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Bloggers take their bow on A-list red carpet

Porter Novelli Melbourne’s Mandy Griffiths offered her two cents on the ‘twitterati’ phenomenon in The Australian newspaper today. You can read the original article (paid) on The Australian website. 

 

TRADITIONALLY, the A-list targeted by every PR company was a combination of media, celebrities and politicians, depending on what best suited the client. A simplistic yet effective formula to get your message heard.

But change is in the wind, as a new breed joins the ranks of coveted guests.

Those who used to qualify as key opinion leaders are moving down the totem pole in terms of influence. Moving up to meet them? Connected consumers: the twitterati.

Bloggers were the first to join the A-list and many have certainly earned their place.

In fact, Technorati Media’s 2013 Digital Influencer Report indicates that bloggers are the fifth-most influential source of information when making a buying decision, and even more influential than traditional media.

Blog events and Tweet-Ups (where tweeters come together to meet in person) have been around for years and companies have been quick to adopt these trends. Now we are seeing the emergence of a new trend: the “social media call”, an event for people with an established presence online among the right demographic.

Twitter lends itself perfectly to this because it is easy to digest, easy to execute and has the ability to reach a lot of people very quickly.

It is also not asking much of the tweeter to write under 140 characters or to use a hashtag, as opposed to spending hours on an article or blog post.

The Victorian Opera recently held a social media call, inviting Melbourne tweeters identified as “influencers” to attend a dress rehearsal for its new production of Sleeping Beauty.

They were asked to use dedicated hashtags and meet and take photos with the cast (using Instagram of course).

Securing publicity in advance with thousands of followers validated the time taken to identify and approach the select twitterati.

This is an easy exercise for an event-based company with an attractive offering or those with a retail focus underpinning brand value.

However, the corporate sphere should not discount the twitterati.

There are always tweeters interested in what is happening with your industry and brand.

However, Twitter is a transactional relationship.

If you want people to take to their smartphones on your behalf, then you need to take the time to identify your online influencers and build a strong connection.

The twitterati carry a lot of influence in their hands, and like bloggers, that influence is likely to increase.

Mandy Griffiths is a social media strategist at Porter Novelli Melbourne.

Authenticity #FTW (For the Win)

Bloggers have redefined traditional editorial and are growing rapidly in readership. Their audiences are targeted, loyal, sometimes large, and blogger opinions are influential. There was a time when people turned to traditional news for opinion. A recent Kleenex study found that blogs, in particular Mummy blogs, are moving strongly into influence, providing a more authentic outlook, untainted by commerciality.

Blogs and reviews play a large part of the decision-making process with 63% of social-networkers reading an average of six online reviews before buying an item. It’s been found that 46% of mothers read blogs regularly, 23% comment on blogs, and 13% of the Australian mums with kids between 0 and 12 years wrote blogs themselves!

It’s becoming common talk in the US that consumers are more influenced by the opinion of a blogger than a celebrity when it comes to learning more about products or making a purchase. Kim Kardashian gets paid $25,000 to tweet 140 characters about a product. With more than seven million followers, her message gets seen – but is it heard? Do her followers trust her tweets are authentic, or a mere financial reward?

In Australia we have the (small) luxury of being an adaptive market, borrowing the bits that work from other markets. The same is true for blogging: but the bit that really works and makes this so exciting for us is that authenticity will prevail over the long-term.

An Open Letter To Bloggers

Mummy bloggers are growing at a rapid rate in Australia.

There are more than 2,000 mummy bloggers nationally, and to provide a one stop shop to help educate Mums how to build their blogs into businesses the Mummy Bloggers Blog was launched 1 March 2011.

I was invited to contribute an Open Letter to Bloggers from a PR perspective to help bloggers understand our place in this sphere.

This was first published here

Porter Novelli

I’ve been working in PR at Porter Novelli Melbourne for three years, on campaigns for Walt Disney Studios, Rubbermaid, Coles Supermarkets, Stahmann Farms and many others.

What I have to say here is about our workplace; I can’t vouch for others in my industry.

Bloggers vs Media

About two years ago we started really reaching out to bloggers, in recognition of the growing value and influence, particularly of Mummy bloggers.

Even a couple of years ago Australian blogging was relatively uncharted, and many PR people made the mistake of approaching bloggers in the same way as print, broadcast or other online media.

The rise of email has made it easy to overlook the art and value of building relationships, personalising contact and doing research to make sure we’re approaching the right people with the right ideas.

Paid vs Earned media

Most brand companies have a number of marketing services suppliers, and that usually includes a media buying agency as well as a PR agency. The media buying agencies plan, negotiate and book ad space. For bloggers, these are the people who work with Nuffnang and pay for sponsored reviews.

In other media, this would be declared as “advertorial” or “sponsored” content.

Much of our PR business is to earn media attention.

In principle, we don’t pay for media space.

We work with journalists and bloggers to identify information that’s worth telling other people about.

It’s not that we don’t believe your work isn’t worth paying for; it’s that content that stands on its own two feet has greater integrity and authenticity than content that is paid for.

More brands understand the influence you wield, but they are still uncomfortable putting their ideas into an uncontrolled environment that where they can’t dictate what’s said or the dialogue that follows.

Paying bloggers to write reviews allows them to feel they have some control, but readers see this for what it is: paid media. Advertising.

PR companies set out to work with you, to earn your interest, unbiased and unhindered by financial reward.

We should never ask you to change something you’ve written, or ask to see reviews before they are published.

We have no right to do that, and you have no compulsion to do what we might ask.

Your supporters value your thoughts and opinions, and that’s why we want to work with you.

But we do believe we should provide something of value for you if you dedicate time to our campaigns.

To date we’ve never asked for sample products to be returned. I understand for some PR people this can be tricky when dealing with very expensive items, but the principle is the same.

For starters, we will recommend our clients buy banner advertising on blogs.

And, should we ask something a lot larger from a blogger, such as acting as an ambassador for a campaign, we will negotiate a fee, just as we do with brand ambassadors – but we will also declare that commercial interest.

Giveaways

We’ll always work to offer a reader giveaway with a review. But if we can offer you a giveaway, it’s because we fought for it; brands aren’t always willing to give away product. We have to argue the case, but we know giveaways are popular and help drive traffic to the post, so everyone wins.

Approach

There are so many “Rules”, “What Not to Do” lists and PR-blogger horror stories.

If we hear somebody here has sent a “Dear blogger” email, it’s not just me who’ll have words with them about it.

This PR/blogger relationship is a new dynamic for us all.

We’re still feeling our way around and working out how to make it work for everybody.

As an example, we’ve had feedback that you don’t want to pay postage for sending out winners’ prizes. So, we’ve taken that back as one of our jobs.

What’s next?

I’ll be at the Aussie Bloggers Conference in Sydney on March 19.

I hope to meet many of you there. Please come and say hi, and I can ask you about life as a blogger, and you can ask me about life in PR. I’m sure we’ll get along fine.