Yesterday on Now Is Gone: Yellow crayon redux: Journalists vs. Bloggers continues the conversation with a refocused crux. The conversation centers on the increasingly gray differences between blogging and journalism.

aimClear’s Marty Weintraub brings us an absolutely great post on PR Power Blogging Zen, the 7 Classic Nodes. In essence, blogging is PR and this post discusses how a company or person can use a blog for each of the seven classic nodes of PR. The nodes are; media relations, investor relations, community relations, customer relations, internal relations, human interest, and crises management

Conversation Agent Valeria Maltoni had an outstanding post detailing how the blogosphere blew up about popcorn thanks to a New York Times article. The popcorn cos engaged bloggers in the comment sections, and successfully quelled the storm. A great example of 1) crisis PR and 2) intelligent PR.

Living in a Digital World’s Rik Haslam highlights seven steps to consider to make your web site(s) iPhone friendly. “In my opinion the most compelling feature is the integrated, (almost) fully fledged browser, it?s the first mobile device I?ve ever used that can make browsing the web practical and useful rather than frustrating and awkward (Samsung – I mean you).”

Chris Brogan is the latest blogger to question the general angst social media fans feel towards businesses in “The Myth of Evil Corporations in Social Media.” Unconferences: Should companies be allowed to play is the theme. “But aren?t stumbles better than letting corporations sit around and ?do it all wrong? over and over again?” A great post, and it’s good to see so many comments rallying around businesses.

Friendly Ghost is chatting up a list of 50 of the most influential bloggers. Unfortunately, it’s a completely subjective list, says our ghost writer. Speaking of lists, is this the week that Friendly puts out the September index of top PR blogs?

Strategic PR Pro Kevin Dugan offered a test for newbie blogger relations pros to determine if they are ready. Newbie or not, this is a great way to see if you’ve dotted your is and crossed your ts.

Josh Hallett has asked BlogOrlando session leaders to post an early discussion of their session topic. Mine is participation is marketing, something well discussed on this blog.

The current Participation is Marketing theory (Chris Heuer) acknowledges that 20th century mass communications enabled companies to dictate messages, control the market, and use media to ensure brand message. With a fractured, traditional media marketplace and new social media channels, message control is dead. Paraphrasing Jay Rosen, audiences are gone and communities are arising.

Participation is marketing is not new (as Rich Becker likes to remind me), but it is reborn because of social media. Most marketers can recognize the traditional participation approach with community evangelists (usually non-profits and philanthropic efforts — see the National Business Community blog). Also consider the “man of the people” approach used by so many successful political campaigns.

Successful social media marketing efforts require companies to become a part of the community. In essence they don’t try to control the message, instead organizations acknowledge they are part of the community and give to it. They act appropriately with transparency and accountability as upstanding members of the community.

In short, participation means companies need to stop thinking of themselves as the center of the universe. They need to get into the street, roll up their sleeves and become people amongst people. Value creation from companies acknowledges they are an entity amongst entities.

There’s a sense of humility to the social media marketer. In essence, they understand that they are a role player in a larger, greater thing. Chris Brogan wrote an outstanding piece that described this participation ethos called, “I am a Marketer.”

And so, it’s a new media world that really returns us to old Main Street ethics. A shopkeeper within the town builds great relationships with his/her community members. There’s an intrinsic understanding that they need the community as much if not more so than the community needs the shop. And so the shopkeeper works hard for the community, and treats it well.

Social Media Case Studies

Note: No where does it say in this column that a participation approach requires a marketer to sacrifice results. That’s why it’s important to consider case studies. Included in this Blog Orlando Participation is Marketing discussion will be an effort to discuss strengths and weakness of real world efforts. Here are eight of them.

Four of these case studies came courtesy of Communications Overtones’ Kami Huyse, and her excellent post on case studies.

• Click TV – Blogger Relations for Click TV (April 17, 2006): An outline of a blogger relations campaign for a Web 2.0 company, Shel Holtz, results here
• Coca Cola’s Community Approach to Second Life (April 17, 2007): Coca-Cola’s new social media strategy in Second Life featured an approach other than buying real estate and creating a store, Shel Holtz & Crayon
• SeaWorld San Antonio: Journey to Atlantis (May 3, 2007): The launch and results of an “event” site to support the opening of a new ride, My PR Pro
• Splashcast’s Social Media for Marketing: (May 16, 2007): Splashcast used social media for marketing purposes, and succeeded by directly engaging the community, Marshall Kirkpatrick
• GeoCommons Social Media News Release (May 29, 2007): An outline of the pitfalls and successes of releasing news via SMNR, Livingston Communications
• New Adventures of Old Christine (June 14, 2007): The show was about to get a new day and time, and she thought outreach to parent bloggers was a perfect fit, CBS via Marketing Roadmaps
• Sci Fi Channel Digital Press Tour (July 12, 2007): Sci Fi channel begins blogger relations program by providing access to filming setsSci Fi, Channel via Marketing Roadmaps
• Goodwill’s Social Media Strategy (August 29, 2007): How Goodwill used social media to rebrand its vintage clothing, Livingston Communications

These case studies were successful because in some way they all acknowledged that participation within the community was essential. I look forward to continuing our chat here and at the unconference!

