Archive for October, 2008

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A recent study “Harnessing the Power of Blogs,” (sponsored research by BuzzLogic and conducted by JupiterResearch, a Forrester Research company) found that blogs can have more impact on purchase decisions than social networks.

Social networks help people connect, but blogs create a conversation and become a trusted resource that influences purchase decisions says the study. Blog readership has jumped 300 percent in the last four years and they’re paying attention not only to the content of the blog, but also to ads on the blog.  A quarter of readers say they trust ads on a blog, compared to 19 percent who trust ads on social networking sites.

Why do blogs play such a big role?  Bloggers establish themselves as an authority on a topic, particularly in niche areas, and create a relationship with the consumer.

50 percent of frequent blog readers say they have taken an action after reading a  blog. 

Of those actions: 17 percent have read product reviews online; 16 percent have sought out more information on a product or service; and 16 percent have visited a manufacturer or retailer Web site.

What’s your blog strategy? 

• Are you blogging – so that you become on the the influencers?
• Reaching out to influential bloggers in your space and reching their audiences? 
• Getting bloggers to post about your company or products?  Putting ads on topo blogsin your space?
• All of the above? 

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A sign of the times: After 100 years of news in print, the Christian Science Monitor has decided to scrap the daily print issue of its newspaper.  They’ll focus on making their site a rolling news service and printing a  weekend magazine.  The change is expected to cut annual costs by millions of dollars for the money-losing newspaper.

They are the first major national newspaper in the US to take this decision.  And they don’t expect to be the last.  The Monitor’s management said the transition was unavoidable — not only for the Monitor but possibly for the entire newspaper industry.  It comes at a time of fundamental transition in news publishing and turns the page on a remarkable chapter in American journalism.

Christian Science Publishing, the owner of the Monitor, argues that the switch to web-only journalism is in keeping with Eddy’s edict that the paper must “keep abreast of the times” and that the cost savings will help it maintain its journalistic standards.

This will be a major change for the Monitor as the bulk of their revenue currently comes from subscriptions.  The move to online will mean they have to go to the ad revenue model.  Subscribers can still get the weekly print edition and a daily email newsletter.

The number of print newspapers on your media relations list might get shorter in 2009.  Are you ready to service online journalists? 

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A lot more people — and businesses — are finding ways to get value out of Twitter, says the WSJ today.

Doctors are using Twitter to update patients about office hours. Local groups such as the Los Angeles Fire Department are using it to share details about service calls with interested residents, occasionally with graphic descriptions of the victims’ conditions. And dozens of major companies, like computer maker Dell Inc., use Twitter to share deals and product news with people who sign up for the service.  WSJ

There is no doubt the user base is growing – Twitter.com had more than a million unique visitors from the U.S. in August 2008, up from just 282,000 in August 2007, according to research firm comScore Inc.

One of the avid users is shoe retailer Zappos.com Inc., of Henderson, Nev.  More than 450 employees are tweeting away and the company offers classes to these employees to help them make the most of Twitter and third-party advanced services that have grown up around Twitter – like adding images to your tweets.

Companies like Comcast are using Twitter to resolve customer service issues.

If you’re not yet a Twitterholic, get started.  Need direction or instruction?  The October Proactive Report is about Micro PR and how to make the most of Twitter.

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Back in 1940 Paul Lazarsfeld did extensive research on the effects mass media had on people.  In contrast to the commonly held idea that the media had a strong influence on most people, Lazarsfeld’s team discovered that in fact some people receive more information and influence others.

Some members of the public have more exposure to media, have more numerous and more diverse social networks, and they are perceived as influential. They also found that the response to media messages is influenced by the social relationships. Most of the people questioned during this research relied heavily on other people for the information they used to make their decisions.

Is any of this sounding familiar?   Influencers, social networks, turning to others for information prior to purchase?

A recent study conducted by Rubicon found that some companies that have tried to work with communities online have found that the conversation is dominated by extreme enthusiasts rather than average users, and have concluded that online community is a distraction from their real customers.

That turns out to be a very dangerous mistake, warns Rubicon.

