Community Guy – Jake McKee

4 Lessons for improved blogger outreach

After posting what has to be one of the worst blogger outreach emails of all time as part of this post, I thought it was only fair that I dived into a bit more detail about what makes it so bad and how to avoid similar issues. I’m not trying to rail on the emailer or hurt the cause, but I think this situation has provided fantastic fodder for discussion.

Before we go any further, let me repost the email in question.

Subject: Short and sweet…and crooked?

Hi Jake,

I’m going to keep this short and sweet, seeing as you’ll likely only be interested in the community angle of this….

I wanted to let you know about a new site that just recently launched by [company removed]. It’s [URL removed]. Now, don’t be surprised that this site is all about Peyronie’s Disease (aka – crooked penises)…that’s just the background information. The cool thing is that [company remove], the company that started the site, is anxious to become a part of Healthcare 2.0. To do this, they encourage men and their partners to start a conversation in the community on their site. It actually is a great, anonymous way for people with this disease to talk about it, and perhaps worthy of being mentioned in your blog.

Crooked penises aside, I hope all things at Community Guy are going well. Also, keep in touch, as I have some cool projects for other companies on the horizon that I’d like to keep you posted on.

Thanks Jake!

Now, onto the discussion part of tonight’s program.

1. Language matters.
As I’ve written about before, community interaction is highly language dependent. Especially in a text based medium like email, text is basically all you have; you’d better get it right. Here’s a few of my favorite gaffs of this mail:

• (Subject line) “Short and sweet…and crooked?” – The emailer set a tone from the onset that was far too light, considering she was trying to make seem important.
• “… seeing as you’ll likely only be interested in the community angle” – Is she trying to imply I might have a more “personal” interest in this community?
• “… [the company is] anxious to become a part of Healthcare 2.0″ – Really? So anxious that they’ve outsource the relationship to an agency?
• “To do this, they encourage men and their partners to start a conversation in the community on their site” (emphasis mine) – If it’s the company’s community, why would anyone feel comfortable there talking about uncomfortable personal issues? Why would I want to start a conversation about this? What’s the point? (I’m sure there is one, but it leaves me wondering what it is)
• “Crooked penises aside…” – Again, is this a serious issue or a gig at people who have this problem? Hard to tell with statements like this.

2. Personality matters.
As a man, what is the biggest health issue you wouldn’t want to discuss with a woman? That’s right: anything at all having to do with the penis. Having the right person actually start these kinds of conversations is as important as the way they start them. Would you want a male agency rep sending blogger outreach emails to women about yeast infections? Choose your representative wisely.

3. Context matters.
It’s sad this needs to be said, but…

• Research your subject enough to customize the conversation. In the case of this email, the emailer could have spent 3 minutes on the site and realized that I do 10 question interviews and offered herself or her client up as a interview subject. She could have done a quick search and pointed out something that I’ve written about that connects to the way the site was designed.
• Understand the goals of your client. I can’t say for sure, obviously, but I have a hard time believing that the client for this outreach campaign would really enjoy the silliness that this email carries as a way to bring exposure to the cause/issue. When it’s so easy to make fun of something you’re trying to make into a serious issue, why would you use this joking tone to get the message across?

4. Conversation matters.
The emailer clearly “customized” a form letter with the opening and closing sentences. That’s not necessarily bad (so long as point 1 above is respected), but why not actually use this email to open up a real discussion about what’s going on with this new community. Offer to let me interview you about the “community angle”. Offer up some personal stories from community members about why this cause is even important in the first place. Tell me some pointers about the site that might be blog worthy. If you’re sending a blogger outreach email to someone, chances are it’s because they’re big enough in a certain space to pay attention to. That means other people are paying attention to them too, and you need to start a real conversation about what makes you interesting. Otherwise, why bother?

Blogger outreach is more akin to dating than marketing. You’re trying to court someone interesting in order to build a relationship, not blast a group of people with an offer to jump into bed for the night. We all know which one of those lasts longer!

Unfortunately, much of the blogger outreach that’s being done today is a being sold and bought on the ad impression model. “If you give us X amount of money, we’ll send your message to X amount of people.” Pointless. Totally pointless… as this blog entry proves.