Simultaneously posted on the Diva Marketing Blog and the Buzz Bin.

This week BBF Toby Bloomberg, Diva Marketing Blog, and I had lengthy conversations about a post written by Ad Age Executive Editor, Jonah Bloom. We were surprised to find that Mister Bloom’s post was written more in the style of tabloid reporting than of a respected journalist holding a senior position with a highly regarded publication. Bloom called out crayon CEO Joseph Jaffe for coloring the truth in a recent blog post announcing a second round of significant changes at the company.

“If Jaffe has fallen on hard times, he might want to consider applying for one of those big, corporate PR jobs where the key to success is saying and writing nothing, but employing so many unwieldy long sentences and so much repetition and jargon that no one ever guesses. Certainly this effort vaults him straight into the Spinmasters’ Hall of Bullshit.”

We both found Jonah Bloom’s/Ad Age’s coverage of crayon’s challenging situation disgraceful to the extent that we are collaborating on this post.

So what if there was some jargon and spin? Taken from a PR perspective, what was Jaffe supposed to say, “We just lost half our senior team because we can’t win enough business?” Wasn’t that clear enough in the letter?

As experienced practitioners, we see right through this post as exploitative, exaggerated yellow journalism. And quite frankly, it’s disappointing to see this occur under the Advertising Age banner, the so-called industry authority hosting the Advertising Age Power 150.

Perhaps you’ve been privy to the changes at crayon, outlined in this letter by Joseph Jaffe. First the high profile departures of Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz. And now there were these recent moves, specifically the departures of Steve Coulson, CC Chapman, and Gerry Cohen. Certainly, changes of this nature garner attention, especially when the faltering party is an agency like crayon.

Neither of us knows Jonah Bloom; however, his bio suggests that his career has been spent working for journalist organizations that could guarantee salary/benefits and not as an entrepreneur. The world of a small business, especially a start-up firm, is quite different. There are sleepless nights worrying that a client’s check will come in before the light bill is due. Projects you were certain would pop are put on hold. Then there are the continuous expenses for the cost of doing business. But if you believe in your dream you make adjustments and trade the Starbucks mocha latte for a coffee made in your own kitchen.

Regardless of Jonah’s responsibility for penning this disgraceful post, Advertising Age itself has a responsibility here. And as marketing bloggers that are technically covered by the magazine, we demand better standards of journalism from Advertising Age.

Impact?

Jonah Bloom’s post brings up a larger issue for us and many questions. Granted that Mister Bloom was writing a blog not a column. Is a blog post written by a publication’s editor or reporter an op-ed piece? Even so should the post be held to the same journalist standards set for the publication’s articles?

Are the lines blurring to the effect that blogging within a journalist setting e.g., Ad Age, mean the blogger is sanctioned to color outside of acceptable guidelines and branding expectations of the publication? Would Ad Age have published Jonah Bloom’s post as an article? What obligation does the “journalist blogger” have to reflect the publication’s brand image?

Neither of us knows the current crayonistas outside of the usual Facebook and Twitter interactions. However, crayon represented so many of the ideal hopes of the blogosphere and the Cluetrain Manifesto, it’s hard not to root for the agency.

At the same time it’s hard not to see these recent events as a disappointment. Not just because of the missteps outline in Jaffe’s letter, but because crayon is more than a company. It’s a dream that we all want to achieve. A marketing profession that is based in transparent, honest, ethical and exhilarating social media communications.

Both of us want to be 100% social media all the time. But getting companies to buy into this new world concept is not easy. For example, the four person firm Livingston Communications gets two thirds of its revenues from traditional public relations clients. The rest is social media.

We understand the challenges and difficulties of getting and keeping a full portfolio of social media clients. And we congratulate all of the crayonistas past and present for their courage in pursuing this noble dream. And to the remaining crayons — Joe, Greg and Scott — we wish you the best of luck in your continuing efforts whatever color they may be

– Toby Bloomberg and Geoff Livingston

Related Posts (updated 9/15):

• Marketing Abstraction “Jaffe Gets Slapped Down”
• PR Works “The Blogging and the Damage Done”
• Student PR Blog “crayon Effectively Out of Business”
• Better Communication Results: “On ethics, social media and good manners”

P.S. As a personal follow-up, it only seems appropriate to note that Advertising Age is probably the most venerable publication in the traditional advertising business. It has made several forays into covering the marketing blogosphere with posts like this, and, most notably, with its acquisition of Todd And’s Power 150.

