PR and Blogging in the Digital Age

January 30, 2007 | 3 Comments

The internet has created a global marketplace, not only for goods and services but also for thoughts and opinions. Businesses, both large and small, are becoming increasingly concerned by the proliferation of comments which can influence buying decisions. Recent research suggests that PR agencies are aware that they need to engage this online chatter, but are unsure of how to go about it.

Tom Chandler, in his Engagement Principles blog, tackled the subject of the hesitancy of PR agencies to utilise blogging. He referenced research, highlighted on the Deep Jive Interests blog, which showed that:

“while most PR executives believe in blogging as an effective tool to share information quickly and broadly (UK 70%, US 80%), and have a role in influencing public opinion and decision making (UK 60, US 70%), the majority do not have a blogging policy (UK 82%, US 88%), and only around a third blog for their own company or clients (UK36%, US 37%).”

It would appear that many PR firms are still nervous about jumping into blogging headfirst, preferring to wait for others to test the water and then watch to see if they sink or swim.

PR’s methodology shares some characteristics with that of the advertising world. Their tactics for influencing mindsets have generally been a one way, top down approach. In a world where everybody now has the means to share their opinions and experiences with millions of online consumers this approach now seems antiquated. PR, like advertising, needs to learn how to listen to what people are saying and to be able to have their client’s voice heard.

Hosting a blog on your client’s website offers an excellent vehicle for being able to respond to online comments and opinions. By having a centralised location for criticism you can prevent it from going unchallenged in other blogs and forums strewn throughout the web.

Handling customer issues in a public format will also enhance your client’s image by demonstrating their transparency, expertise and credibility. People are then more likely to trust you, which is a requisite for an effective buying/selling relationship.

Forrester research offered some insight on the value of blogs in their recent report on blogging’s elusive ROI. Their findings were attained from interviews with businesses with hands on experience, such as Dell, Southwest Airlines and Sun Microsystems.

Steve Rubel, both an experienced blogger and vice president of PR firm Edelman, noted from the study that the frequently mentioned benefits were:

  • Greater brand visibility in mainstream media and on the web.
  • Word of mouth marketing.
  • Improved brand perception.
  • Instantaneous customer feedback.
  • Increased sales efficiency.
  • Fewer customer service PR blowups.

All benefits you would hope to gain from a well orchestrated PR campaign.

Successful PR in the online world is about more than just generating buzz with a virtual store in Second Life. To get info hungry consumers to listen to your message you now need to trade in the currency of transparency and value. By utilising podcasts, wikis, blogs and RSS feeds, PR agencies have the means to communicate in a more open format, and in a manner which will allow your client’s voice to be heard in the online conversation.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under blogging 

Edelman Research – A Corporate Guide to the Global Blogosphere

January 25, 2007 | 2 Comments

Edelman, ‘the world’s largest independent PR firm’, have recently released a new white paper on all things blogging. Their assessment suggests that, although the number of blogs might be peaking, their influence on mindsets is still growing.

Some of its key points:

  • Blog readers are young males who are action orientated and are influencers in their field.
  • 23% survey respondents read blogs regularly.
  • 28% of readers take action in response to a blog post.
  • Blogs were influential in breaking stories such as the exploding laptop batteries and Google’s acquisition of YouTube.
  • The most popular blogs are political, tech or business focused – people read them for information and insight, not purely entertainment.
  • Businesses need to engage the blogosphere to find their advocates and detractors and to start a dialogue to enable the influencers amongst their readership to be more effective.
  • Corporate thinking of the last 50 years, to control the message and communicate one way, is inappropriate for a two way dialogue.
  • If businesses want their viewpoints to be heard they need to engage in a transparent manner.
  • Blogging is part of the “evolutionary process, from control to conversation, because effective public relations depends ultimately on earning trust every day.”

Some key points for UK bloggers:

  • In 2005 people asked ‘What is blogging?’, now the question is ‘How do we work with it?’
  • Political blogs are the most popular – representative of the desire for information not provided by the traditional media or by politicians → using ‘spin’ and ambiguity simply forces people to look elsewhere for the truth.
  • Blogs have been instrumental in breaking political stories e.g. John Prescott’s extramarital affair.
  • 66% of the blogs studied commented on nationally recognised companies, 44% on international businesses.
  • Blogs are steadily emrging as an influential media channel for the info hungry.

