A version of this blog post appeared on the Future Buzz on January 17, 2012.

Chris Abraham recently published a case study on the “art of writing the perfect blogger pitch.” There’s a lot to like here. For one, the time and thought Chris and his team devote to this esoterica are rare. For another, spilling your trade secrets takes guts.

And yet, for a purportedly “perfect” pitch, the Abraham Harrison technique, approach, and diction leave much to be desired. Here’s why (in web-friendly fashion, via a list with headings).

1. Spam. In a classic act of burying the lead, Chris notes, “We reach out cold to upwards of 5,000 bloggers at a time.” This is perhaps the most disappointing aspect of Chris’s technique. After all, anyone can subscribe to a database such as Vocus or Cision, select key audiences and areas, compile a media list, and blast out a pitch. Industry insiders call this the “spray and pray” technique. Others know it as a form letter. The bottom line: it’s spam.

By contrast, another technique is to craft individual messages to specific bloggers. Take it away, Lisa Barone:“You know you’re sending the same e-mail to 20 people. I know you’re sending the same e-mail to 20 people. But sometimes you gotta fake it to make me feel special and pretty … Woo me … Talk about how you grew up in the same hometown (only if you really did). Comment on a post I wrote that gave you a bad case of the giggles, or how you think my Twitter feed should come with an NC-17 rating … I’ll be a lot more receptive once you’ve” connected with me personally.

2. WITFM. The best PR makes it appear as if you’re doing a favor for the person you’re pitching, letting him in on something important and intriguing. By contrast, Chris makes it clear that he’s the one requesting a favor: “If you are able to post about this issue in any form, it would really help spread the message of homelessness in its many diverse forms and maybe suggest ways to help improve many lives.”

Leave the guilt trips for Willy Loman. Instead, demonstrate the WITFM—“what’s in it for me?” To wit, don’t tell me why homelessness matters; tell me why my readers will care about it.

3. Subject line. Everyone agrees that your subject line is critical, so it’s surprising that Chris’s—“November Is National Homelessness Month”—is so boring. (As a colleague puts it, “It’s about as ‘perfect’ as an event notice whose headline reads, ‘Mark Your Calendars.’”)

To be sure, Chris seems to think this is a virtue; he explains, “We want [our subject lines] to be as neutral and as informational as possible. Teasing or tricking a blogger into opening [the e-mail] by being cute, mysterious, or clever … has almost always blown up in our faces.”

This is myopic: you need not sacrifice cleverness to be straightforward. While “Help Feed Homeless Children!” may be exploitative, a line like “What Are You Doing for National Homelessness Month?” is catchy without being too cute.

4. Intro. Chris refers to his opening paragraph as “poetry,” labored over by a team of three. But again, his copy is a snooze-fest:

“November is National Homelessness Month and I’m reaching out to you to discuss the issue of homelessness in America. I’m also hoping that you’ll discuss this issue with the readers of <<Blog Name>>. I am a volunteer at a small kitchen for the homeless in DC and while working there it occurred to me that this issue affects every town, village, and city in America.

This is the best a powerhouse like Abraham Harrison can do? Sure, it’s clear, but it’s nothing special, and it’s hardly inspiring. Indeed, not only does it lack cadence and cohesion; it also lacks commas.

5. Astroturfing. For each campaign, Chris creates a new e-mail address with its own domain. In this case, he’s using cjabraham@MiriamsKitchenNews.org, which is separate from the “real” Miriam’s Kitchen domain,MiriamsKitchen.org. This is problematic for various reasons.

a. Let’s give Chris the benefit of the doubt and assume that “bloggers don’t trust PR firms.” This is why his signature says “on behalf of Miriam’s Kitchen,” rather than Abraham Harrison. Yet there’s no getting around the fact that masking your employer is deceptive.

By contrast, consider the total-transparency approach taken by New Media Strategies: when its employees do something as simple as retweet something from a client, they’re required to use the hash tag “#client.” Ultimately, shying away from full disclosure only gives the PR industry a bad rep.

b. Given a limited budget and limited time, creating and managing a new e-mail address domain is a poor allocation of resources.

c. In this case, Abraham Harrison created an entire microsite at http://MiriamsKitchenNews.org. But, again, most campaigns can’t afford this expenditure, so what happens then? Do you leaveMiriamsKitchenNews.org empty? Do you redirect it to your own firm’s site? Do you throw up a simple landing page that repurposes your pitch e-mail?

d. What happens if, six months from now, someone you contacted replies? (We’ve all received one of these e-mails.) If you’re not still checking cjabraham@miriamskitchennews.org, does the sender get a bounce-back or an auto-reply? Or nothing? If you are still checking cjabraham@miriamskitchennews.org, given that you’re creating a new address for each campaign, I envy your endurance in monitoring what must be dozens of addresses. And to complicate matters further, what do you do with these addresses when your contract with the given client expires?

