The Blogosphere According to Bloggers

I know I'm a little slow in reacting to the Technorati State of the Blogosphere report, but I kept coming back to something I couldn't quite shake. More on that in a minute. First, let's talk about a few of the interesting tidbits about brands and blogging.

"Whether or not a brand has launched a social media strategy, more likely than not, it’s already present in the Blogosphere. Four in five bloggers post brand or product reviews, with 37% posting them frequently. 90% of bloggers say they post about the brands, music, movies and books that they love (or hate)."



Yep, folks. People are talking about you, whether you like it or not. More importantly, people are looking for information online, and when they find it, they may not realize they're on a blog. It's just a link they clicked from their Google search.

Social media users tend to label our tools and put them in buckets - blogging, microblogging, crowdsourcing, whatever. But the people that FIND information on the web aren't classifying things the same way we are. They just want to know what people are saying about the laptop they're thinking of buying, or the hotel they're thinking of staying at. When they click on a link, it may not register with them that it's a blog or a forum post or a mainstream news article online, but it's the information they're after. But they ARE looking for it, so we ought to be putting it in places they can find it and - perhaps more importantly - interact and react to it.

"Company information or gossip and everyday retail experiences are fodder for the majority of bloggers."


Which means people want to talk about you, and given no other choice, will use the information they find to make judgments about your business. It's ever more important that you as the brand are contributing your voice and perspective to the conversation, and showing that other people's viewpoints matter to you, too.

But here's my word of caution. The report is decidedly slanted - Technorati (fittingly) only surveyed bloggers for this report. I understand that they're trying to take the pulse of THEIR community - the bloggers - and understand how and why they do what they do.

But if you're a consultant or company looking at this information, be careful not to overinflate some of the findings, and recognize that they're from a plugged-in audience. Of course they're going to predict the continued growth of blogs and the demise of print - that's the world they live in. Of course they're going to believe that blogs' influence will get ever greater in the grand communications highway - it's part of the sea change that they're creating.

I believe these things - I do. I work with lots of people to understand and tap the potential of marketing through social media - blogging included - and I think blogging is a powerful, accessible medium that really has changed the face of media. But the fishbowl can make you see things through curved glass.

So I'll end by saying that once again, we all need to be mindful of the individual business value of these tools, the important factors for consideration, and how they integrate into the larger landscape. Traditional methods of communication can still be very viable, and even more powerful when enhanced with carefully selected social media tools to transform a message into a dialogue.

And the conversation is only as good as the quality of its participants. More on that later this week...

Social Media: What About The Risks?

Someone asked this a couple of weeks ago on Twitter, and I've been chewing on it ever since.

Is social media risky?

Business in general is fraught with risk. The next client or contract or customer isn't assured. Our advertising campaign could offend someone, our direct mail campaign could be beautifully designed and tested but still fail to achieve the results we want.

Accounting errors happen, and even worse, fraud. Customer service reps have a bad day. IT departments have meltdowns and failures. Products fail to meet expectations, budgets get missed. Employees misbehave, embezzle, share trade secrets. And it all happens on channels outside of social media.

As a very public, lasting, and dynamic communication platform, social media has it's share of potential challenges. And for as powerfully as I believe in its potential to elevate brands, it would be irresponsible to assume that venturing into social media territory doesn't carry some level of risk. Here are a few of the risks associated with social media that we've been talking about:

A customer could leave a negative comment on your blog, or on a social network about your brand.

Criticism happens all the time, and companies need to respond appropriately and thoughtfully. Crisis communication strategy exists purely for this reason. I don't think that social media necessarily increases the chances that something negative will be said about you, but it certainly can amplify the message. Companies embarking on social media adventures need to understand how to monitor their brand online - especially on the company-owned channels - and learn how to engage and respond in a way that bolsters the brand.

An employee could say something on behalf of the company that's not authorized, is potentially offensive, or share something confidential.

Kellye Crane today pointed me to a post that Leigh Durst put on her blog about Whole Foods' potential misstep on Twitter. Apparently, their Twitter representative(s) reposted a tweet with questionable language, and some fallout ensued. Can one misstep like this have more staying power than five smart moves? Social media folks always say that Google never forgets, and more and more we find proof that it doesn't.

Beth Harte penned a great post about her recent experiences on Twitter; the height of the political season has folks tossing barbs left and right, and there is certainly potential for brand damage - both personal and corporate.