The report contains some interesting points for businesses not aware of the influence of the blogging phenomenom, and further reinforces what savvy bloggers have known for some time.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under blogging 

The Changing Language of Online Copywriting

January 24, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Many commentators, myself included, have highlighted that 2007 will be the year that the ethos of engagement marketing spreads. The collapsing level of trust in traditional advertising means it is time for a rethink on how businesses talk to their customers. Both the approach and language needs to change.

You now have to barter for an audience’s attention with the currency of transparency, honesty and value. Consequently, copywriters can no longer rely on just appealing to emotions and desires to garner a response.

The changing tone of marketing language was highlighted at the recent ‘Future of Information Summit’, New York. Delegates converged to share their theories on how to penetrate the perceived anti-advertising attitude of their customers.

David Berne, senior vice president of strategic planning at RPA advertising, discussed in his presentation how consumer values have changed since the 1950s. They now had to engage instead of just appealing emotionally:

“We thought emotions were more powerful ways of influencing and motivating behaviours versus reason, so what we tried to do with marketing communications was connect emotionally.”

RPA’s recent Honda Element campaign was a textbook example of the power of multi-faceted engagement, with a MySpace page, YouTube videos and interactive website. The campaign’s success was not simply due to bombarding consumers across more mediums, but because of the increased conversation it created. As a result, sales increased markedly by 4%.

“We believe very much that [the reason for its success was that it created] a dialogue,” hailed Berne. “We found out what was interesting to people and we built on that, which made the campaign more engaging.”

As David Berne from RPA recognised, the language of marketing communications has changed. You now have to be able to provoke a conversation when you speak to customers. Corporate claptrap and sales spiel will be simply ignored by consumers now deaf to being blatantly sold to. You now need to start a dialogue with your marketplace

Online copywriters should start thinking about adjusting their language to reflect the engagement philosophy. It was never been cheaper or easier to maintain communication with prospects and customers, long after the first sale, if you speak in a manner that they will listen to.

Adopting transparency and informative value in the way that you communicate is what will develop the sales process over the long haul. The ‘grab the cash and run’ attitude of excessive exaggeration, or ambiguous language, will be given short shrift by today’s web savvy consumers.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under Copywriting, Marketing 

How the Internet Can Sell Snow and A Good Story

January 16, 2007 | 5 Comments

For anybody not already familiar with this story: Mary Walker is an advertising copywriter from Colorado who recently sold three bags of snow on Ebay to a family in Connecticut for $102. The story has captured the imagination of the world’s media and shown how the Internet has created a global marketplace for products and services.

You are no longer limited to your geographical area and, because of the Longtail, selling niche products can be very profitable. Even the most random products, such as nature’s elements, have an expanded marketplace as there will always be somebody out there who wants to buy.

The Ebay listing received nearly 10,000 hits and Mary was surprised by the global interest, “There were emails from Nigeria, and Germany, from normally snowy places in the US, like Utah, Minnesota and the Upper-Peninsula of Michigan.” She received offers from Africa, New Zealandand Australia, and thousands of messages.

What contributed to the sale was the story created around it. Mary was supposedly a poor woman imprisoned in her own home by relentless snow storms, desperate to raise enough cash to afford a snow blower.

The story appealed to Chris Hansen, the fireman who bought the snow for his three children to give them at least a partially white Christmas. Chris said, “There she was, snowbound and bored, and she turned it around and gave the whole world a laugh. I can get behind something like that.” Chris even increased the price he paid to $200 so that poor Mary could afford her snow blower.

In true marketing tradition, Frontier Airlines leapt onto the story for some cheap publicity by flying the Mary and her husband for free so they could deliver the snow in person.

Being able to sell snow on Ebay shows that there’s no better way of selling than by telling a story and no better way of spreading that story than by broadcasting it over the internet.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under Copywriting 

Engagement Means Different Things To Different People

January 9, 2007 | 3 Comments

Internet marketers have been promoting the use of blogs and podcasts for small businesses for some time now. Discussing your passions and values in an open, transparent manner is an excellent way of building trust and confidence with your audience, and developing the sales process.

Now large scale corporations and multinational advertising agencies want to harness some of the ‘engagement’ magic. Their old methods are no longer working. They have started to realise that consumer mindsets have changed.

The problem multinationals face is that their rules of engagement are going to be far more complex than those for the small business blogger. Their multi-format marketing machine means their measurement of success, over their plethora of channels, is going to require some thought.

