I would have to agree with Darragh here. The nature of the online community is all about the “collective of the individual” – both in their ability to speak but also in their ability to listen. Essentially it is this choice that makes online so powerful.

To explain…
The fact that I have the ability to broadcast my thoughts and opinions to the entire world empowers me in a way that a private person did not have in decades past. However, the nature of this empowerment is that I have the choice of who I want to listen to. Therefore, if someone is broadcasting an uninspired, untrue, poorly thought-out or simply boring message, I won’t listen to it. That person has no impact on me.

However, should they have smart, educated and inspired commentary on a subject which I am interested in, I will listen. If they are particularly sensible and clever in what they say I will engage them. Generally speaking a person of that calibre will return the engagement and we will have a conversation on that topic.

Which of us is more important to talk to, from a brand point of view? Well both of us, and anyone else who has engaged in that conversation. There is no single influencer here – there is a group of people all worthy of a brands time.

Most importantly though, what they are saying, as smart educated people, is more then likely researched and factual. As a brand/business, talking to these people will not change the facts. You need to do more. You need to listen, take on board their comments, and then action them in the real world. Then you as a brand/business have benefited from what the web (Social Media) has to offer.

Mr Mulley’s reply to this post is the exact reason why PR companies are so anxious about approaching bloggers. Those that try are ridiculed and those that don’t are said to be in the dark ages.

I would suggest that PR companies stop jumping through Damien Mulley’s hoops and get their coverage the way they always did before Damien put himself up on his own pedestal

Hi Conall – my comments are said both in relation to the presentation (and I did not hear you give it so I didn’t base what I said on it) and my own opinion of the online world and how it should work. My comment stands out as a general personal opinion based on the entire question of Blogging and PR. Community enagement is what’s important, not individual engagement. Don’t talk to key influencial bloggers, talk to as many online users as you can – of course point of fact is that it makes sense from many points of view to do so through the channels that bloggers have created but you need to be aware of who they are, what they write, how they write it etc. etc. – it is the same as choosing which journos your press release goes to.

Frustrated – Damien doesn’t have any hoops. He has opinions, and by virtue of experience his opinions are worth considering. PR companies should only be anxious about approaching bloggers if they have not done their research (see above comment to Conall). If you know who you are talking to, and you talk to them (personally), then there is nothing to fear.

I don’t understand the “battle” here. While I agree with Damien in the fact that there are many many PR people who suck. I think their system is great… for PR people. They charge clients big monthly retainers that get them paid no matter what happens. Think about how cool it would be to get $3000 – $5000 from each client per month for “trying” to do your job.

However, some PR people do a great job of getting PR for their clients and they are worth every penny.

Others are very tuned into the changing areas of money and publicity. They respect the position that bloggers have attained, and know how to work with them for win – win results.

On the flip side, there are bloggers out there who have taken their 15 minutes of fame and believed that they are powerful. They are pompous and rude and take joy in harming others with the mean spirited posts on their blogs. They love to rip on people who are just trying to earn a living and sell a product.

Blogs are mainstream. But when you are mainstream you have to play by a different set of rules if you want sustainability. People don’t stick with jerks over the long run.

This debate seems odd to me, as there are bad apples in PR and bad ones in bloggers…. but most seem to co-exist and respect what each brings to the table.

With most things in life… it comes down to building mutually beneficial relationships that lead both parties to better things than they would accomplish alone. If PR people and bloggers look at each other as the enemy, both come up short.

Hi Sasha

My key point yesterday was that PR people need to learn how to get conversations going. To that extent I appear to have had some success. I agree about people in the trad pr space needing to undertand the dyanamics of online communities much better which I why I have blogged for several years and enjoy debating where our profession is going.

PR isnt going away. Nor are bloggers and the trad press. the question is how do you manage these new relationships.

Conall

Damien.

That’s your opinion and you are entitled to it.

The presentation is designed to get traditional PR people thinking about inline communications. Its deliberately provocative beacuse it needs to get a conversation going.

I’ll sit down to discuss all this with you any day because whilst I may not be 100% right some of what you say is just not on the mark either.

Anyway business is good thanks. I am not sure it is because I worked in politics though. In fact many people believe my past career has the opposite effect!

