I received a reader question a little while ago related to the freedom customers have in leaving public feedback about a company, and how a company should treat derogatory comments when they have the ability to delete them. While the question specifically asks about Facebook accounts, it equally applies to company websites, blogs, and other social media tools where you have the ability to censor comments.

Assuming someone puts a derogatory or perceived derogatory comment on your Facebook page (and you are a company), do you take it down to address it, or do you leave it up there with a note that you will be contacting them if you know how to get in touch?

First, I’m happy to see that the question wasn’t a case of simply censoring negative comments, but still being willing to address them even if removed.

More to the point, I have to say there’s no clear cut answer for this one. There are a few things to consider:

1. Does the poster want an actual, and personal, solution to the problem or are they bitching just to bitch?

My philosophy is this: bitch to your heart’s content as long as there’s a real problem, but be prepared to take credit for your comments. If they aren’t giving you any option to contact them (no phone number, email address, or even a Web link where you could find that), then they don’t want a personal solution that badly. Does that mean you should delete anything that’s anonymous? I don’t think so. But there’s a real difference between an anonymous comment laying out a reasonable suggestion or exposing a real customer issue with your product or company that could be addressed for every customer’s sake and an anonymous comment that’s unnecessarily heated because someone was posting-while-pissed.

2. Is the language inappropriate for your site (or profile)?

What’s considered tolerable language for one audience may be completely inappropriate for another. If you don’t want to allow swearing on your incoming comments, that’s fine. But make that clear up front in a comment policy, so there’s no question as to why something may have been removed. If you don’t have such a policy in place, you run a bigger risk of it stifling conversations with other customers if they worry you’re simply going to delete anything you don’t agree with.

3. Is it libelous?

While I’m all for free speech, there’s no place for libel. Your company certainly shouldn’t feel required to host it or support it by allowing it to stay in your comments just because you don’t want to be known for overly censoring feedback.

4. Is it really a derogatory comment?

I don’t think it’s acceptable for any company to censor comments just because they don’t agree with what was said. I’d be careful about limiting the scope of what the company considers inappropriate, so as not to turn away potentially valuable constructive criticisms (look at it this way - it’s free market research).

There are cases where deleting feedback may be the most appropriate course of action, but remember that there are consequences. If you’re overly liberal in using your delete button, you’re going to turn some potentially mild and constructive situations into much more heated ones. Would you rather encourage a wide range of honest feedback on your profile page or website, or would you rather have an oddly peachy view there, but even more venomous attacks on the major consumer reporting websites which quite possibly reach more of your potential customers than your Facebook profile does? I’d choose the former. One of the greatest things your company can do for its reputation, especially online, is to be responsive to customer feedback. As long as you don’t choose to turn a blind eye to anything and everything that’s critical of your company, you’ll put yourself in a better position to do just that.

For Further Enlightenment

• Moderating Your Blog - 3 Times When it’s OK to Delete Comments!
• PM Best Practices - Dealing with Customers and Clients
• The Growing Feedback Fiasco
• Responding to Negative Comments on Your Blog
• Don’t Censor Online Feedback

Just a very mini-rant today after catching up on some feeds:

If you want to risk completely turning off your readers and sacrificing your site’s credibility with them when posting a “Top whatever-the-hell-it-is-this-week” list, go ahead and include yourself. Better yet, list your own site or blog as the #1 resource (because of course nobody else would).

Just brilliant.

Today let’s chat about a tool from David McInnis, brought to my attention a little while ago by Joe Beaulaurier: PeoplePond.

The site is billed as a “personal SEO” tool, to assist in personal branding. But do we really need one?  So far I’m not convinced. But I don’t know. Maybe I’m just a bad example.

Elastic SEO: The Concept

McInnis talks on PeoplePond’s blog about “elastic SEO.” What is it?