Jassim Ali, the Middle Eastern development manager of digital marketers OMD Digital, in an article asks ‘what is engagement?’ His answer is that understanding what it means depends on who you speak to.

Advertising agencies are concerned with consumers absorbing their ‘message’. For them engagement is how they can deliver that message in a way that is acceptable to the consumer and not simply blocked out. They still want their ad to capture the audience’s attention and engross them in the brand.

Advertisers place value on leveraging time spent interacting with video clips and entering competitions. But for them engagement is more of a short-term, immediate tactic for penetrating a consumer’s anti-ad shield.

For other practitioners, such as bloggers and podcasters, engagement is the long-term strategy of building trust through transparency and conversation.

Jassim touches on the problem of metrics and that advertisers won’t be able to truly understand what engagement is until they know how to gauge it. After all, you can’t monetize what you can’t measure. Advertisers have to justify the millions they spend every day. Whilst the blogger or podcaster is playing a patient, long game over months and years.

Multi media advertising agencies are going to have to work out the different metrics for each of their mediums in order to understand the unique and special value they all add to the mix.

In a previous post I discussed a similar attitude followed by Proctor and Gamble. Their approach is to regard the different mediums as ‘touch points’ driven by the philosophy of moulding the mindset of the consumer, and developing trust.

The new approach to multi-channel marketing is highlighted by the research of Kate Maddox from BtoB Magazine. After interviewing marketers, ad agencies, media companies and industry analysts she has compiled a list of the biggest marketing trends for 2007.

She highlighted engagement as becoming more widely adopted as brands get to grips with the new interactive technology at their disposal. You should expect to see ‘viral’ video clips sprouting on social networks and websites as advertisers start turning the internet into their new TV.

Generating new sales leads with free trials, webinars, white papers, blogs and podcasts will also be a major growth area. These tools all trade in the economy of trust and transparency. Exactly what engagement marketing should be all about.

Email is still alive and kicking with a response rate of 2.45%. Direct mail, however, continues to diminish, in mirroring the plight of old mediums, with a conversion rate of only 1.27%.

In summarising, Kate identified 2007 as the year that Web 2.0 becomes embraced by marketers and advertisers. It looks set to be an exciting time indeed as mindsets and attitudes start to adjust to the engagement philosophy.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under Marketing 

2007 – A Big Year for Engagement Marketing and The Write Words

January 2, 2007 | 13 Comments

The festive season is now over. I can finally check myself into a detox programme and ponder on what the new year has in store.

2006 was a fairly major year in the redirection of my career. Towards the end of 2005 I had realised that being a cog in the corporate machine was not for me. With little more than an English degree, and a hastily assembled portfolio, I cleared my desk and took the plunge into the world of freelance copywriting.

Have I regretted losing the regular pay cheque for living by my wits and wordprocessor? Not once. But then I haven’t had to start worrying about paying for my next meal just yet. Hopefully 2007 will be a year of growth for The Write Words as the internet writers market starts to mature.

Over the course of 2006 I had to learn a lot as well as work out my own area of expertise. Writing brochures and leaflets went out the window as I concentrated on the imminent business blogging explosion I had read so much about.

So far this explosion has yet to detonate in the UK. Many marketers still fail to see the value of engagement compared to the steady barrage of one way advertising they are accustomed to. But the stats continue to pile up with online marketers becoming ever more vocal in support of the engagement philosophy. The Copywriter’s Crucible intends to at least be a standard-bearer, if not quite a herald, in the movement’s army.

My prediction for the next year is that the proliferation of forums and places for people to vent their opinions is making business owners anxious. The fear of negative comments will force them to realise that static brochure websites are no longer adequate for managing their profile online. Then the added opportunities of a more fluid online presence will become apparent; websites will become forums for interaction rather than online brochures.

So on to 2007, that has started with a nice little boost to my blog ranking. My much appreciated nomination in the blogger Z-list meme has seen The Crucible climb to the edges of the Technorati top 100k. Thanks to Sandy at The Purple Wren, this collage of the Z-list has found its way onto many of its members’ blogs. The whole gang has been able to benefit from the exchanging of links and a new year’s injection of traffic .

Just twenty-four more letters to go before I can dream of sitting at the table with the blogging A-list. It looks as though 2007 is going to be a busy year.

















Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under About, Marketing, blogging