A journalist friend of mine forwarded me a recent post from Robert Scoble, which cites an increasing number of bloggers unable to deal with the fact that they are influencers, or gatekeepers of information. You can find the post here. Some, like Scoble, are very comfortable with it(please buy my book?!) Hey, everyone, can we take a minor step back quickly. How about we stop pitching bloggers on products, services and companies, and hey bloggers, stop reviewing products, services and companies. What I mean is: bloggers should be part of the conversation. That's why they got into this, right? And of course to share experiences, ideas, thoughts, creativeness. This is why I blog at least. They are early adopters and should be approached, I think, with a partisan attitude. Bloggers should be brought into meet a company, if THEY are interested, for feedback, ideas, thoughts, and to share their own personal experiences where relevant. Influencers should not be approached in the same way the AP Internet beat reporter is approached. "Dear Sir, did you know 1 out of every 3 Internet users..."blah blah blah. I fear the PR industry is forgetting this and jumping the shark a bit, and in turn, bloggers are getting turned off. This is unfortunate, because I think about how powerful the community can be. And that's what a blogger/influencer is...a member of the community. You can't just say X blogger is a search guy, so let's send him all our search news.' It just doesn't work that way.
One reason I came to work for Voce Communications is because from a PR perspective they *get* this whole blogger/influencer/social media landscape. I was introduced to it a bit late, in 2004, while working with/launching the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser. We were able to identify our community and work with them better than anyone had previously done. And that's what bloggers are, right? Members of the community.? Then why the hell would you ever pitch a blogger? I'll stop beleaguering this point.
The same journo friend I mention above says to Scoble and Winer, regarding pitches, 'welcome to the club.' Please, PR folks, VPs of Marketing, John Q. Public, don't treat bloggers as such. While some bloggers outside the media realm might very well wield purchasing or adoption influence, it still does not mean they should be viewed as media, and pitched as such. Now I'm sure that not every email in Scoble's or Winer's inbox is a traditional *pitch*, but I'd be willing to be a good number of them are. I'm in the middle of helping a consumer software company, Blurb, launch in the next couple months. Their *community* will be very important to the business, and bloggers in the entertainment, cooking/recipe, publishing, education, arts & crafts and technology worlds will be of significant importance. But the smart way to help Blurb is not to blast out 1,500 pitches to bloggers writing about these topics, rather to include key bloggers and influencers by asking "how does this product feel? How does it handle? What can we do better? What would YOU like to see?" Remember, the feedback you get from bloggers when you make them a part of what you're doing is just as valuable as a 300 word post on your product. Make those who are interested in what your company is doing, a part of IT. These folks are not the media...if they were, they would have become journalists.
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