In short it’s just old fashioned reciprocal linking (which, in its often excessive form, has actually been discouraged by Google over the last few years although it does still impact rankings in the SERPs). The idea is this:

1. You set up a profile page with PeoplePond.com.
2. You add a link to your PeoplePond profile to all of your other social media profiles (twitter, facebook, or what have you).
3. You add a link to each of those external social media profiles on your PeoplePond.com profile page.
4. Yippie skippy, your rankings will increase.

Don’t get me wrong. In no way am I saying that won’t work. I’m sure it will. But why would I want it to? Why would I put that much effort into a page on someone else’s site instead of simply employing good SEO tactics targeting my primary business site, blog, or profile page that already exists?

Why I May be a Bad Example

I’m a very active Web publisher. My name is tied to quite a few websites, some of which I own and manage, some of which I simply contribute to (or used to contribute to), and some of which I use for networking or marketing. I haven’t made any active personal SEO efforts (I focus any and all SEO work on specific content or specific pages on my business site where I’m selling various writing services).

Yet 8 of the top 10 spots on Google for a search of my name–Jennifer Mattern–are related to me including links to my top two traffic blogs and a business site, site’s I’ve written for, reviews, etc.  (the top two go to JenniferMattern.com, the site of a playwright and rather awesome blogger who happens to share my name - on that note I’m actually interviewing her for another site of mine shortly). I have no need to get into an SEO war over that placement.

I’m also pretty selective about my various profiles, as I network with more than one audience. For example, I have a Myspace profile used exclusively to network with musicians, related to a music webzine I run. I’m also a member of communities where I network with writing-related colleagues, and still others where I network with other webpreneurs (many of whom have become clients, but also many of whom I simply enjoy keeping up with when keeping a finger on the pulse of new technologies on the Web).

I don’t want writing colleagues subjected to information meant for musicians, and those musicians likely have no interest in hearing about Web development (at least not most of them). There’s a reason I have different social media profiles at different places to begin with.

In the end, as usual, it’s about targeting. I question anyone who feels a need to join social network after social network just because it’s the thing to do at the moment. Want to optimize? Focus on building a more comprehensive presence with a more limited number of tools, and give people a reason to link to you and talk about you in the first place (there’s nothing better for natural SEO rankings than word of mouth and natural linking). PeoplePond.com does nothing I couldn’t do from my own business site (if I wanted to - and I haven’t had to do that in order to secure decent rankings).

Maybe if you don’t know enough to use your own site as your one-stop-shop for personal SEO and social media aggregation (or you don’t know how), it would make more sense for you.

Who Might Benefit from Personal SEO Tools

The fact is that, unless you’re exceptionally well-known, most people probably aren’t actually searching for your name to begin with (so rankings for that keyword phrase may not mean much anyway). You’d have a better chance of bringing them to your site(s) or profile(s) by optimizing for the specific content hosted there.

If people already are searching heavily for your name, chances are also good that you have natural links to your existing business site or blog anyway (if you don’t have a site, you’re not ready for SEO to be a priority anyway).

So okay. Let’s say that you’re well-known, people are searching for you by name because of your other personal branding efforts, you do have your own site and / or blog, but they’re not ranking well because you just happen to share a common name with lots of other folks. Okay. Then, maybe (if you’ve already tried and failed to increase rankings by interlinking your already-existing sites and profiles unsuccessfully), it would be worth setting up yet another one to try to improve the situation.

Aggregation

I’m all for social media aggregation where appropriate. During my hiatus here I actually had a conversation with a colleague about that topic and how it’s going to (in my opinion) be the next big thing in social media - far beyond what we’re seeing so far with existing tools. So in that sense, I think PeoplePond.com is fine and dandy.

If you want one link to pass around that will point folks to all of your social media presences, by all means, it may work for you. Personally though, if I’m going to take the time to build links to a page or promote the URLs to drive traffic to it, I’m going to send that traffic and those links to a page on my own site.