6. URLs. Chris deliberately omits the “http://” prefix in links; he says that e-mail clients will auto-activate incomplete URLs. While Gmail is sophisticated enough to do this, many other e-mail clients are not. This inability is especially damaging when a message arrives in plain text, which is the only form Chris sends.

Not many people will gladly share 3,000 words on the subject of e-mail communications. For that, Chris deserves gratitude and respect.

He also offers important insights, especially the one that a good pitch will spark a conversation. In that spirit, he’s agreed to respond to my critique.

So, Chris, over to you. How can two pros who’ve been working with bloggers for so long reach such divergent conclusion?

To convert a prospect into a client is a special skill. Sometimes you get lucky and a company already has been contemplating the services you offer. Typically, however, a company hasn’t envisioned the various ways you can support it.

This is why the first thing we at the Jonathan Rick Group do when meeting a prospect is to contextualize our field. We begin not with who we are and what we do, but how to conceptualize Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and YouTube and so on. Instead of invoking lingo such as “content strategy,” “enterprise 2.0,” or “newsfeed optimization,” we present five simple slides on “how to think of social media” (see above).

For example, at this point everyone knows about Twitter. Yet rare is the company making genuinely strategic use of the channel—using its tweets, say, to generate leads, to showcase its services, to curate content. Once you put social media in these familiar contexts (sales, PR, branding), then the light bulb flashes on.

Indeed, only once someone understands what social media is can he appreciate its value—and yours.

Ask any communications agency what it neglects most, and the answer invariably is, Our own PR. The story is as old as the one about the shoemaker’s son going barefoot.

That’s why I’m happy to share three interviews I recently did.

The first one comes from the Washington, DC, chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMADC), where I serve as the associate VP of communications. Each month, AMADC profiles one of its members for the “DC Marketer” e-newsletter. Here’s the write-up.

The second interview comes from my former intern at Susan Davis International (SDI). As SDI’s first intern devoted solely to social media, Hannah Redmond embraced the challenge and set the bar high for her successors. Indeed, she ended up pursuing social media as a career, and today works as a senior flack at Rutgers Business School. Here’s our correspondence.

The third and most recent interview comes from Gary Kaskowitz, who hosts the “Marketing 4.0” podcast. Like Hannah, Gary was a pleasure to speak with, which we did for 45 minutes. Here’s the podcast.

For an archive of my press, peruse my Delicious account. For updates in real time, follow me on Twitter.

A version of this blog post appeared on Brazen Life on November 8, 2011.

Whether you’re seeking a job or looking to advance your career, using social media to raise your visibility is a must. Yet if you want to stand out—either in a stack of resumes or when your boss needs someone to head up a new project—don’t just do what everyone else is doing. Instead, go beyond the cliché of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and write a post for a popular blog.

Is this more time-consuming than sharing a link? Absolutely. Is it more difficult than banging out 140 characters? You bet. Does it seem strange to write for someone else’s blog rather than your own? Certainly.

Yet put the time and effort into crafting a thoughtful piece, and you’ll likely experience a rich range of rewards. At minimum, you’ll demonstrate thought leadership, make a name for yourself, and earn a byline in which you can link to your resume or website. Even better, you could land a promotion, secure a job offer, or generate new business.

For my part, guest-blogging has led to a variety of opportunities. Consider the fruits of my first commentary for Mashable, which was published in August:

• Two new clients
• 100 new Twitter followers
• 2,000 page views to my blog
• an invitation to speak at a conference
• two requests to meet for coffee
• a pitch from a PR agency
• coverage in the SmartBrief on Social Media e-newsletter
• praise from the Measurement Standard blog
• a reprint on Yahoo

Heady results for 500 words, right?

Here’s another personal example. A few months before Mashable debut, I spoke to the American Marketing Association—Washington, DC, about how to win friends and influence bloggers. Afterward, I published my presentation on SlideShare and milked it for three blog posts. The former has been viewed almost 10,000 times, while the latter included my first piece for Tech Cocktail.

(Of course, it helps that I did my own PR, tweeting to people and companies mentioned in the post and presentation and blasting the links to everyone in my address book.)