We've spent years now using the phone and email to communicate, and the potential exists to really screw up there, too. So what makes social media different? Is it the ubiquitous, open and organic nature of conversation on the web? Does the anoynmity of a computer screen encourage poorer judgment?

Participating in social networks or blogging requires dedicated resources or productivity, and can be difficult to sustain at an active level.

For a moment, I'm going to put aside the argument of whether engaging in social media is a waste of time in the first place, and assume that it's not. But engaging in social media the "right" way requires a commitment, and can be hard work. Understaffing, underestimating, and doing it poorly can be worse than doing nothing at all. A blog with one post that hasn't been updated in months can send a lack of commitment message that a mere absence of blogging might not.

As Mack Collier deftly points out, putting the wrong resources to work can misfire, too. Just because only one employee is familiar with blogging doesn't mean that they're the right choice to blog on behalf of a company. Choosing social media stewards for your company needs to be as well thought out as appointing any major project managers. (One could even argue more so, considering the very public nature of this kind of role.)

The corporate message can't be as easily controlled or managed.

Yes, it's true that you as a company don't necessarily control all your messaging anymore, and your customers are having a greater and more lasting impact on your brand.

But Jeff Summers and Jane Chin are both smart to point out that some industries carry more risk and liability than others for that very messaging. Financial institutions or health care organiations very likely have regulations they must adhere to, and legal obligations that control what kind of information they can disclose and how. For companies in these spaces, social media is a very serious business and legal consideration that has to be approached carefully (if its appropriate at all).

It's more than clear that a sound social media strategy involves analysis of potential issues that can arise as well as the potential benefits. And like any other smart business move, stepping into social media should be treated with respectful planning and communication. Just because it's a shiny "new" toy doesn't mean that it ought to be treated lightly.

Are these risks different than those for other areas of business? Are the standards for social media the same or different, and why? Is there equal risk in doing nothing at all and missing the boat on social media altogether?

Let's continue the conversation in the comments. This is an important subject!

Thanks also to Sonny Gill, Tara Whittle, Tim "Masiguy" Jackson, Rhonda LaShae, and Barbara Baker for weighing in on the conversation, and their great contributions as always (which you can read here on Plurk).

Image by hellolapomme

New York Times Wants to Censor and Influence Bloggers?

On Saturday, I posted about the New York Times and their coverage that same evening of the BlogHer 08 Conference in their online Fashion & Style section (The Sunday Styles section in the print version). I was particularly upset about where the paper placed the story and the overall tone of the article. I also wrote a brief letter to the editor that day that expressed my thoughts on the topic. You can read my post and my letter to the editor right here.

Yesterday, I got a phone call and an email from a New York Times editor in response to my letter, asking simply if I would please call her. So I did, about an hour later.

The contact is an editor for the Thursday and Sunday editions of the Times’ Styles section (known as the Fashion & Style section on the online version). She said she was contacting me because she wanted me to consider revising the letter I had written to the editor because they couldn’t publish it as it was. (She also mentioned that she had read my post and several others expressing similar criticism for the story and its placement).

So, naturally, I asked why. She said that my letter specifically criticized the placement of the story, which it did. But she went on to explain that the Times’ sections operate somewhat autonomously, and when one section gets a good story, they would never “give it away” to another section. She said that the section in which a story was placed was not something they “controlled”, but that it was based on which section editor got the story or whom the reporter chose to pitch.

Effectively, she told me that they wouldn’t publish my letter if it talked about the placement of the story since the section placement wasn’t “something [they] could respond to” and was something they “don’t have an answer for”. Instead, she suggested that if I framed my letter to focus instead on tone and content of the story itself, I could resubmit it to her directly for publication consideration.

What?

There’s a couple of big lessons to be learned here about proper outreach to your community, and how not to engage with bloggers.

Mistake #1
First of all, a letter to the editor is intended as an expression of opinion by the readership of a paper. A publication could reasonably edit a letter for length, but suggesting that content and intent of a letter be revised and resubmitted for the purposes of making it easier or more palatable to the paper isn’t reasonable (or ethical, in my view).

In this case, the Times didn’t want to publish my criticism of the editorial judgment because they would have then had to explain how and why stories get placed in specific sections. They also might have had to defend the content of their Style section and justify why it was a suitable place for the BlogHer story after all. So they’ve made my letter to the editor about what it does (or doesn’t do) for them, instead of about engaging and including the voice of their readers.