Really, the PeoplePond concept could work with any of your other profile pages, or even something like a personal Squidoo lens. But I’ll give them credit for working to help people aggregate content (it would be nice of course if people did that without forgetting about targeting - not saying they are, but that it’s a risk with any aggregation tool).

So do you need a service like PeoplePond to get the benefits of personal SEO? No, not really. And with the way tools designed solely for SEO linking value tend to get bitch-slapped down by Google before long anyway, I don’t see myself wanting to take the time to optimize that page on someone else’s site.

I’ll stick to good old fashioned white hat SEO - building natural backlinks by posting content people choose to link to, bookmark, and pass around; not obsessive reciprocal linking (there’s a reason you don’t see links to all of my other sites from any single one of my sites - I used to do it, realized how sickly spammy that was, and stopped - my sites still tend to rank well for my targets).

It’s interesting to note that the PeoplePond blog specifically talks about Google profiles, and how they’re not really focused on helping the user with SEO - that’s because Google frowns on any activity with the sole purpose of manipulating their rankings, and have made it clear repeatedly to the webmaster community for a few years now (why paid links, Squidoo, and Web directories all took hits at various times over the past two years). I’m one of the last people to do anything just because Google says it’s the right thing to do, but I always have been and always will be a big believer in natural and deserved linking as much as possible, and if you’re going to link to your other sites / pages, make sure it’s of value (so for me, not connecting the various unassociated groups I network with through a single service).

I’m not saying you shouldn’t sign up. Go ahead. Set up a page and play with the service for a while. It may be more your cup of tea. The fact that it didn’t strike my fancy certainly doesn’t mean it won’t be beneficial to you in some way if you need a boost in the SERPs.

Beyond the emphasis on SEO, PeoplePond.com is designed to give you contact portability by incorporating Weavemet and DandyID services into the site. While it doesn’t really apply to the personal SEO issue I wanted to discuss today, if you’re looking for a tool to help you manage your multiple online identities, PeoplePond might be for you.

Asking lots of questions this week, and hearing some interesting thoughts–today let’s talk about spam on Twitter. What constitutes tweet spam in your eyes, and what’s simply good old marketing? This issue has been on my mind for a while, ever since Dave Fleet’s post on Guy Kawasaki and ghost-tweeting (my issue being “should someone who constantly self-links via tweets really be calling out someone else on ethics using the same tool?”).

I’m especially interested to hear what you think about:

1. Self-linking to your own blog posts
2. Automated tweets

Here are some of my thoughts:

Self-Linking

Links are a beautiful thing, aren’t they? But only if they’re deserved. I can’t take any issue with basic link-backs (interlinking related articles on your blog, linking your company site to your blog, links in a press release or article credit, etc.). That’s just natural, and those kinds of links add real value to the reader.

What I don’t like are spammy links like those I often see on Twitter - where someone feels a need to link in a tweet to every single blog post they publish. Look, if people really give that much of a damn about your blog, they’ll subscribe to your feed. They don’t need what really amounts to a manual feed coming through Twitter as well. It’s obnoxious. It’s like screaming “Look at me! Look at me! I said something new and I’m so uber important I just knew you couldn’t wait another minute for it!” Yuck.

I only follow a few folks who do this. Unfortunately they’re people I otherwise respect who should frankly know better (plenty I have no respect for at all do it as well–I just make it a point not to follow them). It’s gotten to the point where a few of these people post more link spam garbage than truly valuable tweets.

I thought the supposed beauty of Twitter was the ability to hold immediate multi-party conversations in a forcibly concise way. Linking to your own posts isn’t about conversation–not on Twitter at least. The bulk of blog conversations happen directly on the blog. To me that means those links (when self-serving) are little more than traffic-generation tools without any real thought behind them. That makes them spam in my book (on par with press releases put out solely for backlinks, which is disgustingly common).

Released an interesting report of value to more than just your regular blog readers? Cool. Tweet it. Real news about that site or blog? OK. Tweet that too. But linking just to link gets pretty pathetic pretty quickly. What do you think about constant self-linking via Twitter?

