderline/evil sense of humour.

Regardless, Skittles were THE trend on Twitter that day, even if it’s difficult to say if this takeover was a good or a bad thing. In the short-term, it definitely worked. The brand was being talked about and I’d imagine there’s a high chance consumption of the rather icky sweet went up among users of the mircoblogging tool.

But there’s still one nagging question here – just what exactly were they hoping to achieve?

Yes, it was a bold move. Yes it was reasonably innovative for such a mainstream brand. Yes, it got them talked about for a short period of time. But, to be blunt, what for? And what now?

Currently their homepage brings up their Wikipedia entry. Which is nice but, um, what precisely are we meant to do with it? Sure, it’s more informative than a garish flash page, but if I wanted to find out about Skittles on Wikipedia I’d, well, go to Wikipedia.

At Econsultancy, Patricio Robles is similarly nonplussed:

“What exactly did Skittles reinforce by turning its homepage into a Twitterstream? That’s the $64,000 question the people in charge of the Skittles brand should be asking themselves because the truth is that buzz doesn’t build, reinvigorate or reinvent brands.

A coherent message does.

I think that’s something marketers need to keep in mind when they experiment with the ever-growing world of social media. If brands see social media as little more than a cheap tool for getting some short-term attention, they might as well stay home. Branding is a long-term game.”

And that is really the problem a lot of brands or companies have with the internet in a nutshell. Most media people have probably been in at least one meeting where somebody asks “Can we get this on the internet / blogs / Twitter?”

Even if it’s the kind of thing that fits well with any given social media site, the ‘what now’ question remains. Skittles have got some great short-term publicity and have shown a lot more social media savvy than a lot of other brands, but now that they’ve got Skittles out there in social media, what do they intend to do with it?

This may well be part of a slow strategy to get Skittles out there bit by bit. If it’s just doing it for the sake of, well, doing it then they’ve got their buzz and then, a few months down the line, everybody will have forgotten about it.

Building a social media presence, be it for your own work, a brand, a personality, a TV show, or whatever isn’t just a case of putting it out into the internet and leaving it.

Sometimes this does work, admitedly, but this usually means you’ve got a simple little thing that users love and start doing their own thing with.

But more often than not, the brand is thrown out in a great blaze of glory and is then sadly neglected when it’s this second step on continual engagement that can yield the greatest benefit in the long run.

And on a slight tangential note, if you want an excellent guide on how to pitch your brand across Twitter, Kai Turner’s post on Mashable is one of the best possible pieces you can read.

On one hand, Tweet Manager is useful for the prolific Twitterers to manage their accounts. You can auto-post a Tweet at a pre-set time, set up an autoreply (useful for holidays) and manage multiple accounts.

The latter is especially useful for people who handle several brands or feeds across Twitter – or want to perhaps split their personal and professional Tweeting, while the pre-set Tweeting could be very useful in certain circumstances.

But it’s some of the other services that are, as Steven Davies, who first flagged this up, just asking for it. Namely mass messaging.

This feature enables you to send a message to up to 1,000 users at any one time. Again, there are times when it could possibly be useful (a major announcement perhaps) but it’s essentially the Twitter equivalent of sending out a mass mail press release, and probably much more annoying.

Then there’s auto-follow, where the application will follow anybody who Tweets a specific word.

This is already a pet irritation of mine – I’ve lost count of the number of people who’ve followed me (probably after a TweetBeep alert) on the basis that I’ve Tweeted a keyword.

Example in point. Not so long ago I Tweeted that I’d had so many emails in a day, my BlackBerry’s vibrate function had caused the device to throw itself off the table. Almost immediately somebody who offered ‘BlackBerry solutions and training’ started following me. Thanks for that.

So, put them all together and it’s now easier than ever for PR people to start spamming Twitter and giving the rest of us a bad name.

Imagine the pitch – a PR agencies pitches to a brand, with no real knowledge or experience of social media. They tell the brand they can set up an account on the hot new site that the whole media is talking about: Twitter.

Not only that, they can also make sure that they track everybody who talks about their product and then hit them all with targeted info (read: mass message).

Brand goes away convinced they’ve cracked the internet. PR then spams the hell out of people who just happen to have mentioned the word, regardless of it they have any interest in the brand or not. You can see where this is going, can’t you?