While the actual 150 love this index for obvious reasons, there is an increasing groundswell of dissatisfaction with Advertising Age amongst the lower ranked bloggers and the marketing blogosphere, in general. The integrity and merits of this index since Advertising Age has acquired it are highly questionable.

The Advertising Age 150 uses a subjective measure, and a Bloglines measures that features an antiquated, out-of-date and increasingly unused reader with thousands of dormant accounts to determine RSS weight. These two measures comprise half of the index score. Advertising Age also doesn’t prune its leaves, letting dead blogs lie in the 150 for months. It does not update RSS feeds and URLs when a blog changes its address, like our friend Kyle Flaherty’s Engage in PR. And highly influential communications bloggers like Ike at Occam’s Razr “do not qualify” to be listed.

If Advertising Age does come to read this post, I encourage them to reinvigorate the index with more factors to counterbalance blatant subjectivity and inaccurate RSS counts. Otherwise — as far as this blogger is concerned — the Ad Age 150 does not hold any weight. Further, given this series of missteps one must wonder if Advertising Age will be successful in its efforts to cover “us.”

GL

One of our Era of Conversation speakers (October 4, 2007 in Washington) is Brian Williams, CEO of Viget Labs. Brian’s a bit of a local prodigy, catering to the stars in Hollywood. His team designed Britney’s site when she was cool in the earlier part of the decade. And he caters to the stars of the new media realm, too, building Squidoo for Seth Godin. A master of search engine optimization (SEO) and creating blogs, sites and networks that compel people to act, Brian shared some of his great insights on Internet marketing and social media.

BB: What was it like working with Seth Godin?

BW: Working with Seth to build Squidoo has been great. He’s passionate about his ideas and he presents them with unusual clarity and focus. He’s impatient (in a good way) and demanding (again, in a good way,) but he also has a tremendous amount of respect for talented people and is generous with his compliments and rewards when they perform up to their potential. He knows that when you’ve assembled a great team, the way you maximize their value is by letting them do what they’re great at doing — so he knows when to drive things and when to get out of the way.

BB: You are a master at SEO. Can you explain to Buzz Bin readers why SEO is so important?

BW: Simple: the vast majority of Internet users start with search engines. That means that the majority of your site traffic should be coming from search results. If not, you’re missing out on a lot of the most high-value potential visitors — those who are actively looking for your product, service, or content. Why work so hard on a site or blog if no one can find it? And since the basics of SEO are straightforward, why not do it?

Search engine optimization isn’t magic and it’s not about tricks or short-term gains. SEO is about applying best practices that will allow the search engines to do what they’re supposed to do: index your content in a relevant way. Every site that is interested in gaining more visitors (and who isn’t?) should apply at least the basics of SEO.

We talk with clients about three key elements of SEO: code, content, and connections. “Code” means building your site or blog the right way, from the CSS to the page layout to the design. “Content” means not just writing great copy that people will like to read, but writing key parts of it (e.g., page titles, title tags) that take your SEO strategy (and target keyphrases) into account and use them accordingly. “Connections” is about inbound links — the voting system of search engines. You have to earn them, but there are techniques you can apply to help your link building strategy.

SEO isn’t a silver bullet. It won’t build your site, write your content, or link to your pages. You still have to write great copy that people care enough about to link to. Ignoring SEO, though, not only means you’ll miss out on visitors, but that those potential visitors will be going to your competitor’s site instead.

BB: How can SEO impact a blog?

BW: SEO can have a huge impact. You can think about your search traffic in two buckets: primary terms (a half dozen or so) and niche terms (potentially hundreds). Over time, both buckets should drive significant traffic to your blog.

Say you are launching a blog about goat herding. You want to rank highly for primary terms like … wait for it … “goat herding,” and you know you need a lot of inbound links (”connections”) to make that happen. You’ve built your blog the right way (”code”), so all of your content is being indexed — including your about page and meta content.

The first bucket to focus on is your niche terms by doing what you’ve set out to do anyway: write great content about goat herding. Every blog post is a chance to earn niche traffic on a topic related to your primary subject. Over time, you’ll have a “long tail” effect of a small number of searches for each niche topic driving small amounts of traffic which add up to a significant audience. This is particularly effective if you can convince your niche searchers of the value of your blog and have them agree to come back regularly.

In addition to the aggregate traffic generated, each new post is an opportunity to earn inbound links. As the number of inbound links increase, the more relevant your blog will be in the eyes of Google, and the more highly ranked your blog will be for your “primary” search terms.

BB: How can SEO impact a brand?