Automated Tweets

For the most part, my thoughts on automated tweets are simply SPAM! I don’t follow people using them. That said, I’m open to the thought that there might be limited non-spam uses of tweet automation (such as a Web hosting provider offering automated server status updates to customers or someone subscribing to automated weather updates especially during severe storm warnings and such).

Spam is all about solicitation. When I follow someone, I’m soliciting their thoughts–not constant links to their own content that I can easily follow elsewhere, and not posts from a bot of any kind (unless I knowingly subscribe for automated updates). Anything else, to me, is spam. The beauty is that you can always (well usually) unfollow someone. But just as an unsubscribe link in an email isn’t necessarily enough to say it’s not spam, is an unfollow button on Twitter? I’ll leave it to your thoughts….

For Further Enlightenment

• Here Comes Twitter Spam and How to Fight It
• Don’t Spam Twitter with Forced Tweets
• Will Search & Reply Spam be Twitter’s End?
• Twitter Spam Already Annoying Some Users
• Twitter Spam Not Likely to Kill Twitter

I’m a strong believer that communications professionals (especially in PR and social media areas) have a responsibility to be somewhat liberal in their comment policies on blogs, networks, etc. Why? Because I don’t think you can really advocate for building conversations if you aren’t open to them yourself–even if they may get a bit heated.

NakedPR only now has an official comment policy, and I try to keep it open. Criticize as much as you want as long as you’re constructive, and if you want to post just to be a jackass, hey, that’s okay too–just take credit for your words. I’ve only banned one person from commenting on any of my blogs that I can think of (not this one), and that was for associating not only myself but many of that blog’s readers with the KKK because they didn’t agree with our views regarding pay issues of all things. It crossed a line. My lines are hard to cross. How about yours?

Do you think it’s okay to ban comments just because someone repeatedly questions you, disagrees with you, or points out what they believe to be flaws in your reasoning? At what point does open communication cross a line into the inappropriate? Are those lines different (or should they be) on a corporate blog? Is it okay for companies to reject negative comments and essentially “control” all aspects of the conversation?

What about links? Judy Gombita of PR Conversations recently asked on Ragan.com why comments didn’t allow a link to a person’s site or blog. I think that’s a good question, and Ragan isn’t the only guilty party - just a few weeks ago I was commenting on a larger media site with the same issues, and honestly I think it’s a problem.

To allow truly open conversations, I think it’s our responsibility to allow readers to decide who they trust and don’t trust. I should be able to click on a link if someone wants to leave one, where I can learn more about that person and determine whether their credentials make them someone I can believe in that subject matter or not. It’s one thing if everyone recognizes your name. That isn’t the case for most people, and not allowing them to demonstrate that they’re actually familiar with the industry or topic is almost akin to having them comment anonymously.

I’m less concerned with things like no-follow and do-follow links, as long as a link is available for actual visitors to click on (although that’s an interesting topic on its own).

How open are you with your comment policies and linking, and do you think communicators need to be held to higher standards on that front?

For Further Enlightenment

• Open Comment Policies on Blogs
• Banned from the Buzz Bin - Bummer!
• Does Your Blog Have a Comments Policy?
• Should My Business Blog, and Should I Delete Critical Comments?
• Communities Should Allow People to Delete Their Comments

Just a quick thought and a few questions today:

When the whole Domino’s issue went abuzz in SM land, all I could really think was “Don’t they have more important things to worry about? Like learning how to make a pizza that doesn’t taste like cardboard?” (I don’t know. I’m a native New Yorker, so good pizza’s in my blood - maybe I expect too much.)

Seriously though, in the grand scheme of things what really caused the supposed PR nightmare? The vid itself, or the social mediaphiles going on about it endlessly because of the type of tool being used? Are the people hoping to come to the rescue with their PR “fixes” doing the most harm to begin with? Did they blow something out of proportion just because, well, they could? Do the top dogs in social media and PR have any responsibility here? Should they allow themselves to be sucked into conversations because they’re there, or should they recognize bait and leave it to the little fish to bite? What was their role in creating the mess, and was it really that much of a “mess” to begin with? (Now go spend a few weeks working in a kitchen, and answer that again.)