Tune in tomorrow for my revised version of this mail!

(original photo credit: nofrills)

Agencies: The distance between strategy and implementation

Yesterday I met up with a buddy of mine for lunch at my favorite local Thai place. He works at a large agency in town (with larger parts elsewhere in the country), and our conversation naturally turned to “the future of the agency”. I relayed my concerns about the agency model I previously blogged about, and he largely agreed.

Since that initial post, I’ve had quite a bit of online and offline conversation about what’s going on with the agency model at the moment. I’ve also seen an up tick in the amount of general online conversation as well. OMMA asks: “If we have consumer-generated content and consumer-generated media, do we still need ad agencies?” Booz Allen points out that “more marketers believe they’ll be doing more business with online media properties from a creative standpoint (52%) than they will with agencies (27%).” And why not skip the agency when the best they’re coming up with is things like this blogger outreach email I received recently:

Subject: Short and sweet…and crooked?
Hi Jake,

I’m going to keep this short and sweet, seeing as you’ll likely only be interested in the community angle of this….

I wanted to let you know about a new site that just recently launched by [Company removed]. It’s [URL removed]. Now, don’t be surprised that this site is all about Peyronie’s Disease (aka – crooked penises)…that’s just the background information. The cool thing is that [Company removed], the company that started the site, is anxious to become a part of Healthcare 2.0. To do this, they encourage men and their partners to start a conversation in the community on their site. It actually is a great, anonymous way for people with this disease to talk about it, and perhaps worthy of being mentioned in your blog.

Crooked penises aside, I hope all things at Community Guy are going well. Also, keep in touch, as I have some cool projects for other companies on the horizon that I’d like to keep you posted on.

Thanks, Jake!

Seriously.

I think that in the previous blog entry’s comments, Josh nails the real issue on the head:

The large agency business model is based on senior people making decisions and lower level people acting. Engagement in online conversations on behalf of a client requires a higher level of experience and engagement than for example calling a trade publication about an editorial calendar opportunity.

As Josh points out, most agencies have extraordinarily hierarchical structures that put higher level folks in a position of dictating, and lower level people into the role of work order fulfillment. I call it “Fighter Pilot Staffing”. The pilot of an F-14 is the rock star, with a vast array of support staff working hard doing a specific, repetitive task in order to ensure that the pilot is able to do anything within the abilities of his own training and the plane’s capabilities. The pilot is the top of the food chain, and without the pilot, the rest of the system falls apart. Sure, the pilot can’t launch his plane without countless people working to ensure the plane, weapons, air traffic control are in order, but largely the support staff is replaceable. Scaling a fighter wing is extremely difficult and costly.

Law firms may hold the key to this problem. Firm partners are charged with specific cases/clients, and work with junior associates and support staff to deliver client solutions. While there’s leadership from the partner at the top of the food chain, every project is meant to be deliver results for the client, but also to train junior staff.

In my own business, I’ve been thinking a lot about scaling issues as more and more work comes in and the space overall continues to grow. After all, how do you scale “hands-on experience”? Perhaps the answer is in these smaller working teams, lead by experience, but meant to train and educate as much as fulfill.

Today’s agencies tend to fail miserably at the later, which means they do marginally well at the former. Having worked in and with agencies of various sizes, I’ve yet to see much training taking place (in the form of formal curriculum and/or mentoring). This means the best way a junior agency employee can continue to learn and grow their career is to leave the agency. In turn this employee churn gives the agency the mistaken idea that they can’t do anything about retention, employees will simply leave within two years, so why bother investing in them?

Agencies are (or should be) in the business of delivering effective solutions to clients, rather than executing requests from clients. Because most agencies have yet to figure out how to bill properly for social projects vs. traditional, short-term campaigns, they simply don’t have the time to do things right or be smart about emerging trends for their clients. As much as we might hate to admit it, the issues we’re talking about come back to resolving the billing model. Until that’s updated for our times, we’ll continue to see quick, foolish campaign mindset applied in exactly the wrong way.

But crooked penises aside…