Blog Dissonance…

I always enjoy reading Rohit Bhargava’s blog because he consistently delivers insightful, well-considered commentary.  I learn something new each time I visit his blog.

Using the phenomenon where Scott Adams–the creator of Dilbert–as an illustration, Rohit discusses why it is possible for a brand (I loosely consider the Dilbert franchise a brand) to suffer a reduction in following because of its blog.  This happens when the audience sees a brand and its creator as one entity, but realizes through the creator’s blog (where one tends to express oneself more authentically) that his/her personal persona can speak with quite a different voice from the brand, hence the dissonance.

As Rohit explains, Adams sometimes blogs on his views on politics and social issues, which some of the readers (many of whom are drawn to his blog because they expect to hear the more of Dilbert) do not understand or agree with.  And when some of his audience see that the voice of Dilbert is not always consonant with the voice of Scott Adams, they swear never to return.

There are some useful lessons for marketers here.  Please read Rohit’s full commentary for more insights.  I believe it will be worth your while.

Ogilvy PR’s Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics – In beta

One of my favorite bloggers who writes thoughtfully about the PR and marketing profession is Rohit Bhargava, who leads Ogilvy PR’s interactive marketing practice out of its Washington D.C. office.  PR practitioners and marketers are starting to understand that bloggers can be strategic stakeholders.  But how does one strategically–and ethically–reach out to them? 

As a starting block to help the profession navigate the landscape, Bhargava and his team has drafted a beta version of Ogilvy’s PR Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics.  You’ll find it a good investment of your time to check it out.

Institute of Public Relations Singapore PR 2.0 Conference

I recently attended a conferenced organized by the Institute of Public Relations Singapore, entitled “PR 2.0: Engaging Stakeholders in the New Media Landscape.” 

  

It featured a number of great speakers with interesting ideas to share.  An example would be Christopher Graves (Ogilvy PR’s President, Asia Pacific), who shared the agency’s thinking on the social media landscape.  It was of course also a subtle plug for Ogilvy PR’s newly launched 360 Degree Digital Influence practice. 

 

Other speakers include John Kerr of Edelman, who by now is a familiar face in the social media lecture circuit, but who nonetheless always makes it a point to customize his presentation to suit the needs of the audience and occasion. 

Melvin Yuan of The PR 2.0 Universe moderated what was probably the most scintillating panel discussion, owing to a penetrating question asked by Dr. Jim Macnamara (General Manager, Research, for CARMA).  Jim’s point was that while outreaching to “celebrity bloggers” to evaluate or endorse a product was a great promotional tactic, it wasn’t authentic (which was a word one of the panel speaker used to describe such efforts).  I have to agree with Jim.  Even though bloggers are not technically obliged to blog about free products they receive, those who do have made a business out of blogging know that if they don’t, or if they write an overlydisparaging review, companies and PR agencies may start giving them a wide berth.  Even in traditional media organizations, marketing preriodically exert influence over editorial.  Having said that, I hope that consumers will be sophisticated enough to take what they come across in the media–old and new–with a pinch of salt and look for corroborative evidence instead of relying on any one souce to make a decision.

 

My colleague and friend Walter Lim, who heads corporate communications and industry promotions at the National Heritage Board, shared how blogger outreach made a difference in the International Museums Day 2006 and the success of NHB’s Yersterday.sg blog.

SMU PodCamp 2007 – The seeds of a social media movement in Singapore?

While, as organizer Michael Netzley said, the SMU PodCamp 2007 was more a hybrid powwow than an unconference in the purest sense of the word, I think it was an excellent way to get the local social media types–and hopefully a few skeptics–excited about the new vistas that social media can open up to communicators and companies.

 

The primary feature speaker was Mitch Joel, president of Quebec-based marketing firm Twist Image.  Mitch did his “Six Pixels of Separation” presentation–essentially making the points that we live in a world that is more connected than ever before and that it is not technology that connects us, it is content.  In fact, he made the point that content is media.

 

The afternoon featured local mobile operator StarHub’s marketing VP sharing a case study of the company’s blogger outreach campaign in the lead-up to the official launch of its Pfingo service.  What I thought was quite fascinating was that some of the bloggers StarHub provided pre-release handsets and information to were journalists of traditional media who also happened to blog (mentioned was Alfred Siew of Straits Times, among others).  Sure, it’d be a scoop for a blogger to be the first to break the news on a pre-release product, but if that blogger also happened to write for a traditional media organization, what would his/her editor think?

 

John Kerr, who leads Edelman’s Southeast Asia social media practice also presented some interesting slides on media consumption trends in Asia, as well as its now annual Trust Barometer study.

 

The second day was spent mostly with Mitch doing a demo of some of the cool social media sites such as del.icio.us, Linkedin.  I have to say I wasn’t motivated enough to start my own accounts until I saw what they could do through Mitch’s demo.  Now, my del.icio.us account is at http://del.icio.us/sojourneys, and my Linkedin account is at http://www.linkedin.com/pub/4/8a9/910.  I will continue to build on them over the next weeks and months ahead.

Hopefully this podcamp will sow the seeds, creating ripples of change in Singapore when it comes to social media communication.  Kudos, Michael, for putting this together, and till PodCamp 2008!

The Executive Blogger’s Guide to Building a Nest of Blogs, Wikis, and RSS

My friend Walter who often blogs about issues related to marketing and public relations (among other lighter moments of life) sent me this executive blogger’s guide from Ogilvy PR.

