Blogger Outreach and Its Challenges

I’ve decided to write this series on Blogger Outreach because it’s obvious to me that the concept is new enough to not have fully developed standards, controversial enough to engender tensions and accusations, susceptible enough for ‘bad’ practices to threaten it, but viable enough to become a viable aspect of future marketing efforts. I’ve tried, therefore, to identify a few of the challenges that face those of us in the social media marketing field.

Here they are:

1) Our three conflicting roles

Mack Collier thought I was calling him out for accepting a Nikon D80 and then deciding not to blog about it. Not to blog about the camera at least. He is blogging about the marketing campaign itself. And here is his written and somewhat uncomfortable explanaton regarding how he’s establishing his role here. You can see his photos on Flickr.

I still don’t think that this necessarily helps out Nikon, but then again, Mack (and others in the field) weren’t necessarily given the cameras to review them. They were likely chosen because of their expertise in social media and that it was likely that they’d blog about the program.

The reason I said “uncomfortable” is because I think that Mack was stuck between a rock and a hard place, wanting to do justice to the program while not wanting to compromise his integrity…completely understandble.

That’s because we come to the game here as three distinct things.

We’re marketers. Marketers who are beholden to our clients (and the companies that we work for) to provide the best possible service and to create the best possible blogger outreach programs that we can. That’s our responsibility. That’s what they’re paying us for. When it comes to blogger outreach, they’re not paying us to give out free products that won’t be given some sort of review, let alone even be blogged about.

We’re social media consultants. We owe it to ourselves and to one another to ensure that best practices are established. This is a new industry, one that comes with risks, and one that skeptics want to trash. Blogger outreach is something that could potentially be abused, and, if that happens enough, it will hurt us all. We also owe it to our employers whose reputation maybe partially riding on all this.

We’re bloggers. We’re online based and we often believe in the ’sacred’ concepts of trasnparency and authenticity. Of open and shared conversation. Of the idea such as we all can now be our own publishers with our own opinon pieces.

Those three things can come into complete conflict. How do we, as client focused marketers, successfully create blogger outreach programs that stay true to the principles we believe in as social media consultants…principles we’ve learned as bloggers? How do we protect the concept of blogger outreach (and essentially protect our fellow practicioners) from an overdemanding client that wants results NOW? How do we best serve a client in this space when the blogosphere can be so volatile, often unnecessarily so? What hat do we wear and how do we wear it?

It ain’t always easy. Clients can be demanding. So can employers. They want results…often NOW. Controversies erupt all the time.

2) Best practices have yet to be established, yet alone solidified

This whole blogger outreach concept is new. It’s been trial by fire. It seems most attempts are automatically met with skeptismim or rancor by some. And, at the very least, these efforts are thoroughly analyzed examined post-lauch and well before the final results are in.

Yet that seems part of the problem. It has become examination after the fact. What was done right and what was done wrong? OK, that’s important, but it’s very reactive. I’ve seen little conversations that deeply delve into the following questions:

How do we target bloggers by category?

How do we target and approach individual bloggers?

How do we ensure authenticity and transparency?

What should we expect from bloggers?

What should bloggers expect from us?

How do we avoid having bloggers appear to be shrills? Or, for that matter, actually be shrills? And what do we do if they have already become shrills?

What do our clients owe the audience?

What do we, as marketers, owe the audience?

What do the bloggers owe their audiences?

How do we conclude a blogging outreach program?

We need to start addressing questions like the ones I just mentioned. Some have, but all to often it’s been in response to an existing program. That often leads to post-effort analyses and criticisms that are often too case-specific.

3) The ‘wing-it’ or ‘hire an intern to do it’ factor.

It’s no secret that a lot of marketing companies look to hire young – and inexpensive – people to carry out assignments. CK has pointed this out. And when something goes wrong – often as a result of a senior person dropping the ball – it becomes very easy to position the mistake as the work of an overeager young intern or new hire that was doing whatever they could do to help a client…and didn’t understand the negative ramifications of their work.

We can’t stop this from happening, but we can pledge to develop conversations re best practices so they become somewhat common knowledge so those senior types will know them beforehand and, in turn, teach these young types how to perform. Will this happen? Haven’t a clue, but maybe it can start soon.

Next, I’ll try to come up with some solutions and answers to the questions I propose.