Digigen & The TinMan

An interesting development in news publications, but to be honest one I cannot see rivalling traditional means of taking in news. By traditional I mean blogs and journalists. It does have a very interesting niche to fill, but I ponder if its a niche which hasn’t needed to be created.

Theblogpaper.co.uk describes itself as:

“a news community which allows anyone to publish written and visual work online and in print. Rating and commenting, in other words the community defines what gets promoted to the front pages as well as to the printed version. theblogpaper aims to publish the first user-generated newspaper in London.”

It is certainly a user-generated first, but I guess there are already well-established blogs such as The Londonist who would argue that they are creating their own user-generated newspaper. (and doing it incredibly well)

My thought is that the way TheBlogPaper can make this work is by generating views through advertising which bloggers couldn’t drive themselves. However, my feeling is that most bloggers in London are well connected enough to get people to their own sites, this may just be an additional tool for doing that.

The development of the additional facility to end up in print may be an additional incentive but to make this work The Blog Paper need to firmly establish credibility. Perhaps this could be done by partnering as a free giveaway with the Standard or The Times, a type of London fanzine if you like.

It will be really interesting to see how this develops and I will be checking out the pages in excitement.

This must rank as my favourite blog post that I have read this year. Not only does it back up my thinking about how blogging outreach/blog seeding should be done (or actually shouldn’t in this case), the actual response is pure genius.

Thomas Brown of TopSpot Promotions congratulations, you are the winner of the inaugural “How to Lose Business and Alienate Bloggers” Award.

“Thomas wrote back, explaining that his client was an online bingo company called 888ladies.com. Hmmm, I thought. Sounds right up my alley. Thomas continued…

‘The post of course should be about online bingo and should include, as mentioned, information about my client’s website an services. You can write the post as you want as long as it will be positive. I don’t want to limit you but of course that the longer the post will be it will be better.

Once the post will be ready you can send it to me and I’ll show you where I want to place the links (from which words).

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.’

So, even though I had a million other things to do – get a job, write a bestseller, get Paul McKenna to hypnotise me to stop smoking, get my ears syringed, get my piles waxed, honestly, the list really is endless – I decided to spend some time on my positive promotional bingo post. It took me bloody ages too, but I think in the end I got the tone right. This is what I sent…”

Read at the following link (thanks to Bete de Jour for sharing)

Three Quick fixes for Thomas Brown:

1) Work for the government – I hear they love this sort of underhand skulduggery and bribery.

2) Remove yourself from any legitamite blogging programme – you aren’t doing the people who try to do this correctly any favours.

3) Perhaps read the following post

Mbb

There has been alot of negative feedback from Bloggers around the way that certain agencies approach them, the “incentives” they are offered, and the pushiness of the people running the blogging programme. Given the ruling of the FTC that all bloggers should say when they are being paid to blog, I feel its necessary to be transparent from an agency end as well. Therefore, I think there are five key points to blogger outreach:

1) Research.

a) There are alot of companies out there like Social Media Library, who will sell you a list of blogging names with their own influence index built in. These companies are taking you for a ride if you think the quality of database is any good. You are much better off doing the research yourselves and establishing your own influence index for bloggers. Whether you base this on Alexa, Technorati or whatever, do not go on the index you are given by people like Social Media Library.

b) Don’t approach a blogger without doing research on their site. Bloggers are not expecting you to read every post, however, they will expect you to know what their blog is about, the sort of tone of voice they use, and the sort of things they really like talking about.

2. Bespoke Approach. As offline PR agencies begin to move into online PR and blogger outreach, there seems to be a consistent blanket approach which is taken to contacting bloggers. Unfortunately, sometimes these blanket emails fail and clearly show “Dear [Enter Name]” as the automated greeting. The only way to approach bloggers is to approach them with a bespoke email, taking into account all of the above research points. Do not send a generic approach, it will only annoy and alienate the person you are trying to befriend.

3. Constant Contact. If a blogger has been positive towards your first approach, then don’t wait to begin your outreach. Discuss everything you are doing with them as you go, talk about the product with them to get their understanding of it, before you send them the product. Give them constant, but relevant updates about what the company is doing, what you are doing, etc. The more involved they feel, the more likely they are to respond positively. Do not lose contact, as it takes along time to build up initially.

4. If they say No, be polite. I have spoken to a few bloggers who have had really rude, negative feedback from blooger outreach programmes. Generally, the smaller the company the more high pressure there is to connect with bloggers, therefore the more tension. Treating bloggers like third rate citizens is not on.

5. Be more personal. If you can, phone them. A one to one is better than email, by a long way.

An additional fantastic comment from Eric Friedman at Marketing.FM (Thanks Eric..)

“I think another big part of any blog program should be letting the CEO\founder\company person speak to the blogger.  Nothing solidifies the importance of the project than speaking directly to the originator of the idea.  I would venture to say that the outreach and connecting doesn’t stop once you get an interest, but rather should complete the loop back to someone at the company.  Many times this is impossible due to scale and time issues, but in some cases make the exception.  I think this should apply to the large publications and a few small ones as well”

The FTC has ruled that any bloggers reviewing products on behalf of companies must now declare that they have recieved payment or freebies. The penalties for not doing so will mean a fine of up to $11k.

I find this all a bit surreal to be honest. The whole point of blogging is the freedom to talk about what you want, when you want. I don’t know any people that we work with who would dishonestly take money for writing a positive review. Our stance is that all bloggers should be equipped with information and products. If they then choose not to review the product then that is unfortunately our loss. A positive review cannot unfortunately be relied on and shouldn’t be relied on by clients or agencies. This is one of the cons of doing blogger outreach.

The more positive parts of blogger outreach for me are:

1) The ability to really discuss the product with someone who is an expert in the product area. I have found this amazingly useful when engaging further about the product with clients, bloggers and other members. Most bloggers I know, Eric Friedman in particular, are more than helpful in advising on best approaches.

2) The buzz when a blogger does write a positive post because he/she is passionate in that area and loves the product. This to me is the ultimate in blogger outreach and something that should be cherished. They don’t need your product, they don’t need to review your product so be grateful they have taken the time to review.

Blogging should be viewed as an additional arm to a PR strategy, not a simple way of getting paid advertising out there. I get approached almost daily by small agencies or “blogging technology” companies who will take money for being able to help “generate some positive blogging pr”, but we refuse to go down this route.