It is a sensible, down-to-earth guide drawing lessons from notorious examples of companies that failed to understand the bottom-up, galvanizing, and sometimes investigative culture of blogosphere (the humble bic pen and the almight Kryptonite lock, Mazada’s “crash”) as well as case studies of companies–even juggernauts such as Boeing, GM, and Sun, that have harnessed blogs to build communities around their issues.  Worth checking out (click on the picture below to open or download the PDF).

Give stakeholders insights into your company personality through corporate blogging

Even though Richard Edelman’s blog entries can be verbose, 6 A.M. is a blog I enjoy.  Other than insights into the public relations profession, the blogs offers a peek into the thinking and personality that founded one of the world’s leading PR firms. 

In his recent May entries, Richard Edelman reflected on the proceedings of a breakfast meeting of the C40 group of large city majors and the bridging role of PR in private-public partnerships; his take on smoking prevention and cessation programs–where he announced that he is offering to any Edelman staff who quits smoking in the next few months US$500 if they stayed smoke-free six months later; and shared his sense of loss and grief at the passing of a colleague whom he also considered a dear friend.

Edelman’s 6 A.M. blogs offers several lessons, but I will just discuss one here, and that is a corporate blog can be a powerful way of giving stakeholders intimate insights into your company personality that is beneath the varnished corporate website, media releases, and collaterals.  But this also means that any company that is not willing to offer a personal glimpse into its thinking and workings should probably not blog.

Can Singaporean companies do well in this area?  My observation is that for psychosocial reasons that are to lengthy to delve into here, Singaporeans by-and-large are reticent about being the public face of the organizations they work for.  It wasn’t so long ago that even sign-offs to letters responding to public queries in the newspapers made it clear that the spokesperson was speaking on behalf of yet another person (usually a higher-up).  This practice was especially prevalent among government organizations. 

A successful corporate blog is seldom run by a team of anonymous employees churning out prosaic postings on a clockwork schedule.  Rather, it is about building relationships and enaging in an ongoing, multilateral conversation.  It can only work if a company truly cares about offering a personal facet to its public face and can find ardent champions who are empowered to pry aside the corporate veils even if ever so slightly.

Avoiding the MySpace mistake – 8 dos and don’ts for social media marketing

BusinessWeek is one of the most prolific general business periodical I know of when it comes to articles on social media marketing.  While the latest May 8 piece shared some quick tips on helpful (and unhelpful) behavior when trying to market a small business using social networking sites such as MySpace, the principles are applicable across other social media platforms such as blogs and podcasts.

Most useful is the reminder to avoid hard sell.  Nobody wants to surf on to a blog overtly hawking the supposedly latest-and-greatest ware, nor are people interested in tuning in to a podcast droning endlessly about the matchless virtue of a product. 

 This is linked to what I think is the next most important point, i.e. participating in social media is about giving, not taking.  Of course, marketers and public relations professionals in a business environment have bottomline imperatives and are not expected to be doling out advice and tips with no clear objective.  But part of being in a conversation means listening, acknowledging, and contributing.  And when you establish yourself as a credible, constructive voice, your messages will be received with greater receptivity and you’ll find that the community is more reciprocal when you have a conundrum that could benefit from more brain waves. 

And of course, along the way, you establish valuable contacts and grow a community that is actively paying heed to what you have to say about trends and developments in your industry, adding to your brand value and reputation. 

Click here for the BusinessWeek article (or here for the print-ready version).

A couple of interesting views on social media marketing

If you’ve read my May 3 post on why Singaporean companies should tap into social media marketing, you might want to check out these two articles:

 Social Media Marketing, eh? Let’s See What’s in Our Bag o’ Goodies – This article talks about what companies can do with social media marketing, and broadly discusses some strategies and pitfalls.

How to Leverage Web 2.0 & Social Media Sites to Market Your Brand & Control Your Message – Presents an overview of some of the top social media websites and how to use them.

Can Singaporean companies benefit from social media marketing?

First, let’s look at the local media scene.  Ownership is concentrated in the hands of a few.  MediaCorp publishes some 15 local titles, while SPH has some 30 local titles to its stable.  MediaCorp has a monopoly of the five or so free-to-air TV stations (with SPH holding a 20 percent stake).  There are about 13 local radio stations in Singapore: MediaCorp owns 11 while SPH owns two.  Then the newspapers…for English papers, there are four key dailies.  SPH publishes Straits Times, Business Times, and afternoon tabloid The New Paper.  MediaCorp publishes the commuter broadsheet TODAY. 

Anyone who has worked in PR knows the challenges of getting your story heard.  The situation in Singapore is exacerbated by a limited media pool.  And if you’re an SME with limited resources, good luck.

However, with the advent of social media (perhaps a more precise way of describing how new media has evolved into a platform for building and galvanizing social relations), PR professionals now have a way of more directly getting their messages out to their target audiences.  Take blogging as an example.  Small businesses in the United States are already starting to use blogs to reach out to their stakeholders.  The types of businesses run the gamut from the Oregon-based Anne Amie Vineyards, Southern California’s Arcadian Lighting, and Buddy’s Chance, an Austin-based dog training company.

A common question is: Do people take blogs seriously?  Well, according to a Windows Live survey conducted in late 2006 on the MSN Asia portal, half of Internet users in Singapore rate blogs to be as trustworthy as traditional media such as print, radio and television.  Check out the Microsoft news release here and a subsequent news report of it by Singapore’s ChannelNews Asia here.

Given the small media pool and increasingly crowded business environment, perhaps it’s time for Singaporean companies to tap on the new opportunities presented by social media to more directly reach out to their target audiences and build a community surrounding their brand.