Jen Moire, a PR pro in St. Louis, has pursued a similar path (though instead of opining, she reports). In the spring, she wrote her first article for All Facebook. Today, she’s a regular contributor, with all the benefits this brings: more Twitter followers, more traffic to her website, new contacts, and a rep as an insider that boosts her business.

The marketing firm, Eloqua, offers another case study. Over the past year, Eloqua has risen to prominence in the social media space on the strength of its community offerings. Recently, the firm detailed the success of an infographic it released called the Blog Tree:

• 1,000 tweets
• hundreds of inbound links
• 49 sales-qualified opportunities
• introductions to the bloggers featured in the infographic

Elaborating on this last bullet, Joe Chernov, who oversaw the project, tells me that these intros later blossomed into partnerships, whereby the bloggers contributed to Eloqua’s e-books (both its Grande Guides and its Social Media ProBook).

Finally, behold this example, described by Ken Auletta in last month’s New Yorker:

“Dana Canedy [an editor at the New York Times] was engaged to Army First Sergeant Charles Monroe King. Their son, Jordan, was born in 2006—when King was in Iraq—and he started writing a journal addressed to Jordan, offering life advice in case he didn’t come back. In October, just a month before King was to return home, he was killed by an improvised explosive device. At the end of the year, the Times planned a series of short profiles of soldiers killed in Iraq, and Canedy volunteered to write about King. . . .

“The story, ‘From Father to Son, Last Words to Live By,’ appeared on page one of the Times on January 1, 2007. Canedy wrote about King’s lessons: how to behave on a date and how to treat people who are different. She movingly described how ‘as a black man he sometimes felt the sting of discrimination,’ yet ‘betrayed no bitterness.’ Readers flooded the paper with letters and e-mails. Organizations invited her to speak. Publishers vied to give her a book contract. Denzel Washington optioned the movie rights.

So whether you’re penning an op-ed or delivering a speech, reporting the news or developing an infographic, guest blogging can open up unexpected doors. Now it’s up to you to walk start knocking on them.

A version of this blog post appeared on Brazen Life on October 24, 2011.

“The dog ate my homework.”

Even though this famous excuse is rarely used, what it symbolizes is all-too-familiar: an aversion to admit accountability. What’s more, this urge to excuse one’s blunders rather than shoulder them betrays a bigger issue: a lack of character.

Let’s be honest: no wants to entertain excuses—even perfectly good ones. We value friends who are reliable, we promote employees who are consistent, we love spouses because when they wrong us, they rectify it. Not for nothing did the sign on Harry Truman’s desk proclaim, “The buck stops here!”

To be sure, emergencies arise. We all screw up from time to time. Yet it’s how you rectify things that counts, that makes you who you are.

For example, did your car break down? Do what my realtor did when this happened to him while house-hunting with a client: call a cab. “The show must go on,” Morgan explained. No excuses.

How about this well-worn crutch? “I was stuck in traffic… And parking was even worse.” Anyone who’s ever sat behind a steering wheel has bumped into these predicaments. That you didn’t prepare for them indicates a preference to make others wait rather than make yourself early. No excuses.

Here’s my favorite refrain: “I’ve been busy.” Nope. We make time for what’s important to us. Why not just say you dropped the ball and apologize? And then make up for it. No excuses.

This no-excuses lifestyle is demanding. It means if you say you’ll do something, don’t make your counterpart follow-up for an ETA. If you agree to call someone at a certain time, don’t make her wait. If a request is ambiguous, don’t foist the monkey back, but assume the burden and propose clarifications.

If you’re nodding, you’ll be gratified to know you’re in good company. At Apple, whenever an executive reached the level of vice president, Steve Jobs would deliver a short sermon. Jobs imagined that the garbage in his office wasn’t being emptied, and when he asked the janitor why, the janitor shrugged. The locks were changed, and the janitor didn’t have a key.

This is understandable coming from someone who empties trash bins for a living. As Jobs put it, “When you’re the janitor, reasons matter.” But when you’re a VP, he continued, “reasons stop mattering.”

What matters, I would add, are commitments.

This Rubicon separates the shoulder-shrugger from the commitment-keeper—the staffer from the manager, the manager from the VP, the VP from the C suite. To the commitment-keeper, it doesn’t matter who or what’s at fault; an excuse signifies a personal failure. To the commitment-keeper, nothing is more than important than keeping your word, and thus your integrity.

Think of this next time you next you find yourself in a hole. Will you dig out with an alibi or with accountability? The choice is yours.

No excuses.