I really was taken aback by your tweet earlier. I do hope we can move on from that based on some sort of mutual respect. The one thing the peace process taught me is that people have to find ways of working together and respecting each other.

Conall

This smells a little bit like trying to re-frame social media into whatever old PR view of the world worked in the past. It’s a sort of buzzword bingo that might make Fortune 500 companies feel better about paying a monthly retainer, but it’s exactly the sort of standoffish rhetoric which would make the average person feel like a faceless automaton.

If anything the “Badvocates” (Honestly, the most embarrassingly clichéd portmanteau I’ve heard in a very long time) are exactly the people that you need social media to reach – it’s a failure in the company’s process or product/service that has resulted in an unpleasant experience for them (and follows the old adage of the unhappy customer telling 10 of their friends vs a happy customer telling 2).

The tentative relationship between PR and bloggers is due to PR representatives trying to push an opinion into an unnatural direction, and when it happens this way people quite naturally don’t play along. Blogging isn’t like a paid media slot where you spout the same tired platitudes and expect consumers to lap it up, it’s a personal, unique viewpoint that has to be earned through something more than lip-service.

Dave had you been there you would have heard me say a lot of what you just have.

Jason

I take it im not the sort of person who should be turning up at BTW then?.

I cant remember saying that PR people and bloggers dont mix. I really enjoy blogging and yes I do think it gives me some insights into how I and others in my profession can do our job better.

My view of the future as i said above is that it will be ‘inline’ that is both offline and online.

Conall

Niall, a few weeks back on the publication of the survey about online habits you were all about “journos” getting sneak peek of report. I asked “what about bloggers”… Emailed my details to you so I could do a blog post about it. Got nothing back and I think you deliberately did that too. Your mentality seems to be all about MSM, and I find it very odd that a blogger who specifically went to you asking for something to blog about – got nada back.

no doubt if I’d been “influential” or “prominent” I’d have gotten something back from you. So try practice what you preach re: social media engagement.

Claire

Please read these articles. I think you will find we are on the same page.

I was invited to give a challenging talk and get people thinking. I was happy to do that and am sorry some people seemed to find what I had interesting.

http://oconallstreet.com/2009/08/27/speaking-notes/

http://oconallstreet.com/2009/01/06/put-your-marketing-budget-in-pr/

Conall

Yes Conall, there are similarities in what we are saying. You have missed the point though- if it’s about building relationships it seems to me that you’ve failed to that in this instance.

Sometimes it’s not WHAT you say that creates disharmony it’s HOW you say it.

Claire

Thanks for that.

Maybe I need a good coach?

Conall

Thats fair enough .. It wasn’t really that clear from the post! /me pokes Niall

Hi Daniel, a few points…

“Blogging is simply a medium and it’s only as honest as the people using it. No more, no less” – this is of course 100% true – but it needs to be qualified with the reminder that blogs are free to read and those writing them (the bloggers) are unpaid. That changes things very much, and brings me back to my earlier point that I have the choice of who I want to listen to and if someone is broadcasting an uninspired, untrue, poorly thought-out or simply boring message, I won’t listen to it.

“bloggers involved in these engagements are invited and selected based on not getting on the wrong side of the gate keepers hustling the engagement” – I would say this is incorrect entirely. People invited to blogging events are done so based on their own interests and blogging topics. This is my direct experience as an Irish blogger who regularly engages with PR companies. I don’t get invited to events about topics/brands/products that I have no interest in. Simple.

I will read those articles, thank you Conall, and I’ll comment again if there is something worth commenting on in there.

I agree with Dave and think he sums it up well with “The tentative relationship between PR and bloggers is due to PR representatives trying to push an opinion into an unnatural direction” – key word here, *unnatural.* The issue I have with PR people not getting the social media thing is presuming they can way in with big size tens and influence people. We all know that the work of advertising and PR agencies is naturally filtered out by the general public at the best of times (kettles go on during ad breaks, the dawn of supreme channel surfing, ignorning advertorials in publications, that sort of thing). This shows how much the public filters out PR on a daily basis – what makes dodgy PR folk assume that they *should* be able to manipulate the views of bloggers or people on Twitter?

