Boston's Algonquin Round Table, um... sort of

Tomorrow is our next Boston Solo PR Coffee at Taste Coffee House, 311 Walnut Street, Newtonville, Mass.

I can't guarantee the types of discussions you may have heard between Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley, but Bobbie Carleton is usually there and she's nice. And Tony Loftis had a lot to add to the discussion last week as well. Of course, there were many others.

I'll be hanging around Taste starting at 9am, per usual. Feel free to stop in for a minute or an hour. Whatever works.

Some topics on my mind this week:

• What qualifies as a pitch?
  Mom bloggers have declared a PR blackout and Adam Gaffin asked (again) to be removed from Cision for getting lousy, off-topic pitches. But is it a pitch if it is just a discussion between colleagues? If you run into a person, or speak with them on IM and tell them about your client, does that fall into the "pitch" category in the same way that the mom bloggers are considering?
• Where is the money?
  Marketing budgets are drying up, is this a short term reaction to the economy or a long-term change in the industry? Are social media programs going to be handled from the CMO/VP of Marketing position or through other aspects of the organization such as customer service?
• And more?
  What questions do you have? Can't make it to the coffee? Then tweet us with a question using the hashtag #bostpr and we'll ask the collective. Last week we helped an AAE better understand the basics of pitching through Twitter.
  

See you then!

The Art of Pitching

I have only pitched Adam Gaffin once, and rather unsuccessfully at that. Frankly, I wasn't so much pitching him as making him aware of my Boston-based client.

That said, I have managed to be referenced on his highly-trafficked Universal Hub blog quite a bit, because over time I've learned how to write blog entries that he finds useful and that, I believe, he'd find useful to share with his readers. If I notice he hasn't linked to something I believe is relevant, I may drop him a quick email to make him aware of the post.

That's just Adam. You can send him a traditional pitch, and he may even use it, but you're better off writing on your own Boston-based blog something about the community. Ultimately, that's what Universal Hub is all about.

Someone like Robert Scoble is a different story, he's very pitchable if you know how to reach him. He'll listen and tell you if you're full of crap or if you have something he can use.

Of course, you'll find none of this data on the database most used by PR people called Cision. I could tell the very first day my blog got listed in Cision, because I immediately got deluged with laundry list of bad pitches, few of any relevance.

I could blame this on Cision, but as a (former) Cision user I don't think that would be fair. It's actually user error. I found that a lot of people would do some searching, create a list and then just start pounding away. If they stopped and looked first, reading a few blog posts, perusing a few articles, looking at a LinkedIn profile or two, they'd immediately determine which names on their lists are for real and the best approach for each person.

Of course, that kind of work takes billable hours to do, and right now the name of the game is to keep hours low and hits high.

So Adam is going to continue to get pitched about "nipple covers for 'moms hitting up the pool.'" Only, with Twitter he can complain about it.

But to Cision's credit, Ruth McFarland has been very responsive to complaints, but the fault doesn't always lie with them.

What's on your mind? Boston Solo PR Coffee Tomorrrow

Solo PR People of Boston, what's on your mind?

Laying out a strategy and need and ear? Maybe want to vent about some odd client demand? How about balancing work and life?

Or maybe you're having trouble with client development.

Come to the Solo PR Coffee on Tuesday at Taste Coffee House in Newtonville, Mass. and meet with other people in your shoes. We'll be there from 9am until whenever we break up, usually between 10:30 and 11am.

I'll be there!



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Good Marketing Isn't Free

Quick show of hands: how many of you have Word on your computer?

Great, that's just about everyone (if you didn't raise your hand, check out Google Docs).

How many of you used that tool to write an amazing novel?

I don't see many hands.

OK, how many of you wrote your memoirs? Family history? A decent article?

I see a few more, but not many. Why didn't you? Because the tool doesn't make the talent.

Four years ago I did a video about my daughter's adoption. After this 9 minute video that took me hours to produce, distilling 3 hours of video, re-cutting music, selecting other Chinese music and fretting over the order of certain sequences given the audience, my cousin said to me "Oh, so you just need to choose the right music."

Um... right. That and get a graduate degree then spend a decade producing TV news. But sure, just pick the right music and you're on your way.

I thought about this after reading George Colony's recent post referencing a Forrester report noting how marketing budgets are dropping. I've seen the impact of that myself.

A lot of CMOs and Marketing VPs see the free tools such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and all those other great social media buzzwords and figure "great, we can do this ourselves!" And yes, some can. But in reality, to handle these tools effectively you need someone who can help you tell your story.

Of course, you can always go and work on that novel.

Come for the Companies, Stay for the Company!

It's hard to believe that this is only the fourth Mass Innovation Night, since it's quickly become a great place to network with some amazing people. It's also cool that it's in America's First Factory. We get a sense of what innovation can do and how transformative it can be.