A version of this blog post appeared on Tech Cocktail on October 21, 2011.

Every hack authoring an article and every flack penning a proposal has encountered The Question: how many users does this social network have? Sure, you can Google the answers, but then you run into the problem of making sure that your source is authoritative, current, and doesn’t confuse active users (those who log in at least once a month) with total users (your grandmother, who, after signing up, gave up).

Here, then, a new offering from Tech Cocktail: a continuously updated Google Doc that lists the number of active users for the big social networks (see the embedded spreadsheet above or click here).

While Jeremiah Owyang did something similar last year, no one seems to collect these data on a regular basis, and the Wikipedia article on the subject is outdated.

Admittedly, the spreadsheet is incomplete—no StumbleUpon, no Tumblr, no Wikipedia—but that’s where part two of this project comes in: we’re hoping that Tech Cocktailers will tip us to missing, and newer, stats.

So, leave a link in the comments and help us to help data fiends everywhere.

And don’t forget to bookmark the chart for future reference.

A version of this blog post appeared on Mashable on October 14, 2011.

The next big thing is always around the click

Internet innovation is so fierce and constant that it undermines the notion of zero-sum market share. Instead of vying for a piece of the same fixed and static pie, webtrepreneurs bake whole new pies. Not for nothing does Jeff Bezos insist that the Kindle comprises a “different product category” than the iPad: just because a company maintains a seeming monopoly on a market doesn’t mean the market is devoid of opportunities. When there’s an innovator, there’s a way. With the Web, Goliath is always vulnerable.

This milieu should make us skeptical when an antitrust charge is volleyed around, as it has been recently in the form of a lawsuit from the Justice Department, an investigation from the Federal Trade Commission, and a hearing from Congress.

We should be especially skeptical because Internet innovation comes in tidal waves: big and bold. By contrast, when’s the last time your microwave got a radical upgrade? Or your shower head? And how’s that electric car coming along?

Click here to continue reading.

A version of this blog post appeared on the Bad Pitch Blog on October 5, 2011.

Practice deftness, not deafness

In a recent blog post, Chris Brogan describes a scenario familiar to anyone not living under a rock: “Today, I sheepishly deleted several e-mails … that were waiting for a quick response … Dozens. Maybe 100 overall. So that means almost 100 people got my attention, got me to read something, got me to think that maybe I should do something,” and then never heard back.

Why does this happen so often to so many? Brogan’s diagnosis is convincing: Because “we don’t fully understand the syntax of saying ‘no.’”

He offers a graceful example of how to construct this elusive sentence: “What you’re doing is important, and I’m very supportive of you, but I’m not able to take on what you’d like me to do because of my own full plate of commitments.”

In other words: Thanks, but no thanks.

Amen.

Whether in business or romance or friendship, surely most of us would prefer the certainty of being rejected to the uncertainty—and looming false hope—of being ignored. To be sure, no reply typically is a reply, just as postponing a decision is a decision. But there’s no getting around the fact that silence stings.

Sadly, this sting is all-too-common among those you’d think would know e-etiquette by heart: PR pros. As workday spinners, we’re paid to frame the conversation, to help a particular perspective prevail. So it’s bemusing that when we confront this challenge in our own lives, we shrink from it instead of enlisting the opportunity. After all, what better way to demonstrate our savvy, our tact, our profession?

No likes to deliver bad news. It’s unpleasant and messy. Yet it’s also the hallmark of a professional. And as Brogan demonstrates, you can apologize, explain, and decline all in just 32 words.

That shows the opposite of rudeness. That shows character.

A version of this blog post appeared on Spin Sucks (September 12, 2011) and K Street Cafe (September 15, 2011).

Why you should host one, and how to do it

Bloggers’ roundtables have been around for a while. They’re especially popular for book clubs, with the Department of Defense, and among politicians. (One wag asked John McCain if he knew the difference between YouTube and MySpace.)

Yet roundtables never took off as a form of outreach. That’s too bad, because as a vehicle to engage many stakeholders at once, roundtables can be as effective, if not more so, than their headline-grabbing cousins, Twitter and Facebook.

What is a bloggers’ roundtable? Technically, it’s a conference call. Figuratively, it’s a virtual press conference or editorial board meeting. Instead of standing at a podium, the speakers sit by a speakerphone, while the audience—the bloggers—dial into a conference line.

When is a bloggers’ roundtable useful? A roundtable works best when you want to share your story with a small, engaged group; when you want thoughtful feedback; and when you want substantive write-ups. (“Small” can range from a car-full of people to a dinner party to an NFL team.) The conversation is more intimate than a live chat, the invitation is more prestigious than a tweet or Facebook update, and the whole thing is more fun than an e-mail.