Here are some key findings of that survey, and its implications for companies:

• Enthusiasts do dominate online conversations.  About 80% of the user-generated content on the web, including comments and questions, is created by less than 10% of web users. But the other 90% are listening.
• User reviews drive product purchases. Online communities have enormous influence on almost all web users. Online comments and reviews posted by the enthusiasts are second only to word of mouth as a purchase driver for all web users. Those personal reviews are far more influential than official reviews posted by a website or magazine, or information posted online by a manufacturer. The most frequent contributors are the influencers, and they have a strong influence on purchase decisions because they write most of the online recommendations and reviews.
• Your average customer is open to education and influence.  Most content and discussion sites should be viewed as performances, in which you interact with a relatively small number of users in order to educate, persuade, or entertain everyone else. This means it is critical that companies understand who the influencers and frequent contributors are, and how to take care of them.
• Online communities are not created equal. Different communities have different dynamics and user bases. What works in one may fail in another.  So you need to understand what kind of community you are engaging with.

Other insights from the study:

Search is the leading web category.  It ’s essential that your site and your news content is found in search engines. 

Community sites are in the top four web destinations. Ignore online communities at your peril. Find out where your customers are active. Identify the influencers in that community and figure out how best to work with them.

For more indepth information about Social Media and PR get the PRoactive Report

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According to the 2008 State of the Blogosphere from Technorati, a little more than half the companies in North America do not have a blog.  So that means that just under half do.  Why are they spending their time blogging?

Lynette at the MIndless Babble Blog says that based on the Technorati numbers, blogging should be a part of every business’s marketing or PR strategy:

• 46% of all bloggers are professional bloggers. This may mean that they’re writing a corporate blog, or simply writing about the industry that their company is in, while not necessarily mentioning their company at all.
• This equates to just over 84.5 million bloggers that are, in essence, business bloggers. If your company doesn’t have some kind of blog presence, that’s potentially 84.5 million businesses ahead of you when it comes to reaching your target audience.
• Online sales in 2007 totaled $260 billion. Blogs are known to increase awareness of new products and offers from companies. Less than half are utilizing this, which means that 1 out of 2 companies are losing a large part of $260 billion dollars of online income.

If your company is still wondering whether to blog or not to blog, take a deeper look at the data in the State of the Blogosphere. And take a look at your industry and your competitors.  What are they doing?

Of course not every one of the 84.5 million businesses that are blogging are your competitors.  But some of them probably are. Using a cost effective PR like a corporate blog can pay big dividends, if it is done right.

At the very least you must be tapped into the blogosphere and listening to the voices that matter to your  business. 

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The biggest caveat in engaging in social media and blogs is to be open, honest and authentic. Every major social media flap has been caused by companies or agencies doing something questionable.  And there really is no place to hide.  Sooner or later someone will figure it out.

Patrick Altoft writes on Blogstorm about some possible astroturfing being done for Nokia. Astroturfing is a derogatory term that implies you are faking grass roots activity.  In this case it is blog comments coming from the same IP address with different names pointing to a sales page for a new Nokia product.  

The blog American Thinker refers to astroturfing as the new propaganda plague. He talks about how it has been used in the current Presidential campaign.

Put this on your don’ts list.

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Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere is being released this week, one segment each day. For the first time, they’ve surveyed bloggers directly about the role of blogging in their lives, the tools, time, and resources used to produce their blogs, and how blogging has impacted them personally, professionally, and financially.  Interesting stuff.

The majority of bloggers are 25 – 44 years of age.  One in five are self employed (versus 8% of Internet users). Three out of four U.S. bloggers are college graduates, and 42% have attended graduate school. More than half have a household income over $75,000. 59% have been blogging for two years or more.

As a group, they are educated, affluent, and influential.

Read the posts every day this week for the full picture.

Peter Kim,  posted a list of brands that are using, or being affected by, social media marketing.  He invited others to add to the list in the comments and as of the 18th October it’s grown to 270 brands.  A great resource.

I took a look at what categories these brands fall into and what percentage of the social media marketing pie they represent.  As expected Tech companies lead the way.  Travel, which seems to me to be a natural for social media marketing, is right at the bottom of this list with only 3%.