To echo Claire’s tips – the key to a successful Twitter campaign by any business big or small is – be real. Be genuine. Don’t try to have a hidden agenda, it just won’t wash. As everyone is saying here today, bloggers are real people – human beings – we’re meant to be reasonably intelligent, please don’t insult us by pidgeonholing and categorising. Good PR people let us be, and wait for us to talk about them. If you had something worth talking about, you wouldn’t need to work so hard on the relationships, they would just happen.

The people I follow most on Twitter are just themselves. They are naturally engaging and are happy to talk about the passion in their lives – their businesses. Even if that is an employee at a huge multinational – they are passionate a real about it, and that is what shines through.

Good luck to all businesses who venture into social media. Once you don’t underestimate your audience, you’ll get on just fine.

I’m really not sure about the ‘animosity’ idea. as I’ve mentioned before, I engage and am engaged by PR folks all the time (weekly), and I have never experienced any sort of animosity from fellow bloggers towards them, or from PR folk to bloggers.

Do Bloggers And PR Fit Together?

Bloggers are people
PR people are people
Journalists are people
Forum users are people
Marketing people are (funny enough) people
Photographers are also people
Web developers/programmers/designers are all people
Most of the accounts on Twitter are people

The other common element? They enjoy sharing information, in whatever form that they do. Marketing people share/tell about their brand. PR people share the buzz. Journalists tell the story. Photographers take the picture. Twitterers tweet. Bloggers write things and put it on their blog. All with one goal – to communicate it to the person sitting at the computer monitor reading what they have written.

People who use the internet are all many things, professions and backgrounds but overall they’ve got one thing in common. They’re people looking for information, either specific or general, to inform, educate or entertain, or all three.

For too long people have tried to put people in categories and boxes and classify them in how you should talk to them. For too long marketers and PR people have stuck rigidly to what they’ve learned in college about how people should be dealt with. What we’ve seen in recent years is that that way is completely outdated, as is that style of thinking.

What is the difference between a journalist and a blogger?

“Journalists” don’t just write for print any more. Many tell their stories on blogs and websites as well. They are paid to write certain articles but now we’re seeing more and more expand on what was in print online, or post articles that never made it to print. They have a good, learned, style of writing, which reflects on them, their skill as a journalist and their reputation. People can read what they write and learn from them.

“Bloggers” don’t just “blog” – they photograph, they video, they talk, they go to events, they meet people and often have a wide and varied online presence that benefits them offline, and they write about that online, unpaid for the most part. They can communicate passionately about what they want to, and do it in a way both to inform and entertain and this reflects on them, their skill as a blogger and their reputation. People can read what they write and learn from them.

Should they be communicated to differently? No. They should be communicated to as people. Approached respectfully, dealt with professionally and thanked for what they do. Talking to either where the approach based only on the fact they have a “label” rather than they are “people” is bound to fail.

Anyone trying to get their message across needs to remember that all these are are people who create the information that people are looking for.

Yesterday’s discussion

Conall is a really interesting, nice, approachable guy with a great pedigree in marketing. I’d hate anyone to think that my interruption on his talk was anything other than me engaging with him. It’s worth pointing out that this was during the Q&A session at the end of his talk, and afterwards, we talked together, civilly, about our discussion. So no problems there between us – him PR, me a blogger.

He started badly though. He made a throwaway comment to the room about how he could continue his conversation or “they could listen to some bloggers” – silly thing to do, when the “advocates” he’s talking about are in the room. He once again didn’t treat us as people.

Conall was making the point that advocates were becoming more important as they had far more influence than advertising and that it was essential to find them online

My main beef with part of Conall’s presentation was the (over)use and emphasis on this idea that someone trying to communicate their message online (be that about their company, brand, event, charity or service (I’ll refer to this as “brand” from now on) should go out and “recruit/enlist” “advocates” to spread the word about them, and to have a strategy in place to deal with “badvocates”.

Bullshit.

All anyone needs to do is to communicate properly with the person reading their screens.

If you want people to think positively of your brand, provide a good service. Have a decent website. Answer the questions you are asked. Give to them what you say you’re going to give to them. If they have problems, resolve them or at least do your best to. Do what you say you’re going to do.