What do you need to do? After compiling a media list of pertinent bloggers, send each one an invitation to this “exciting new program.” Just as you wouldn’t invite the guy off the street to your press conference, so it’s best to review each blogger’s work beforehand to ensure that he’s relevant and respectable. (To be sure, this often is a judgment call: What do you do with someone, like a Keith Olbermann or a Glenn Beck, who’s very controversial but who commands a huge audience?)

Given the unwritten rule of RSVPs—of those who are invited, a minority will agree to come; of those who agree to come, a minority will actually show—it’s best to invite at least twice as many people as you’d like to participate.

Once you develop a distro list, you’ll need to set up a conference line. If you have the budget, consider recording and/or transcribing the call, so that you later can publish the audio file and transcript. Not only will this win you plaudits for transparency. It’ll also produce continuing returns on investment.

Now you’re ready to start inviting people. A few best practices:

• Make the invite compelling, so that it stands out alongside the dozens of messages that fill up the typical inbox each day.
• Send a calendar invite instead of or in addition to an e-mail.
• Send the invite a week in advance, and dispatch a reminder the day before.
• Instead of trying to cram everything into the invite, use links. Avoid attachments.
• Mention that the number of spots is limited. This engenders scarcity and thus commitment once someone has RSVPed.
• If you sense that a blogger is especially receptive, ask if there are others whom he’d recommend that you invite.

If you have the time, treat your most receptive blogger to an exclusive: A heads-up that you’re launching the roundtable, a pertinent article before it’s published, an advance one-on-one interview with your subject matter expert(s). Then, in your invitation, you can link to what the blogger wrote, which bolsters your credibility and inspires others to follow suit.

If you have even more time, consider conducting media training or murder boards with your expert(s).

How does it work? Generally, a roundtable lasts for an hour. After taking roll call, the host, who is typically the organization’s spokesman, introduces the experts and lays out the guidelines. Sample guidelines:

• Everything’s on the record.
• Use mute when you’re not talking.
• State your name and the name of your blog before speaking.

Each expert then provides a brief overview of the subject and his role in it. Then comes the crux of the roundtable—the Q&A.

On one hand, you can control the colloquy by calling on each blogger in the order everyone dialed in. On the other hand, you can let the conversation ebb and flow of its own accord. Or you can pursue a middle ground, which avoids awkward silences and doesn’t put anyone on the spot, by asking each participant to press the pound sign for his phone to be unmuted, after which he’s placed in a queue.

Whichever approach you prefer, while structure is important, don’t straight-jacket the conversation. Cultivate it. Your goal is a fruitful give-and-take.

For brownie points, consider preparing a backgrounder on each blogger, which your representatives can use to great effect when responding: “Hi Peter – Before I answer, let me just say how much I empathized with your recent tweet on the misery of being a Redsox fan.”

How do you judge success? Success comes when the bloggers write about what they heard. When this happens, encourage your expert(s) or spokesman to do something to show support, like leaving a comment on the post or tweeting about it; public displays of affection go a long way on the Web.

The bottom line: There’s more to online outreach than “Twitbook.” Sometimes the best tool is the oldest: The telephone.

What’s your experience with the bloggers’ roundtable? What advice would you add?

A few recent posts from my language blog, Sprachgefuhl:

• “most important,” or “most importantly”?
• TIME Magazine? Time Magazine? Time magazine?
• Linguists vs. Lexicographers: Why Stylebooks Should Not Be Dictionaries
• Good Writing Is Good Writing
• Do You Love Grammar?

A version of this blog post appeared on Mashable on August 29, 2011.

How to sell social media

In business, definitions are everywhere. They’re your first line of defense in mission statements, job descriptions, expense accounts, statements of work, accounting principles, and the like. If you can’t define something, you’re left with Potter Stewart’s famous but ultimately unhelpful maxim, “I know it when I see it.”

Understandably, this is why a plethora of pundits have sought to corner the elusive term, “social media,” within a dictionary. . . .

Yet while definitions are important, to sell the field that everyone talks about but few can illuminate, we social media strategists need to reframe the conversation. Instead of striving for Merriam-Webster precision, we would do better if we focused on case studies.

Click here to continue reading.

This chart, from SEOmoz’s Rand Fishkin, may disabuse you—or someone you know—of that increasingly inflated notion. (I converted the GIF into a spreadsheet.)