Just *being* on Twitter is not social media. Autoposting and not engaging is not a social media strategy. They’re fine for news feeds (which in themselves are quite a useful thing to have on Twitter) but not for a genuine Web 2.0 strategy. And mass messaging definitely isn’t a social media strategy.

The sad thing is, there’ll probably be a few PR people and.or brands who genuinely think that they’ve now cracked Web 2.0 because they’re posting stuff on Twitter. And then there’ll be those who know they’re not but will do it anyway.

Ok, this isn’t a Demya-type service – and I’ve no doubt that Tweet Manager was built with the best intentions in mind (and they ask users to use the service responsibly), and it does have some useful features. But we’ve already got enough problems working out how to fix email and PR. Let’s not have to do the same with Twitter.

He started off by Tweeting that he’d been hit by an unusually large amount of spam. He Tweeted his further investigations, and uncovered the source – a company called Demya who, for the princely sum of £75, promise to publish 100,000 forum posts promote website, products and service. They stopped short of offering to love you long time.

And how do they promise to do this? By going out into communities, engaging with bloggers and forums, or even just alerting relevant people to the product? No, they’ve gone for a much more simpler option:

“We use special software to automatically register on forums worldwide and post promotional messages.

Your message will appear to be a normal post on forums. Different usernames are generated by our software so that each forum registration and post appears to be unique. You can ‘rotate’ pre-written messages and publish multiple promotional posts.

This is the most advanced level of penetrating online established communities.  We can target communities based on your campaigns keywords.”

They’re not overly picky about which clients they take on either:

“Do you Promote Gambling, Dating or Viagra Campaigns?
Yes, we don’t care what the website, product or service is that we are promoting. ”

But, get this, their services are completely and unequivocally NOT SPAM. Ok?

“Legality
We do not “spam” forums or emails. We use an automated system that registers on hundreds of thousands of forums for legit accounts and posts your custom messages automatically. “

Funny that. I could have sworn that sending out an automated system posting hundreds of messages out on random forums and blogs without any thought for the content is, well, spam.

You can take a tin of spam, put a label on it and call it ham. But it’ll still be spam inside. The same goes for the online version. No matter how many times you say “hey, this isn’t spam” doesn’t change the product in front of you. Spam. Or, as Helen Lawrence rather nicely lists it:

“There are a zillion things wrong with this.

1. It’s spam. Spam, spam, spam, spam. Forums are not the place for marketing messages.
2. Contrary to their site’s claims, this kind of activity will actually push you down lower in search rankings.
3. Even if forums were the place to send out marketing messages how the hell are you supposed to monitor 10,000 possible conversations (most of which will be ‘fuck off’) and gain any insight from it? Just attack and leave, what kind of relationship is that? Don’t go into a forum if you’re not being honest and you don’t have anything to offer other than a promotional message.
   
4. It’s spam.
   
5. It’s spam.
6. It’s spam
   
7. Its’ spam

Oh, I’m so angry. How does this kind of rubbish still exist? Why do people still think that forum spamming offers any kind of result other than just pissing people off?”

The sad thing is there are probably a few brands or businesses who’ve decided to get a web presence and think this is a surefire way to get attention for their product on the web. Well, yes, it will. But only if you want to appear in Google rankings having people yell “Spam” and much worse next to your name.

Frankly, I’d have no sympathy if any company goes down this route and finds it backfiring on them. If you’re that stupid about your approach to online PR and marketing, then you probably deserve bad Google karma.

I try not to swear often on this blog (a policy that’s not anywhere near as successful in real life). I always feel that, unless you’re particularly good with your profanity, swearing kind of undermines your argument.

But when even Helen, whose blog is a lovely, friendly, excitable happy place that often comes with recipes for bacon brownies and lusting after McFly, feels compelled to describe them as spammy cunts, I think I’ll make an exception. So Demya, I’d just like to say that you’re an absolute bunch of spamming cunts and I’d quite like you to take your service, shove it up your arse, and fuck off while you’re doing it. Kthnxbai.

“The web is the most disruptive force in the history of media, by many orders of magnitude, destroying every assumption on which traditional media businesses are based.

But the market should care, you say. What would happen if we didn’t have the newspapers playing their Fourth Estate watch dog role?

Here’s the bitter truth — the feared loss of civic value is not the basis for a BUSINESS.

The problem with the newspaper industry, as with the music industry before it, is the sense of ENTITLEMENT. What we do is valuable. Therefore we have the right to make money.

Nobody has the right to a business model.

Ask not what the market can do for you, but what you can do for the market.”