Lesson: When engage in dialogue with your community, you lose credibility and respect when you try to censor or influence that conversation just because you don’t like what’s being said.

Mistake #2
In our follow up correspondence after the phone call, the editor asked that, should I choose to blog again on this topic, I not reveal her name because she’s “not a higher-up in the section” and would “rather not be seen as speaking on behalf of the section in print.” However, her phone call to me was from her desk at the Times, and her email to me was from her New York Times email account. In both cases, she was clearly presenting herself as a representative of the paper whose duties, per her email to me, “include [responding] to letter writers.”

They say in journalism that nothing is ever truly off the record. The Times, however, via this editor, is asking to be exactly that.

Lesson: If you’re going to be a part of the conversation, be transparent. Own your viewpoint and speak as yourself. Otherwise, your community questions your motives and you lose their trust.

So what should they have done?

Here’s my take:

• Either chosen to publish my letter as it was, or chosen not to publish it as is their prerogative (after all, publication isn’t guaranteed). But never should their response have been to try and convince me to amend my opinion because they didn’t have a suitable response.

• Commented on my post. The editor mentioned that she’d read my blog post about it, and that gave her and the Times the perfect opportunity to engage in the conversation and contribute their perspective.

• Respected my stance rather than trying to influence it. They didn’t have to agree with me. But trying to get me to revise my letter to the editor or suggest how I should treat future blog posts tells me that they’d rather control the message than have a discussion.

Let me be clear that I think the Times, in theory, made the right move by reaching out to someone who is clearly speaking up about them, and to them. Engagement is much better than ignoring. But the question becomes what does more damage: Not responding at all, or responding and trying to influence a letter writer or blogger to amend their content?

I think the piece itself and the editor’s response to my letter underscores the lack of respect that the Times has for bloggers, their readers, and their influence within the larger media community. The overall tone of the exchange with the editor, while courteous and friendly on the surface, leads me to think that the Times not only wants to unduly influence the conversation, but that they might be taking this ill-advised approach with other bloggers, too.

This whole situation highlights an archaic and potentially damaging system that papers like the Times are using to determine where their stories run. I think they ought to be rethinking this for the sake of integrity.

So what do you think? How would you have reacted to such a request? Do you think the New York Times handled this correctly? If not, what should they have done differently and what are the lessons to be learned?

Photo by Anderson Mancini

New York Times Commits a Fashion Faux-Pas about BlogHer

It's not often I get on my soapbox on my blog; my intention is to share with you, my good readers, a bit of widsom and insight and share everything I've learned in kind from all of you. But I'm hoppin' mad at the New York Times for how they've managed to undermine some fantastically accomplished and groundbreaking women from BlogHer.

BlogHer is a community of women bloggers who blog about everything from cars to health and wellness, technology, green causes, law, social change and dozens of other topics. With over 13,000 members and over 10,000 blogs on their directory, it's a powerhouse of content, expertise, and community building. These women are driven, and influential.

So imagine my frustration - nay, disgust - when the New York Times managed to write a story about their recent BlogHer08 conference and put it on their Fashion and Style page?

It prompted me to write a letter to the editor:

I’m so disappointed that you managed to completely undermine the professional, hardworking group at BlogHer by parking that article on your “Fashion & Style” page. Why not Business? Technology? These women are changing the face of technology and the online world, and you’re parking them off in a trivial corner instead of among the gamechanging minds of Web 2.0 where they belong.

This is exactly why glass ceilings exist. Way to take a legitimate, amazingly powerful event for professionals and treat it as “aw, how cute!”.

Shame on you.

That pretty much sums it up for me. I'm thankful that events and communities like BlogHer are garnering recognition in mainstream media for the incredible things they're doing. Blogging and social media are changing the face of marketing, communications, and mainstream media. But I am so distressed that this particular event was treated like it was some cutsie fashion show with a bunch of women getting manicures, drinking tea, and giggling with one another over soap operas. Even the article has a rather condescending tone, as if they NYT was surprised and amused at this little gathering of mommies who blog.

Blogging is a commitment. It takes dedication, passion, and focus to do it well. It is shifting boundaries all over the world about how people, businesses, and media get and share information. And communities like BlogHer are the essence of bringing people together to learn, share, and teach one another (sound like any of the definitions I've given about social media???).

So I repeat, shame on you New York Times. BlogHer members - and all of the evangelists of Web 2.0, social media, and community - deserve better than that.


Image credit: Wendy Piersall of Sparkplugging.com