A version of this blog post appeared on LindsayOlson.com on August 1, 2011.

“We’re gonna make your logo pop! We’re gonna make the IPREX globe spin! And we’re gonna make the buttons beautiful!”

“A button can be beautiful?” asked a skeptical Susan.

“Oh yeah!” beamed a confident Jesse.

It was at this moment that Jesse had Susan. He’d been muddling through the meeting, but this burst of bravura, energy and passion was sincere and infectious—a gust of fresh wind that I believe won him the contract to redesign SusanDavis.com.

Similarly, when I myself interviewed with Susan, things coasted along for the first 15 minutes. She asked about my experience; I provided conventional answers. Then she deployed her pet question: “If you were an animal, what would you be?”

”That’s easy,” I grinned. “I’d be a dog.” It was at this moment that I had Susan. With great pride and obvious pleasure, I regaled her with stories of my miniature schnauzer, Wyatt.

One final example. I was one of a three-person team interviewing a potential subcontractor. It was clear this husband-and-wife duo could do the job, but they lacked fire in the belly. And because it wasn’t clear that they really wanted the gig, it wasn’t clear if they’d be fun to work with.

Sensing this, my boss’s boss changed direction and pinged the pair with the following question: “Can you tell us about any of your extracurricular activities that relate to the military?”

The husband tilted his chair back, searched his memory, then tilted forward. “Sure,” Chris said, as he proceeded to uncork a heartfelt narrative about a recent weekend when he was playing video games. When his wife returned home, she told him about a veterans charity she had just read about. The story so moved Chris that he dropped his controller and stayed up all night voluntarily coding for the nonprofit.

“If these guys can sacrifice their lives for their country, I can sacrifice a night’s sleep,” he said with a gleam in his theretofore sleepy eyes. It was at this moment that he had us.

To an artist like Jesse, attention to the seeming minutia of Web design was no big deal. To a PR guy like me, naming five national reporters mattered more than discussing my dog. To an engineer like Chris, proposals ought to be won or lost on their merits, not on what the bidders do in their spare time.

Yet what all three of us failed to appreciate was the import of passion. Fortunately, we each were tossed a soft ball to rectify this. Not everyone is so lucky. It shouldn’t take prompting to light your fuse.

Passion, of course, isn’t a substitute for talent. It is, however, a key differentiator, revealing what makes you tick, what drives you, what you’re capable of achieving in the right circumstances. To exude such enthusiasm is to show character. To withhold it is to be average.

So, the next time you’re in an important meeting—be it an interview, a sales pitch, even a date—relax that uncomfortable façade, slacken your stilted smile, and unbottle your passion. No doubt, you’ll be more comfortable. And more successful.

A version of this blog post appeared on Tech Cocktail (July 18, 2011) and the Web site of the American Marketing Association—Washington, DC (July 21, 2011).

Mention the phrase “blogger engagement” to today’s marketer, and you’re likely to get an eager response, followed by self-professed ignorance. “We’d love to do that—we just don’t know how.”

To some, this scenario spells new business. (In part, this explains why many agencies separate their “digital” practice from their traditional ones.) Yet an honest blogger whisperer will let you in on a secret: If you can pitch a reporter, producer, or booker, you can pitch a blogger. After all, bloggers are just people—susceptible to the same charm-and-disarm techniques that every PR pro performs every day.

Indeed, the best way to understand bloggers is to view them as members of the media. Think of blogger engagement as public relations, albeit a new kind. Neither straight reporter nor pure pundit, the blogger is a hybrid creature who observes his own rules.

For example, you wouldn’t pitch the Joe Fridays at NYTimes.com, whose practices would make the Columbia School of Journalism proud, the same way you’d pitch the wits at Gawker Media, who aspire to an “angry-creative-underclass voice.” Instead, in order to get the results you want, it would behoove you to treat bloggers on their terms, not your own.

Here are nine of these terms—with the caveat that only after you know the rules is it ok to break them.

1. Write As if Your E-mail Will Be Published

Think of this as Joe Kennedy 101. The patriarch of the Kennedy family famously advised his children not to write “anything down that you wouldn’t want published on the front page of the New York Times.”

Indeed, if your pitch is good, your blogger may integrate your copy into his verbatim, without acknowledging his source. If you pitch is bad, your blogger may forward it to the Bad Pitch Blog. As SHIFT Communications advises, “If you pitch isn’t good enough to be published as is, don’t send it.”

