Harvard Business Publishing: Umair Haque - What Apple Knows That Facebook Doesn’t

Too often, we don’t recognize the power of platforms - even in Silicon Valley. Nilofer Merchant, Rubicon’s CEO, writes frequently on the topic and ties it together with strategy. The piece below by Umair Haque, draws an interesting difference between…

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Nilofer Merchant

Swing Thru the Ball

What should you do? Do you stop things? Start things? Answer: yes, to both. Of course you should rethink and reevaluate but if you do that for long you put at risk the current business or effort simply because you didn’t execute what you could have done.

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Michael Mace's Blog RSS

Michael Mace's Blog Archives

How not to win points with bloggers

As someone who writes a weblog that gets thousands of visitors a week, I receive an e-mail like this every few days (the names have been deleted out of politeness):

===

From: [deleted]
Sent: Friday, August 22, 2008 7:56 AM
Subject: Mobile Opportunity Blog - Blogroll

Hi Michael,

I hope you’re doing well.

I’ve been following your writing about the mobile/wireless space and wanted to introduce you to [weblog title] blog on [URL]. [name] is the CEO of [company name] — like you, [CEO’s first name] is blogging on major issues and news in the wireless space.

We’re big fans of the Mobile Opportunity Blog, and we’re hoping to be added to your blog roll (which, of course, we’d want to reciprocate).

For your background, [company name] is a [description of company]. Feel free to visit the site at [company URL] to learn more about the company!

Let me know your thoughts, and please don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions or comments.

All the best,

[name deleted]
[external PR firm name deleted]

===

The letter gets points for politeness, and if you’re not a blogger it probably looks like a very reasonable request. But viewed through the eyes of a blog author, there are several problems.

First, the letter is from an external PR agency, not from the author of the blog. Writing a weblog is a very personal activity for most people, and they expect contact to be author to author. If the CEO really does like my weblog, why didn’t he send me a note himself? Because he’s too busy, obviously. Which means I’m not really important to him, and he’s not really committed to blogging. He’s just trying to get some PR for his company.

That’s confirmed by a quick visit to the CEO’s weblog. The biggest red flag is that the CEO did one “welcome” post in January of 2008 and didn’t post again until July. The implication is that someone set up the blog for him, but he didn’t make a commitment to posting to it. There have been several posts since July, but you have to wonder whether the CEO wrote them, or the PR firm did it for him.

Either way, the pattern of posts shows a lack of passion. Good blogs are driven by passion: The author has a point of view and can’t restrain him- or herself from writing about it. An active blog author can spot lack of passion in somebody else a mile away.

The next problem is the topic of the posts. The CEO has posted only articles that relate directly to his business, and they are all relentlessly positive on the prospects for his company. The CEO isn’t engaging in a conversation about the industry, he’s trying to spin things and score PR points. Again it seems less than genuine.

So add it all up:
—The contact comes from a PR firm, not the blog author
—The blog author doesn’t post consistently
—The posts don’t feel like a genuine conversation

Why in the world would anyone want to link to his weblog? By linking to a site, you’re endorsing it. Linking to his site would damage your credibility with the people who read your site.

The right way to kiss up to a blogger

Here are a few rules to follow if you’re starting a company weblog and want to get traffic:

1. Make sure you really mean it. Don’t start blogging unless you have carved out the time to update it regularly, you have a perspective you want to share, and you’re prepared to have a conversation with the marketplace. If you personally don’t have time to do this, find somebody in your organization who does and get them to blog.

2. Make contact yourself. Don’t let your PR firm or your marketing director or your personal assistant be your interface to the blogging community. They can help you in the background, but the whole point and power of writing a blog is to create a feeling of direct contact from you to the reader. You destroy that feeling when you let someone else shill for you.

3. Spread love without requiring a return. If you genuinely think a blog author is great and you want to get their attention, pick out one of their articles, write a post saying you agree with it, and link back to that blogger’s site. Most bloggers track the traffic to their weblogs pretty closely, and will check out a new site that links to them. Maybe also you can send them a fan e-mail (again, from you, not from your PR guy). Most bloggers won’t be able to resist checking out a site that compliments them, and if you’re writing good stuff then you’ll get links back.

Keep in mind that most bloggers write because they crave an audience, not because they’re making money from it. Be a good audience, add to the conversation, and you’ll eventually get some attention yourself.

Tags: blogging , online marketing