And yes, of course there are some great innovative companies there. Some, like Drync and Web Notes I've seen at other events in town such as the Web Innovator's Group and Mobile Monday, but it's nice to see how they've progressed since then.

I also had a fascinating discussion with Andreas Randow, CEO of StudioShare.org, not only about his company but about is own history of innovation. I was also impressed with the passion with which Paul Martin showed me SpaceMAX, as well as the innovations coming out of Intuit Labs. Who knew that the company behind QuickBooks can help small businesses effectively use Facebook? A great example of what happens when you empower your employees to come up with new ideas.

But the true value of Mass Innovation Nights is the after-party at Biagio's in Waltham. It's there that I got a chance to talk with Elli StGeorge Godfrey about the issues that entrepreneurs have when they try to shift from having an idea to making it a reality. Her business is in coaching those entrepreneurs. It's also where I get to meet, face-to-face, many of the people I follow on Twitter such as Jeff Cutler, Bob Collins and Ari Herzog.

Because social media allows us to easily connect with people who have like interests. Turning those connections into meaningful and profitable relationships takes a little more work... like having a beer.

How much is experience worth?

Today I was told by a VC that his portfolio companies operate extremely lean and that as an advisor he doesn't encourage any spending on marketing.

In fact, those that do anything just do some blogging, and he encourages them to hire a recent college grad--"they're available dirt cheap," he said--to do the writing work. For about $1000 a month you can direct them to write some posts then take what you want and discard the rest. Content for short money.

Another startup told me that they hired a woman who had been with an agency for a year to do their PR. One year out of college, one agency job under he belt and she was in charge of getting them coverage. To their credit, they know that eventually they'll outgrow her experience and they will need to invest more in PR.*

If you're a startup exec, the numbers person in you is probably saying "wow, that seems to make complete sense!"

But let me ask you this: could your college self do the job you do today? My college self certainly coudn't, though he thought he could. Why would you trust your company's image to someone with no worldly experience?

Last week I met with someone how commented that he liked reading my blog because my punctuation and grammar are on target. That's a pretty low bar. Though, having had recent college grads writing for me, it's one that is apparently pretty high.

Back when I taught a news production class at Emerson College I had to teach the juniors, seniors and master's students the difference between present tense and active voice. Many simply did not know.

So, are you now willing to trust your brand to someone with no worldly experience? Someone who doesn't know the players, doesn't know the language and doesn't know how to market?

Maybe it's me, but seems like a waste of $12,000 annually.

_________________________________

* Added 7/7/09

Just to clarify, I think this is a smart strategy on their part because of their situation. They need a launch right now, it's all they need. They are focued on a tight market and there are just a few blogs and publications that will get them off the ground. Also, as a very small company they have the time to focus on these details. They do understand, however, that this is not a long-term strategy and won't help them to sustain exposure, nor will it help them as their business focus expands.

New York Times: Hey , bloggers matter too!

The New York Times devotes quite a bit of space today to the changing face of PR in Silicon Valley. Not the whole tech sector, mind you. They avoid talking about the outlying areas like, oh, say, Boston, New York, Austin, Seattle, San Diego and the Research Triangle.

Regardless, the piece breathlessly follows PR execs who, shock of shocks, pitch people other than the A-list "journalists" such as the Times itself, Forbes, Fortune, BusinessWeek, etc. Instead, the PR folks pitch bloggers and social media influencers.

Instead, [Publicist Brooke Hammerling] decides that she will “whisper in the ears” of Silicon Valley’s Who’s Who — the entrepreneurs behind tech’s hottest start-ups, including Jay Adelson, the chief executive of Digg; Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter; and Jason Calacanis, the founder of Mahalo.

Notably, none are journalists.

This is the new world of promoting start-ups in Silicon Valley, where the lines between journalists and everyone else are blurring and the number of followers a pundit has on Twitter is sometimes viewed as more important than old metrics like the circulation of a newspaper.

So nice that the Times is now only 2 years behind.

The fact is, the new PR needs to be about creating content, not just pushing it. Hammerling touches on this briefly when she points out that when she represented Flickr back in 2004 The Times touches on this briefly in referencing the 2004 PR program for Twitter headed up by Donna Sokolsky Burke, co-founder of Spark PR: "she never issued a press release for it, even when it was acquired by Yahoo. Flickr would publish news on its company blog, a few more blogs would pick it up 'and two days later, BusinessWeek would call,' she recalls."

In all, the story paints a picture of PR that's straight out of Sex in the City. Attractive women partying up a storm and hobnobbing with the who's who of influencers. It also talks about measurement in terms of followers and number of Twitter mentions, but gives short shrift to metrics such as "traffic driven" or "conversion rates."

In all, the view of PR portrayed in the piece is still about pitching and about having other people tell your story, but less focused on creating a story built on your own content.

There is so much more to do in the trenches, even here in the hinterlands.