2. Connect and Flatter

Think of this as Psychology 101. Like most things in life, blogger engagement is built on relationships. And relationships that flourish tend to sprout from common interests. As Lisa Barone, of Outspoken Media, advises (my emphasis):

“Snuggle me a little. You know you’re sending the same e-mail to 20 people. I know you’re sending the same e-mail to 20 people. But sometimes you gotta fake it to make me feel special and pretty … Woo me … Talk about how you grew up in the same hometown (only if you did). Comment on a post I wrote that gave you a bad case of the giggles, or how you think my Twitter feed should come with an NC-17 rating … I’ll be a lot more receptive once you’ve stroked my ego.”

In other words, your initial message is your opportunity to demonstrate that you’ve done more than copy and paste the blogger’s name and e-mail address. Show that you’ve taken the time to learn about this guy and are familiar with his work. Show that you’re someone worth engaging with.

A related point. Blogging is a personal and relational medium, so send e-mail blasts only when you must. Ask yourself: Do you treat messages in which you’re CCed differently from those in which you’re the only recipient?

3. Make Your Pitch

Think of this as Public Relations 101. The secret to PR: Make the blogger feel as though you’re doing him a favor, not asking for one yourself. Explain why the blogger should care about what you’re throwing him.

4. Exude Enthusiasm

Think of this as Showmanship 101. If you aren’t jumping for joy about what you’re pitching, your recipient won’t be, either. Enthusiasm is contagious. Spread it around.

5. Don’t Pitch—Talk

Think of this as Communications 101. Hacks have long relied on flacks. But bloggers, especially in tier one, tend to look at PR people askance. As Nick Denton, founder of Gawker Media, puts it, “Our sites are allergic to corporate boilerplate.”

This is understandable. For one, while it’s common to spam a hundred reporters with a press release, bloggers loathe releases. Instead, omit the manufactured quotes and summarize the key points—maybe in bullets for easy reading.

6. Be Brief

We live in an era of texts and tweets. According to blogger Brian Solis, “The escalator is the new elevator when it comes to pitching.” To wit: You now need to be both succinct and brief. This means resisting the urge to cram everything into a single message.

Instead of attaching PDFs and PowerPoints, use links generously. Your goal is to whet your blogger’s appetite, to spur an ongoing conversation, rather than a once-and-done correspondence.

7. Make the Ask

Think of this as Sales 101. Before you close the deal, you need to make it clear what the deal is. In the same way, don’t forget to tell your blogger why you’re e-mailing him. If you’re looking for him to write something, say so.

If you’re just introducing yourself or asking for feedback, say that. Be explicit without being Donald Trump.

8. Exploit the Subject Line

Think of this as Marketing 101. Most people devote all their energy to crafting a compelling pitch,  then wrap their labor in a cheap bow. That is, they treat the subject lines of their e-mail as an afterthought.

Big mistake. Your subject line is an opportunity. Like the headline of an article, its point is to persuade the reader to continue onward. Accordingly, make sure that your subject line does your body text justice.

9. Practice Full Disclosure

Someone’s paying you to talk with bloggers, a fact it behooves you to disclose. Some experts would advise you to begin your e-mail with something like, “Hi, I’m Jon Rick. I do online communications for the Department of Labor.” Others suggest that your signature block serve as your introduction.

Whatever you prefer, remember that not only is transparency important in itself. Transparency also breeds trust.

A version of this blog post appeared on Blogcritics on June 15, 2011.

It’s only natural. Each time you glance at your stats, you can’t help but notice that the number of your followers has dipped. Who defriended me, you wonder? Sometimes you have an inkling. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a way to confirm your inkling, a service that automatically notified you of your shrinking status? Let’s review the top four free services that promise to do just that.

1. Goodbye, Buddy. If you follow @GoodbyeBuddy, within a day or two, this bare-bones program will chart anyone who’s unfollowed you. It checks for changes “many times a day,” and publishes the result every two.

• The pros: The FAQ is funny.
• The cons: The only way to see who’s unfollowed you is to visit GoodbyeBuddy.com; there’s no way to be notified—unless you pay $2/month, in which case you’ll get a DM for each defriending.
• The takeaway: It doesn’t work. Despite having registered with the service about two weeks ago—and been unfollowed by more than a dozen people since then—Goodbye, Buddy reports that I have “0 unfollowers.”

2. TwentyFeet. TwentyFeet presents an array of tidy charts about your Twitter and Facebook accounts. (For $2.50/year/service, you also can learn more than you wanted to know about your bit.ly, MySpace, YouTube, and—WTF—Google Analytics accounts.)