For Further Enlightenment

• Domino’s Pizza Video Prank Pulled Too Soon
• Reputation Management - Domino’s Pizza
• Domino’s: How One YouTube Video Can Ruin a Brand
• Domino’s Pizza Deals with YouTube Nightmare
• Consumerist Sleuths Track Down Offending Domino’s Store

Last week, Chris Brogan posted in support of sponsored posts or content marketing. And while it may be surprising given my strong stance against companies like Molson, I think Brogan has it right. Here’s why:

There’s nothing wrong with marketing or advertising. Yes, I know, they’re our “evil twins” and whatnot, but in the grand scheme of things, there is absolutely nothing wrong with ethical marketing and advertising practices. With full disclosure, that’s what many sponsored posts are. Sounds hypocritical given my past stances perhaps, but it’s not. My primary issue with Molson and others over the last year haven’t been that they’ve given free crap to bloggers, but rather that they do it under the guise of good blogger relations, and focus targeting on influence alone rather than legitimate reader interest (those bloggers pretending sponsorship is a matter of good PR are far more unethical and misleading to their readers in my eyes than someone who discloses a sponsored post for precisely what it is).

The Influence Factor

“But paying a blogger to post might influence their opinions,” you might say. In fact, one comment on Brogan’s post specifically equated sponsored posts to “buying opinions.” What bullshit. First of all that mentality assumes that all sponsored posts are opinion-based to begin with (they’re not). It also assumes all sponsored posts are actually written by the blogger (they’re not). It also assumes that non-”sponsored” posts are unbiased to begin with if you want to make a negative comparison (they’re not).

Bloggers are in Business

I am just sick, sick, sick of PR and SM folks acting like tools exist for their purposes and their purposes alone. It’s bad enough that PR folks are habitually late to the game to begin with, but once they discover a new tool, it’s like no one exists but them. Yes, I understand the PR value of blogging. I understand the value of conversations and relationship-building. Blah, blah, blah. We’ve heard it all before.

What I also understand is that there are other motivations behind blogging. Blogs have always been self-serving. Even using them in a PR capacity is precisely that to some degree. Blogging is a significant part of my own business model. I’ve monetized them in numerous ways (from contextual ads to my own product sales to, yes, sponsored posts). And I can tell you for a fact that sponsorship in no way automatically equals positive opinions. In fact, on the site where I offered them (two years or so ago), the bluntly honest content was often cited as the reason for wanting a sponsored review to begin with - people wanted honest opinions on how to improve their sites and products targeting members of my audience.

I’ll give you another example, also from a few years back. I run a music webzine. We were always inundated with review requests. I hired reviewers to handle those for me. We did offer sponsored reviews. Payment had zilch to do with the content of the reviews (the reviewers were paid the same whether it came from me or the advertiser)–it was solely for guaranteed space on the site and a quick turnaround (where they could otherwise wait for weeks just to hear back from a reviewer because of the wait list before them). It was frequently used by artists and indie labels looking for last minute reviews for press kits on pre-launch albums. There were absolutely no differences between “normal” reviews and sponsored ones in the terms of what the writers delivered–ever.

It’s just business. And not everything in business has to do with PR. As a blogger you answer to your readers. If you’re able to work in sponsorships that don’t deter from their general experience, I’ve found they’re rarely really bothered by it (unless they’re taking part in one of these industry-centered debates). In fact, they may very well find them preferable to other monetization streams common in blogging, such as heavy use of contextual or banner ads.

If you keep your audience happy, and you’re earning enough to keep you in blogging (for those doing it as a business), then you’re doing something right.

What Constitutes “Sponsorship?”