BW: One interesting way SEO impacts a brand is in terms of search credibility. Search engine users are increasingly savvy about paid versus organic search results, and the brands that appear at the top of the organic listings for relevant terms earn a higher degree of credibility in their eyes. Furthermore, the higher your brand appears on the results, the lower your competitor’s brand will be, so the impact of being higher on the list is that much more valuable.

BB: Let’s discuss RSS subscriptions. Why is RSS so important in today’s online environment?

BW: First, let’s define RSS (Really Simple Syndication). RSS is just a way of formatting content into feeds (based on XML standards) that can be published somewhere else. The most common example is feeds publishing to RSS readers that can monitor, parse, and display the content.

RSS readers monitor these feeds regularly so that when a user looks at her RSS reader, which aggregates content from a number of sources, she immediately sees which sources have new content available. So, to a user, RSS allows them to monitor the blogs and web sites they care about in one easy place and be alerted when new content is up without clogging their email box. They can consume the content they care about on their own terms. To a blogger or site owner, it?s an easy way to publish content beyond their own site and pull readers back regularly.

When it comes to blogs, the nice thing about RSS is that most bloggers don’t need to know or care about the technology. They just need to make the subscription option clear to readers so they are inclined to grab it. We recommend a service like FeedBurner, which lets you better monitor your subscribers.

While the technology behind RSS is only really interesting to the geeks out there, understanding how RSS is used is important. Most notably, it should influence how you write your blog post titles. I use iGoogle, for example, to monitor dozens of blogs. Throughout the day I scan the feeds for new posts that jump out at me, and click through to posts that have intriguing titles. Boring titles get no such clicks — so craft wisely.

BB: What’s your favorite example of web 2.0 success?

BW: Even though “web 2.0″ means a lot of things, to me it boils down to participation. Anyone can contribute to the conversation by starting a blog, contributing to a wiki, broadcasting a video, or commenting on the content someone else just put up. There is a small but growing number of professional bloggers who are able to make a living by sharing their expertise on a blog and leveraging platforms like squidoo to both promote and augment their web presence — that’s exciting.

To give a specific recent example, Apple’s response to the angry buzz of bloggers voicing their displeasure about the iPhone price reduction was interesting to witness. It was still the mainstream media coverage of the buzz that forced Apple’s reaction, but it all started with regular people speaking out about why they were angry. That never would have happened even five years ago.

BB: What’s next for Viget Labs?

BW: We have big plans. We just moved into brand new office space in Falls Church, VA and recently opened our first remote office in Durham, NC. In both places, we?re hiring great web people (designers, user experience folks, ruby/rails developers, etc.).

On the client front, we’re working with a number of exciting start-ups as well as traditional companies looking to do more online with a firm that really “gets” the big picture and can execute. I’m just really excited about the people I get to work with, both clients and co-workers. We’re having a lot of fun and we know our best work is still ahead of us.

Guest Post by Qui Diaz, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide

Last Thursday, the FEC dismissed complaints related to online political activities conducted by two blogs called into question under campaign finance law. The accused: Daily Kos, for voicing support for candidates while simultaneously generating advertising revenue, along with a blog authored by Michael Grace which was used to trump Mary Bono’s election activities.

Blogs, the FEC ruled, are media (quoting Jordan McCollum: “Oh, if only Marketing Pilgrim had a category called, “Duh.”) and therefore exempt from campaign finance laws.

Those who rallied around and have been following the matter recognize the outcome for what it is: A triumph for blogs! Before we all start donning “Bloggers have rights, too!” t-shirts, lets reviewing the question marks and points of clarification about the ruling:

• The FEC-specific determination means that, as media, blogs fall under the protection of the First Amendment. Per Tech Crunch, the FEC’s decision “reaffirmed the right of American bloggers to exercise their free speech rights without being subject to US electoral law, in the same way that media organizations are able to.” To be clear, the decision impacts political bloggers with regards to the FEC’s own regulations.
• The purpose of Campaign Finance Law is to ensure that money doesn’t govern the democratic process. As such, campaign gifts of more than $1,000 per year define an entity as a political action committee. Technically speaking, there’s no out-of-pocket to plug into WordPress, Blogger or other blogging platform. Can you wag the blog, so to speak, without money changing hands?
• How does one verify that a blog is not “owned or controlled by a political party, committee, or candidate,” which would disqualify it from the media exemption?

Additionally, the decision raises entrenched questions about the role and obligations of mainstream media, and how blogs are adapting to and influencing the landscape. In exchange for “ No restrictions,” our mainstream press brethren have developed an honor code for responsible and objective journalism. As Placeblogger’s Lisa Williams points out, bloggers provide authenticity, not objectivity.

While the burgeoning spirit of the blogosphere is ushered into the fold of mainstream, and the new era of PR with it, criteria and standards among bloggers – political or otherwise – will continue to manifest. But on our own terms, I would add: bloggers and journalists are different animals.

In the meantime, can I get my t-shirt in black, size medium?