Tech                           15%

Food and Drink          14%

Apparel                      13%

Media                        10%

Auto                            9%

Finance                        7%

Home Products            5%

Telecom/mobile         3%

Travel                          3%

Then we get into small categories where there are only one or two brands involved. But many of them have excellent social media ideas and projects. Take a look at these  initiatives – perhaps it will inspire you to get started too.

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Hats off to Jeff Jarvis for his post about new media and journalism  It certainly set the cat amongst the pigeons, and has generated a flood of contentious comments!

So often when the substance hits the fan we cry “Not my fault!”  It’s refreshing to see someone who looks the changes in the eye and is willing and able to see what part of that he can be responsible for.  In a climate like we have today it’s all too easy to blame our woes on something or someone else.

“The internet does not just present a few glittery toys. It presents the circumstances to change our relationship with the public, to work collaboratively in networks, to find new efficiencies thanks to the link, to rethink how we cover and present news. No, the essence of the problem is that we thought the internet represented just a new gadget and not a fundamental change in society, the economy, and thus journalism. “ Jeff Jarvis  Buzz Machine.

Another thought leader who thinks this way is Seth Godin, author of Meatball Sundae. Here are some excerpts from an interview with Seth about the book and his premise that new media is a sea-change in how we do business.

We are in the very beginning of yet another industrial revolution. We had several of them; the last one was the mass marketing industrial revolution.

Most businesses don’t have the CEO saying let’s reorganize this company around new marketing principles. Instead what they have is pressure on hardworking, well meaning folks lower down the organization who are told make this new stuff work with our older organization.

With no exceptions, of every consumer brand that has grown from nothing in the last ten years, not one of them has been built on the back of television. In 1978 or 1968 it was a 100%, and now it’s 0%. We see that the Starbucks and the Amazons and the Zappos of the world growing by other means.

This is not a little sideshow, I believe that this is the beginning of the future.

The old gatekeepers were people like Rupert Murdock, Sumner Redstone or the owner of Clear Channel. One nod from such a very powerful person got you in; if you knew the right reporter at the New York Times, or had enough money to buy a PR firm to get in there, you had access.

We are also inventing new gatekeepers, so a guy like Mike Arrington (TechCrunch) who I never heard of three years ago, is now one of the most powerful people in new media.  If he likes you and says three things nice about you several weeks in a row, you can triple the valuation of your company.

Source: Interview with Eric Enge  

New media is much more than a fad – it is a game changer. Watch Game Changing Moves for more insights. In fact, have your C-suite watch it.  Now is the time to find new business models that work.

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Paul Gillin, author of The New Influencers, writes a great social media report.  Today’s issue is about why PR practitioners must learn to get their news content visible in search, but one fact caught my attention: 95 of the top 100 newspapers now have a blog.

Nielsen/NetRatings reports that unique visitors to the largest Internet newspaper blog sites rose from 1.2 million in December 2005 to 3.8 million in December 2006.

Jay Rosen, who teaches journalism at NYU, points to this post about journalists blogging: The Stand Alone Journalist is Here (“And the newsroom has left the building.”)  And in this post he tells us about a site for journalists who are learning to stand alone and blog.   “To keep the professional press going, the news tribe will have to migrate across the digital divide and re-settle itself on terra nova,”  says Rosen.

The Brodeur study done in January showed that blogs are not only having an impact on the speed and availability of news but also influencing the tone and editorial direction of reporting.  “While only a small percentage of journalists feel that blogs are helpful in generating sources or exclusives, they do see blogs as particularly useful in helping them better understand the context of a story, a new story angle, or a new story idea,” said Jerry Johnson, head of strategic planning at Brodeur.

Wall Street Journal tech reporter Nick Wingfield tells Bulldog Reporter how journalists use blogs in their jobs.

• A ticker files when researching stories
• To get tips they used to get from trade pubs and newsletters
• As sounding boards – to get a feel for the conversation aorund a new idea or product
• A digest of the day’s news.  RSS feeds cherry pick headlines from blogs a reporter wants to watch
• To find useful information.  Journalists don’t read the personal diary type blogs

So a statement like ‘our news is not online or in search because we’re not looking for blog coverage’ makes no sense at all.   The relationship between blogs and mainstream media is a fact of life. Learn to use it to your advantage.

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