People would miss their local paper. But not enough to get outraged and march down the street in protest, I think.

And the death of the local paper, or radio station, won’t mean the death of journalism. It’ll mean that journalism is done somewhere else, probably by somebody else:

“Journalism will find a way. Even if the industries that once supported it do not.”

There’s nothing wrong with trying to retain the audience you’ve got. But retention is fire-fighting. Innovation can start fires elsewhere.

Let’s think about what the staples of the local paper are:

Classifieds? Not any more. Gumtree, eBay, Craigslist and others. Your mates no longer send in embarrassing photos to the paper on your birthday. They stick it up on Facebook.

Letters to the editor? Blogging. Or comments on other blogs.

TV listings? Plenty of those around elsewhere.

Event listings? As above. Google’s as much a friend for this as any other site.

Local sport? Ok, so they’ve got the access. But every club has their official website. Most fans forums post their own thoughts and match reports. The information’s fairly readily available.

Obits? Ok, I’ll give you that one. Nobody does obits quite like a newspaper.

So we just come down to journalism and the quality of the writing (and obits). As nice as it would be to say these are a great reason to keep a paper alive, it doesn’t necessarily stack up for the balance sheet.

Joanna Geary (who flagged up Scott’s piece) has a succinct thought on this:

“If time is becoming increasingly squeezed then I suspect the reasons behind someone dedicating half-an-hour of their time to reading a newspaper have to be even more compelling. Being on public transport and having a paper available for free is one of those reasons.

Even if the newspaper is a great product, with fantastic stories, it may not be something that fits into a person’s life easily.”

The model changed a long time ago, largely thanks to Google [1]. People don’t need to be told what the news is. They can sit at a computer and find out for themselves the news that’s relevant to them (and this is coming from somebody who still loves flicking through the papers and finding random articles of stuff I never knew about. But then isn’t that what StumbleUpon is for?).

And PR: don’t think you’re immune from this. The conversation’s happening around you, not necessarily with you. The web doesn’t need press officers to kick-start and control the conversation. Its perfectly capable of doing that for itself. The question is now how to get into that conversation, not how to control it.

And, strangely, after all that, I still feel optimistic for the future of the media: both journalism and PR. But just not in their current guises. Especially not local journalism if it carries on in its current state. Sorry.

[1] If newspaper editors want to start pointing fingers at websites that are killing their industry, they’d be better off looking there than the BBC’s plans for local news.

Ok, so the above does a bit of a disservice to the embargo, but in this internet-centric world where any news organisation or website or blogger can, and often does, break the embargo, perhaps a rethink to the humble STRICTLY EMBARGOED UNTIL 00.01 WEDNESDAY line is necessary.

The embargo today still feels like a very traditional media concept (albeit one that still has a time and place) that, like smoking, is a hard habit to give up. Ostensibly, it still feels wedded to the pre-internet days and specifically tailored around print deadlines.

The journalists I’ve met and worked with have mixed feelings towards embargoes. One old tutor from my training days positively encouraged the breaking of embargoes, while another editor was fairly respectful of them as they believed that, in the long run, you’d get some good stories first from the PR as they knew you could be trusted.

Ultimately, though, embargo breaking leads to a weird situation. The press office are likely to get annoyed and, in the worst case, stop working with the media organisation for a period of time. But if the company really wants to work with said media organisation, there’s little option but to start building up that relationship again.

But with the internet, it’s never been easier to break an embargo. Hell, the material can make it from email account to the web in around 10 minutes if the journalist is so minded and feels there’s worth in doing so.

And with no real evidence, other than increasingly common conversations with other PR people about embargo-breaking online, the gut feeling is that journalists and bloggers are increasingly disregarding the stern words at the top of the press release.

Now – admittedly basing this assumption on anecdotal evidence and then declaring it thus – if that is the case, the embargo needs a bit of a rethink.

Should we go as far to scrap the idea of the embargo [1]? Perhaps not completely. After all, the point of the embargo is, from a publicity point of view, to retain an element of control to the story. There are perhaps a couple of advantages to embargoing information:

• Timing the embargoed information to coincide with something else – perhaps even to take the attention away from elsewhere.
• Preparation time for journalists. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to give the media time to digest what they’ve read and produce something relevant for their audience, and this can actually enhance the coverage.
• Co-ordinating an announcement that makes the nation’s collective jaw drop. But, again, how easy is this in an online world?
• Giving the embargoed material to a few trusted places so the announcement can be coordinated strategically.

