Social Media Library doesn’t get social media
Social Media Library launched recently as a directory of bloggers, Twitterers and other heavy users of social media for the public relations industry.
At face value it sounds like a good idea, but as social media practitioner Jenifer O’Grady says, it risks ‘act[ing] like a plaster for PR agencies who don’t “learn” the basics, giving the contacts without the skills’.
In other words Firebrand Digital, creators of Social Media Library, appear to treat social media outlets in much the same way as traditional media outlets: put crudely, identify the editor and send them a press release. Stuart Bruce reckons the ‘gullible’ will end up spamming bloggers. I already get many press releases aimed at my blogs and I don’t mind, but I’ve yet to use one and can see why others might think of them as spam.
Bloggers do not behave like newspapers. Newspapers are collegiate, feel obliged to fill a predetermined number of pages with news (for which they have a vague definition), have an audience in mind, feel commercial pressures and, while they are often biased, have boundaries for their bias. Bloggers tend to work alone and write as much or as little about whatever they fancy without worrying too much about who, if anyone, is reading.
Public relations professionals understand what news is to a particular newspaper. They spin stories, that make their clients look good, to fit that definition. Newspapers simply print the best press releases and that happens more often than they’ll ever admit. But why would anybody simply publish a press release to their blog?
Social media is social because it encourages conversation. Bloggers write about things that interest them or have happened to them and those things do not have to be news as a newspaper would define it. People update their Facebook status with what’s on their mind and most of the time that has very little to do with what’s currently making news headlines.
The challenge is not build a database of social media users, but to engage genuinely.
Genuine engagement is a challenging prospect to many public relations people, especially those who are used to working as an adjunct to marketing; the kind of people whose work may be measured using Advertising Value Equivalents.
At the same time, genuine engagement can be incredibly fulfilling. A client who becomes a leading blogger in his or her field is a client who is recognised as an industry leader.
More useful than a list of bloggers is a Google blog alert that lets you know when someone writes on your topic of interest. And that costs nothing.
Comments (5 comments)
I agree that Social Media Library’s offering very much tries to mesh traditional PR with Web 2.0, where communities respond more positively to sincere engagement as opposed to message pushing.
I’m about to publish a post on this myself on our site, but, as I’ll mention on Monday, I think a more intelligent approach is for PR companies to spend real time examining the composition of their stakeholder groups and build engagement programmes around these communities.
Intelligent social media strategies like this have already been taken up by companies such as Unilever and Intercontinental Hotels Group and they have seen tangible ROI on their efforts.
Lawrence Ampofo / June 5th, 2009, 10:44 am / #
Hi Stephen, thanks for the green light to post.
As i mentioned in my email, we are in complete agreement with you and Lawrence (in his above post) with regards to your concerns regarding social media engagement strategies and outreach etiquette – spamming bloggers or social media users is not only lazy but it quite simply doesn’t work.
Prior to launching Social Media Library/ Affairs my business partner and I, Graham Lee, founded and sold the online PR agency, onlinefire, to the Eulogy! Group. onlinefire looks after the online PR and social media engagement for companies such as Panasonic, Virgin Mobile, Post Office, BBC Radio 5 Live and MTV, so it is an area we know well.
We go to great lengths to advise all of our clients not to spam bloggers, advising them to focus upon engaging rather than talking at people. As a matter of course all Social Media Library directory subscribers receive free best practise guidelines and we also offer subsided training for our clients, to help them better understand how to engage social media effectively on behalf of their clients, or their own brand.
Social Media Library is a system which we’ve created to enable marketers to save time and engage social media more effectively, by taking all the donkey work out of the initial discovery process it means our clients can spend more time coming up with innovative and intriguing ways to engage.
Cheers,
James Fitzgerald
Director and Co-Founder Firebrand Digital (Social Media Library)
James Fitzgerald / June 5th, 2009, 12:31 pm / #
I can think of one reason a blogger would publish a press release – he/she is being paid to do so! I don’t know if this is already happening (it is probably, somewhere, at least), but if it does become a trend then the value of blogging and the perceived value of unbiased opinion generated by logs will be severely diminished. Perhaps a new advertising model is going to be born – PPB : Per Per Blog.
Stuart Noton / July 29th, 2009, 11:53 am / #
There have been quite a few attempts to make the pay-per-post model work, but none seem to have really taken off.
Stephen Newton / July 29th, 2009, 11:55 am / #
I agree with James,
Social Media Library gives you the contacts, but that doesn’t mean it encourages to misuse them. Nobody accuses media directories to favour spam practices or scattergun approeaches. Bad PR’s do that.
By focusing on extensive Social Media research, Social Media Library finds itself in a great position to advice clients in how to do effective blogger relations.
Xavier Izaguirre
Xavier Izaguirre / October 24th, 2009, 1:10 pm / #
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