If there was scaremongering started in yesterday’s class, it was the use of “The battle lines” heading in screen 19 of Conall’s presentation. You’d swear that there was some magical, mystical way of communicating online that doesn’t work anywhere else. It’s simple – provide people with the facts that are interesting about your service and make sure they are true.

Screen 20 – “We need to think differently” – no you don’t. You just need to think “there is a person, like YOU ARE NOW, sitting at a monitor reading this”. You still need to tell your story. Yes there are more channels, but they’re simple to use. You must still communicate the right message and do PR. It will work both online and offline.

Get rid of the notion or label of “advocates” and go right back to the very basics of delivering a good service – “There are people who are happy with the service I provide and will tell others about it” and “There are people not happy with the service I provide, so can I resolve their issues or have I done all I can to make it the best possible?”. That’s simply it ladies and gentlemen. No big mystery there. Of course if people are happy with your service they’ll contribute to your bottom line. But why label them “advocates”?

Take slide 27. Full of questions that might need answering, but even better might be

Are we providing a good service?
Are people happy with us?
If we gave them the opportunity to, would they tell other people about us?
If they have a problem, how can we solve it for them and show we have?
What are we doing that will make people talk about us?
If people want to talk TO us, can they?

Don’t go “enlisting advocates”. Just let people talk about you and give them a good reason to. If they have a question about you online, answer it. If there’s something you can do for them, do it.

Talk to people.

Bloggers and PR folk don’t really mix that well.

You know what Niall? That’s even more bullshit than “advocates and badvocates”

People don’t mix very well Niall, not generally. The problem here is that once again you’re putting labels on people and trying to confine them. “The Irish and English don’t really mix that well” is along the same lines.

If there’s a “problem” between PR people and bloggers, it’s that they don’t talk enough, because generally, PR people don’t approach bloggers as people, but as promotion vehicles. It doesn’t work like that. But both sides are learning, and learning quickly. I, for example, though with no need to contact PR companies for my job, am in touch with at least ten of the top PR companies in Dublin and I meet and talk and have chats and coffee and pints with PR people all the time, because we’re talking as people. You knwo why the Budweiser event you mentioned was a success? Because organisers WHPR came to me (completely free of charge I might add) and asked me what they should do. I told them. They did it. No big surprise there.

the examples of successful campaigns are few and far between.

That’s because no one is talking. No one is asking. No one is listening.

PR companies and marketers want to TARGET bloggers to get coverage for their products, they don’t really care about the conversation or anything apart from the product they are pushing

Not always Niall, they just need to understand it first.

Bloggers want to get the scoop, feel important, ahead of the curve or get to test products or invited to launches early. They MIGHT then write about the product.

Niall, again, complete shit-stirring and neither accurate, fair or true. We don’t “want” to. We appreciate it. Big difference. BIG difference. We “like” scoops, but also like being able to talk about things. We like someone saying “well done” for the work we do. People generally do that. We appreciate the invitation to a launch to find out more, to ask questions and to be able to write better about what we’re sharing. Of course we only MIGHT write about a product. What if it’s not interesting to us? What do you expect us to do?

I think on the most part PR companies and marketers are scared shitless of bloggers

Perhaps rightly so Niall. Some PR people have been stupid. But that doesn’t stop them from saying “sorry, won’t happen again”, from talking to other bloggers and learning how to do things properly.

I can’t seeing it changing too much in the future. Sure people are starting to get bloggers a little more and understand not to spam them and how to talk to them properly

Niall, a question. When was the last time you sat down with bloggers? I don’t mean met at an event, I don’t mean networked with, I don’t mean asked for links or coverage or mentions and I don’t mean personal friends. I mean sat down and asked bloggers about this.

You’ve displayed, to me, a shocking level of ignorance here and set back a lot of work that bloggers like Damien, like me, like others have tried to do. And it’s a bit of a kick in the teeth for those bloggers and online heads who wish(ed) you well with your projects, who blog about what you do and who, like me yesterday, donated my time free of charge to an event that put money into your pocket.

You know why and how? You haven’t asked. You’ve assumed.