But even with these (rather vague) exceptions, there’s still an argument for doing away with the embargo. If you’ve got a jaw-dropping announcement, the chances are the collective journalism jaw will also drop, so why not just announce it there and then? More control, less chance of an early leak online.

And if the news isn’t going to get jaws dropping, then perhaps that negates the very need for an embargo. Chances are that if you send it out in the middle of the day, it’ll get filed in the ‘to do’ file, then make the papers the next day.

And if it’s one of those wonderfully pointless surveys that flood into newsrooms on a regular basis with a stat that 76.2% of households in the South East would continue to use canned fruit in the event of a nuclear holocaust, an that tend to end up as space-filling churn, then may I humbly suggest that this news isn’t so exciting that it needs to be sat on until a certain time. The world will, you suspect, keep turning.

But if you’re still wedded to the idea of the embargo or want to give the journalist time to prepare, if there any way the embargo can work in a Web 2.0 environment.

The short answer is probably not. But the longer answer includes a maybe. The most draconian and time-heavy solution would be to lock the material behind a password protected area and include further password protection and lockdowns behind this to make it as hard as possibly the get the info out. This seems slightly too much effort on the part of the PR and irritation on the part of the journalist. Can’t quite see a future for it myself.

The second idea goes back to one of the bullet points  - working with a few specific, trusted outlets – perhaps a couple of leading websites or a paper – and offering the information as an exclusive.

Again, it’s not without its problems or dangers. The information better be good – good enough for organisation A wanting to have it, even under embargo, in the first place, and good enough for everywhere else to want to republish and not get annoyed that they weren’t first in the queue.

In some respects, this is an approach that could find more success with bloggers than traditional media. Web 2.0 loves to share and if the right blogs are targeted, then there’s the potential for a bit of a buzz.

But, again, the story has to be good enough to create a buzz in the first place. And it’s not something I’d be especially fond of doing more than once in a blue moon. Web 2.0 loves linking and sharing, but doesn’t like the feeling of being manipulated, which, done wrongly, this could be viewed as.

Is there a place for embargoes? Do we need them anymore? Could we work a more social media solution in via Social Media Press Releases? Or even wikis? Or is this just a pointless attempt to preserve something not needed? And do you have any thoughts on this that are more coherent than the above? I’ll now throw this to the floor…

[1] Is the embargo dead? Oh, the irony, THE irony!

Basically, Qwitter’s an application that sends you a quick email whenever anybody unfollows you, along with your last Tweet. Kind of like one of those ridiculous exit interviews companies insist on putting you through. Or the kind of social media tool that neurotic recent singletons, who pour over every minute of a a failed relationship, would love.

So far, so pointless. But if there’s on thing the internet doesn’t need, it’s a rather useless service that feeds insecurities of online friendships. God alone knows we have enough problem with that offline, and Louis Gray has a pretty good analysis of Qwitter:

“What Qwitter has done with this unnecessary “service” (and I use that term loosely) is turn a very mundane, passive act that usually reflects more on a person’s available time than a follower’s actions into an act of aggression with some seemingly dubious “reason” behind it. I can see this turning ugly, as friends who discover that friends sometimes unfollow them take it personally. This means instead of realizing that on Twitter you can go back and forth with a kind of ebb and flow as needed, those with hurt feelings from being unfollowed proceed to email demanding logic, reasons, and possibly even threatening retaliation or repercussions. Qwitter feeds insecurity and neuroses by making something simple into some kind of seeming failure or insult.

…

The thing about the internet is that it has a tendency to turn aggressive in a hurry. Twitter has, until now, avoided that Internet Troll atmosphere and been a relatively happy place to connect with people online in a very low-key and self-directed way. There are a few Twitter Trolls, but not that many, thanks largely to the anonymous unfollow and anonymous block features. Qwitter changes that, and for what?”

One of the main reason to love Twitter is the free swopping of ideas and conversation between people you wouldn’t other meet, but it doesn’t matter if the following isn’t reciprocal.

I follow plenty of people on Twitter who haven’t returned the compliment, and nor would I necessarily suspect them to. Just because I find what they have to say interesting, doesn’t mean they’re going to think the same about what I say.

And vice-versa. I have a lot of random people following me, some of whom I’ve followed back, some of who seem interesting but I’m not too concerned about following them back, and some who – like some of those I follow who don’t follow me back – I’m sure are lovely people, but there’s no interest there for me. 