For those so adamant about (again, disclosed) sponsored blog posts being evil, or some such nonsense, I have to wonder what they consider sponsorship (especially given this is the same crowd that backs half-assed “blogger relations” efforts revolving around event invitations and free crap).

Okay. Being paid cash outright for posting is certainly sponsorship. Then I suppose posts with affiliate links would also qualify (I mean, you are potentially getting paid for that post over, and over, and over again, and those links are often placed within reviews where they only earn if you buy).

How about that free stuff? How about those special events? If someone gives you something with the expectation (or even hope) that you’ll post something nice about them (and let’s be honest–no one specifically targets bloggers in the hopes they’ll keep their mouths shut), I don’t think there’s a valid argument that would support freebies not constituting sponsorship. Just look at the whole pseudo blogger relations rush targeting “influencers” instead of audiences. It’s all about wanting something in return (precisely why size matters folks).

Sponsorship Scenerios

Let’s think about two hypothetical blogs. The first is an informational tech blog run by an authority in the niche, and it generally consists of news and advice. The second is solely a commercial blog which revolves around product information (mostly reviews) to help readers make buying decisions. Let’s look at the role sponsored posts might play, and how there’s no one size fits all answer to the question of their ethics. Assume equal influence (read: popularity).

Authority Blog - Most of Blogger A’s posts have nothing to do with product reviews. However, once in a while when something new comes out of interest to his readers, he tests it out. Sometimes he buys the products himself, sometimes he tests them out in-store or through publicly-available trials, and sometimes he gets his hands on them through a friend.

Now let’s say Company A is releasing an anticipated gadget of some variety. A company rep is familiar with the blog, knows the readers fit within their target market, and they like the authority style of reviews the blogger writes up. They decide to send him a pre-launch “toy” to see if he’ll review it. He agrees. He writes a balanced review like those his readers are accustomed to, and he discloses how he received the item. No money changed hands, but you would be hard-pressed not to call that a sponsored post. Instead of giving him money, the company simply saved him from potentially spending that money himself later in exchange for that early authority review.

Is there anything wrong with this kind of sponsorship? I don’t think so. It’s disclosed. It’s honest. The readers know the blogger’s style better than anyone else, and they’re big boys and girls–they’re fully capable of deciding if they trust that review in comparison to others and making a decision of whether or not to buy.

Commercial Blog - I’m referring to this blog as a commercial blog, even though there may not be direct advertisements on the site–being paid in merchandise is still being paid.

This blog posts very little other than product reviews. In fact, they actively solicit freebies from companies interested in reaching their audience through a review. They rarely, if ever, actually purchase review materials just because they think something would be of value to their audience. They’re more likely to accept a more poorly-targeted item for review if it’s given to them for free, regardless of the interest their audience might have in it.

We’ll say this blog was originally designed to specialize in software, hardware, etc.–computer-specific gadgets and tools. Blogger B is contacted by the same company that reached out to Blogger A for a review of their new gadget (let’s call it the next iPhone alternative). They don’t hesitate to accept.

The review does disclose that item was given to them, and they also make an attempt to write a balanced review. However, unlike Blogger A, this blogger doesn’t have any real expertise in this type of gadget (meaning their review would likely carry less weight with the company’s specific target market).

Is there anything wrong with either of these situations? While I personally would never read Blog B, because I would find the constant sponsorship and greater interest in free stuff over readers to be obnoxious, I still don’t see anything inherently wrong with either blog as long as things are disclosed. I mean if the readers are sticking around, they know what they’re getting into, and they have the ability to leave at any time if they feel their trust was betrayed.

Yes, if their style changed for sponsored reviews I would say there’s an ethical dilemma. Yes, if they failed to disclose any kind of sponsorship it would be a problem. In the end, it always comes down to the individual blogger’s ethics. My actual opinions could never be bought–not with cash, not will affiliate earnings, not with free stuff. Can yours?