I think Conall learned a lot from yesterday and the discussion and I look forward to sitting down with him and talking more, as I would with anyone else.

As for the anonymous “Frustrated”, the sooner you realise that Damien’s “pedestal” is non existent, the sooner you’ll get how to communicate with people. There are no “hoops” – there’s hard work. All we have the liberty of doing is pointing out when you’re doing it wrong and how to improve.

As for Daniel’s point (someone who has no bones about making his many problems with Damien known at every evailable opportunity) once again Daniel, you’re adding to the problem.

If there is any communities out there they are self selected ones of people who happen to blog and for some reason wish to rarefy what they’re are doing. People talk about engaging with ‘bloggers’ but the bloggers involved in these engagements are invited and selected based on not getting on the wrong side of the gate keepers hustling the engagement.

No they’re not. Depends on what you think of as a “community” I suppose, but firstly, I don’t think there is a blogging “community” but an online one in Ireland, and (b) the bloggers involved are involved because they make themselves available, they answer invitations and they are open to approaches. Why? Because they’re interested in what they write about and they want to find out things.

I watch conversations between the 1200+ communities on Boards.ie, on twitter and on blogs all the time. I listen to people. I try to do things correctly and if and when I don’t, I apologise and I try not to make the same mistake again. It’s all people talking. No bullshit. It’s very simple. And there-in lies the zest.

Well said! I was wondering why you were so quiet!!

I appreciate that folks have strong feelings and serious disagreements with each other, but I think lack of civility is unnecessary. It even makes me somewhat uncomfortable and I often stand back from such discussions… and I’m fairly used to the rough and tumble of the online world having been on boards for 11 years! Is it really any wonder that total newbies are fearful?

This conversation sums up the problem in the Blogging community.

Nobody is entightled to an opinion unless they are in they agree with the hardcore blogging community, and if you do express an opinion which is at odds to that community, then your an idiot and you will be crucified and ridiculed. Come on guys… get a grip and give others a chance. You’ve been pushing blogging and demanding respect from the wide community, which you now have, don’t blow it and end up being bitter and twisted if someone has an opinion which isn’t the same as yours.

Conal gave a presentation yesterday explaining what companies like his do for their clients. He gave his opinion on how the PR world was changing. He is right about it changing because it is and it has to.

Then a blogger… ie Damien, who I have met and do respect, comes in and uses foul language and sums up his entire presentation as bullshit and muddies his name, having not even been at the presentation yesterday. Totally uncalled for.

There is a level of the blogging community which is losing the respect of the Average / Normal internet user. Extremism and harsh comments which are unfounded are unnecessary are a complete waste of time.

I never respond to posts like this but maybe the Hardcore Blogging community need to calm down a little bit and have more respect for people and their opinions.

Get real folks and if you don’t have anything nice to say, say it but don’t gang up on a hard working individual with an opinion just because you disagree with them.

No doubt I will now get abused and shat on for having this opinion.

PS Well done Simply Zesty – Great day and a good crowd.

Eamonn

Read through all of this and feel like I’ve read War & Peace. Do any of you people have deadlines? You could fill a whole newspaper with this stuff. Joking aside, everyone’s passion is evident. The whole ‘social’ medium is so new I think we’re only at the foundation stage and have so much to learn … from each other too. I’m not really bothered about inline or online or communicating or influencing the masses, just doing my job which is giving my audience the quality of information I think they want.

But fundamentally a lot of this involves writing. I don’t consider bad language or nasty retorts good writing, just a form of behavior. If I was a brand and had to trust someone with my budget it wouldn’t endear me to any of you, I’d rather get on a bucking bronco or leave it outside a turf accountant’s premises.

Instead of course language how about wit and sarcasim, innuendo and eloquence?

Entertain and illuminate folks. They say sarcasm is either the highest or lowest form of humour but I found this one on Google and it seems to sum up this whole debate:

Lady Nancy Astor: If I were married to you, I’d put poison in your coffee!
Winston Churchill: If I were married to you, I would drink it.

“Hi all, from the outside looking in, this conversation appears to…”

be about some people thinking they are better than other people because they are peddling a line that happens to be fashionable at the moment.