To any of those people reading this, sorry it’s not personal! I’m sure I’ve probably lost a fair few Twitter followers because there’s a fair bit of football chat on my feed (which I am conscious of, and have considered setting up a separate feed for) and the sheer banality of some of my Tweets.

But it’s definitely not like Facebook, where there’s a definite awkwardness about having people add you who you’d rather not add, or debating whether you should add colleagues, or ex-girlfriends, and the like. Twitter’s a lot more laid back, and is all the better forward.

Sally at Getting Ink has also been thinking among similar lines, this time in relation to the Twitter Karma application:

“I follow people on Twitter on the basis that I find what they post interesting and relevant to me. It doesn’t necessarily follow that what I say will be equally interesting and relevant to them. So, let’s imagine I’m following someone interesting, but they’re not interested in me – do they then become LESS interesting as a consequence? Should I only be listening to people to listen to me?”

Nonetheless, it feels like Twitter’s slowly moving from the childlike to the adolescent – like the acne-ridden teenager who suddenly becomes aware of the social groups and has to decide (or try) to fit in with them or not. Whether this is a good thing or not, I’m not sure.

How Twitter works best isn’t as a popularity contest or a desire to be loved, but, as Mike Butcher says:

“It quickly became apparent that this was turning into the best use of Twitter of all. Not for long, winding conversations you might have on instant messaging, but short, to the point wise-cracks between people interspersed with a little status update here, a small observation on life there. Twitter was no longer about ’status’ or ‘what are you doing’. It was about conversation, ‘what are you thinking’, ‘what are we talking about’.

The key difference is that people who say “take this conversation over into IM” don’t get it. IM can’t do what Twitter does. You can’t instant message into “the cloud”. With Twitter you can. You can shout or whisper whatever you want to say out into the ether and anyone online can hear you. And anyone following you, even if you don;t follow them, can reply – then you may well become connected.”

And Charles Arthur notes, in his typically blunt but nonetheless spot-on style, there’s only so much Twittering you can take:

“It’s simple really. In an attention economy, there’s only so much time I can listen to what colour your curtains are. Then, I’ve got to get on and earn some money. Please, no hurt feelings though. In the meantime, I’ve resolved to try to tweet useful stuff. Though the temptation to put any old rubbish in is huge, I have to admit.”

I’ve made lots of contacts and a few good friends through Twitter already, and a lot of people in my feed often stick up very interesting links (I’m probably rather bad at doing this). It’s relaxed, interesting and fun. Kind of like an online version of Central Perk, if you will.

What it doesn’t need is people suddenly starting to take it too seriously, which is what a lot of the worry and chatter around Qwitter and Twitter Karma feels like. Have a cup of tea, relax and we can Tweet about it.

***

While I’m on the topic of Twitter, a couple more examples of how the social-networking-cum-microblogging-cum-conversation site is continuing its quest for world domination rise in popularity and usefulness.

Following on from Stephen Fry, no lesser celebrity than Britney Spears has entered the Twitterverse. Or rather a mixture of of her and, possibly, the occasional Tweet from Britney herself.

It’s very different from Stephen Fry, but is a good example of how those working with a big star or somebody slightly less gadget and web-obsessed (those are good thing by the way, before Stephen Fry gets hurt) can use a Twitter feed.

There’s some nice openness and accountability – very Web 2.0, especially this Tweet – with conversation and a team (or possibly just one woman, Lauren) updating the feed reasonably regularly. It’s a good balance for a star like Britney and is a good model for any other celebrity thinking about using Twitter.

What’s more, it gives Britney devotees, of which I’m sure there are many out there (I can’t class myself as one of them, although Toxic was a great pop record) a chance to get closer to her than any celebrity magazine could offer.

Now there’s a thought. Could Twitter kill off Heat magazine?

***

The other sign that Twitter is slowly marching on came in a phone conversation today. I was in PR mode, pitching a small item to a few local papers, and rung an old university friend and colleague who worked on one of these papers.

I’d barely begun explaining what I was ringing about before he cut in to tell me that he knew what I was ringing about and had already mentioned it to his editor, all because of a couple of Tweets I’d done earlier in the week.

Now – if either as a PR or a journalist or both – if that doesn’t get you excited about the power of social media tools like Twitter for ‘traditional’ media work, then I guess nothing will.