If you don’t like sponsored blog posts, that’s fine. Don’t host them, and don’t read them. More power to you. That’s between you and your audience and what’s acceptable in your blog’s niche. But don’t make blanket judgments that all of anything is automatically “bad” just because it doesn’t fit within your own goals within your specific profession. Criticize if you have valid points, yes. But try to put them in context. Sponsored posts come in many forms, from completely honest reviews to sponsor-provided advertorials. Don’t judge them all collectively.

As for Brogan, while I don’t personally support content marketing in a network type of environment, I know many others do. So to them, good luck with it. I hope they find a way to keep on benefiting everyone while keeping it honest, and maybe they’ll eliminate some of that sponsorship stigma in time.

For Further Enlightenment

• I Support the Future of Sponsored Posts
• Sponsored Blog Posts: Debate has Returned, and Both Sides Have a Point
• This Space (Is Not) For Sale
• Sponsored Posts: Advertorial 2.0
• Paid Posts Should Not Affect Search Engines (trying to hold back the Google rage while posting this one)

The new theme is officially up and ready to go, back to regular posting tomorrow. But first, let’s look at some changes so readers can find their way around and understand why things are as they are:

1. Comments on old posts will remain closed. In the top nav bar, you’ll notice there’s a new comment policy active on NakedPR. I’m really not a fan of closed comments, but it’s only fair that since the comment policy applies only to new comments, old comments should remain as-is. And since they were closed for months when the blog itself was “closed,” I don’t think we have a huge loss here. I also don’t want past bad form in comments to influence further bad behavior on some of the more heated older posts.
2. As you can see, I opted to go with a much simpler and more traditional blog format (much closer to the original theme of NakedPR than the last one). There’s much less clutter. You won’t find recent and featured post lists for example. You also won’t find a bunch of little chicklets littering each post page. (If you’re in this niche enough to be here, you more than likely already have your own favorites and are perfectly capable of using them without handholding.) The basic necessities of categories and archives can be found in the sidebar. I think the RSS location is obvious enough. Other than that, hopefully you won’t have a difficult time finding anything. If you do, there’s always the search function (no button–just hit enter) or the sitemap at the top of the blog which has every post sorted by category on a single page for you.
3. The only real amenities added are comment subscriptions and live comment previews (no clicking for the preview–it will display below the input form as you type).

I haven’t run across any problems on testing, but if you do, please let me know so I can look into it.

Boo! I’m back. Well, Monday I’ll be back… if the new theme comes to me coded without issues tomorrow (and I expect it will be fine).

Sorry folks. More rants underway, and we’ll have a somewhat full plate next week–sponsored blog posts, the gimme gimmes, comment linking, tweet spam, personal SEO, and dough boys. Fun stuff.

OK. I’m reviving NakedPR as a one time only thing for now. If one topic has had me burning up over the last few months, it’s been bad blogger relations, and the Molson Brew 2.0 event has been at the top of my shit list (and that’s putting it “nicely”).

I’ve avoided getting into it here, but the discussions just don’t seem to go away - and nothing worth saying at that - just the same few people saying the same few things.

It came up again when Eden Spodek commented on Mack Collier’s post “Are Companies Targeting the Wrong ‘Influencers’ with Social Media?”

To say I cringed (at the comment; not the post–which has it spot on) would be a serious understatement. I left a few thoughts there. I was going to followup with more in response to a comment from Brandon Carlos, but the comment ended up practically being a post in itself. So rather than hijack Mack’s post over this particular case, I’m just posting those thoughts here in the hopes that they’ll sink in with at least one sane person out there in SM-land.

Before this, I suggest reading Mack’s post. It’s a great discussion on how much influence those “influencers” actually have, when the company doesn’t bother researching exactly who they have “influence” over to begin with.

I think the real problem is that companies are becoming content with getting bloggers to say “Oh, they’re so nice to have invited us,” or “They hosted a super-cool event,” and completely ignore relevance.

I follow several “influential” SM bloggers for example. When I visit their blog, I expect to read about social media issues - not beer, not soda, not anything unrelated unless there’s a heck of a good reason.

Telling your readers how Molson decided to give you some free beer to pour down your throat isn’t a good reason (unless you’re following a food & beverage blogger, or are in a pop culture kind of niche full of cheap beer drinkers who want to pat you on the back for the great mooch). Even attempting to spin it as “it’s a great example of blogger relations because they “bought” me with free beer” doesn’t cut it - if anything, that’s just sad.

Personally, I stopped following a few bloggers who went on about that event, because frankly they showed me they didn’t “get” blogging’s role in SM enough for me to continue wasting time following them. As a member of the type of audience those bloggers were targeting, I couldn’t respect their opinions on that blog anymore seeing that they could be bought (and there’s no other way to describe it after reading some of those posts). Even a hint of that is a turn-off as a blog reader - the very people those companies are hoping you can influence (not any more sweeties).

Now as much as I despise the BS surrounding the Brew 2.0 event, I’ll at least give Molson a tiny bit of credit for trying. But they should have tried harder.

How could they have done that?

1. Better targeting (more quality over quantity).

2. Actually give the bloggers something no one else has - something worth blogging about that their readers would care about - a story to break, etc. (And “they hosted a blogger event” hardly counts when it’s irrelevant to the bulk of their target market / customers.)

3. Get it through your heads that blogger relations isn’t about kissing the ass of bloggers, parties, and events. Far more often what a blogger wants is advanced info (it’s a big deal for most of them to break even something tiny), or your direct interaction on their blog–those in the food & bev industry or those industries that companies like Molson otherwise sponsor would probably love to have a high-level company rep stop by and leave a comment, offer to do an interview, offer to do a special contest or promotion through their blog, etc. What matters in blogging is the information; not showmanship.

The real key is that it doesn’t matter how generally “influential” a blogger is. If they’re audience doesn’t care about your company or product (or wouldn’t want to hear about it in that particular place), then that “influential” blogger actually has very little real influence over their readers when it comes to that particular post.

Did Molson get some blog coverage? Sure. But I didn’t see anything truly substantive (and I saw a lot of it). It was the same old “ooh, it was so cool they asked me to go,” and blah, blah, blah. Where was the product info? Where was the actual value to each blogger’s readers? Where was there anything truly new? There really wasn’t much, if any.

If Molson were asking people in PR and SM specifically because they wanted them talking about how the event itself was run, that still wouldn’t be good blogger relations, but it would at least be slightly less absurd. But when asked publicly, they made it clear they had no intention whatsoever to get that kind of coverage, or pitch that kind of angle to the bloggers.

“We’re in no way interested in publicizing our social media capabilities, rather we want to ensure that we’re present, and can contribute somehow if possible, when beer or related topics are being discussed online.” - Green Banana

Instead they opted to put on a fake face and say they really expected nothing at all - and I’m sorry, but by telling those bloggers there that you didn’t expect it, you’re bringing it up with the hope of planting that idea in their head. And if it were really about “being present” as a future resource for beer-related posts and nothing more, they wouldn’t have targeted SM “influencers” - they would have targeted people already talking about beer.

That entire thing was a joke and very little more.”

As I said on Mack’s post, I’m amused to see Molson’s still spiking the Kool-aid. And just for shits and giggles, over the next few weeks, I think I’m going to take on a bit of research some of these folks obviously neglected. I’ve decided I’m going to reach out to two target blogger groups that would have been better targets than SM folks for a beer company: food & beverage bloggers and a niche of entertainment bloggers where my event experience tells me alcohol companies are often the biggest sponsors (and whose readers are huge fans of the general product). That’s to start–beyond that, I’ll consider making it a bigger endeavor covering more “influential” bloggers in a larger sample of popular blog niches. If I take it to that point, I’ll be sure to publish the results, and then maybe we’ll once and for all see what bloggers really want out of your blogger relations efforts.