• The pros: Lots of data. And bonus points to founder Martin Seibert for responding to tweets.
• The cons: No notification; the only way to see who’s unfollowed you is to visit TwentyFeet.com, where you need jump through several screens.
• The takeaway: If you have patience and love data, give TwentyFeet a whirl.

3. Qwitter. Qwitter sends you a daily e-mail showing your former friends.

• The pros: It’s been around for a while.
• The cons: The “daily” e-mails arrive every month or so; the last one I received came on April 6.
• The takeaway: Would be great if it worked as promised.

4. Nutshell Mail. Owned by Constant Contact, NutshellMail delivers a daily e-mail detailing your activities on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare, Yelp, and Citysearch. (It also tracks MySpace, but who uses MySpace anymore?)

• The pros: Easy to use and powerful. You can specify the time of your e-mail, and customize which data the message displays.
• The cons: None. (The e-mails don’t even have ads.)
• The takeaway: To use NutshellMail is to love it.

Addendum: As it happens, the Gadget Cage blog recently ran a similar post.

A version of this blog post appeared on Technorati (June 13, 2011), GovLoop (June 14, 2011), and K Street Cafe (June 14, 2011).

One of the most overlooked opportunities for online marketing also happens to be one of the most ubiquitous: the e-mail “signature”

One of the first things new employees do is create a “signature block” for their e-mails. These half a dozen lines or so, consisting of your contact info, plop themselves at the bottom of every e-mail you send. Yet few people put any thought into their e-signature, let alone alter it after it’s typed.

This modus operandi reflects a 1.0 mindset. Let’s upgrade it.

First, think of the e-signature the same way you think of business cards: they reflect upon your organization’s brand. This is why every employee’s card looks the same and contains the same basic information: because each flows from a uniform design template.

Yet most organizations treat the e-signature as an afterthought. They’ll hire someone to design a business card, stationary, and even envelopes and labels, but utterly neglect e-mail—which, of course, reaches far more people than do the aforementioned materials combined.

As a result, each employee fashions his own e-signature. Some people include their job title; others don’t. Some link to the company Web site; others link to the company’s social networks (or their own). Some prefer hyphens or periods to parenthesis in listing a phone number; others want to abbreviate “Parkway” as “Pkwy” or “Pkwy.” Still others include a quotation, while others favor fancy fonts.

Everyone gets the basic info across, but these differences make your organization look sloppy and unprofessional. After all, you wouldn’t allow each employee to design his own business card, would you?

By contrast, let’s say you developed a template that standardized these data, so that everyone’s e-signature was uniform. The template might exhibit your organization’s colors, publicize your tagline, link to your Web site. Your recipients, no doubt, would be impressed that your firm is organized, detail-minded, savvy.

Equally important—yet overlooked even more—are e-mails sent from your smartphone. By default, a mobile signature consists of advertising such as “Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry” or “Sent via iPhone.” But just as you wouldn’t let the vendor that printed your annual reports stamp its imprint on each page, so you shouldn’t give corporate giants free ads in your e-mails. Instead, reserve this precious real estate for yourself (or at least for humor, as in “Sent using my thumbs; please excuse typoss”).

Finally, reconsider the content of your e-signature. Rather than limiting yourself to titles and numbers, why not add a line to promote one of your current projects? As with Twitter, a succinct, catchy sentence that’s hyperlinked is most effective. For example, given a project for the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, you might write, “How do you rebrand general aviation’s leading advocate?”

Again, consistency is crucial. To maximize your branding, not only should everyone participate; everyone also should use the same one-liners and change them at agreed-upon intervals.

None of these suggestions is revolutionary. To the contrary, they constitute modest tweaks. Yet it’s through such seeming minutiae that good brands distinguish themselves from great brands.

Which are you?

Publishing this correspondence has long been on my to-do list. Today, I’m delighted to report that I’m now in the process of crossing this task off the list. Here are a few posts I recently published on my other blog, Sprachgefuhl:

• How does “suasion” differ from “persuasion”?
• How does “racialist” differ from “racist”?
• What does “QED” mean?
• How does “entitle” differ from “title”?
• How does a “justice” differ from a “judge”?

Earlier this month, the Daily Beast broke the news that Facebook had hired a powerhouse PR agency to plant negative stories about Google in the press. The agency, Burson-Marstellar, deployed two of its big guns for the campaign: Former CNBC tech reporter Jim Goldman and former Hotline executive editor John Mercurio.

In one e-mail, Mercurio offered to help write and place an op-ed if the recipient, blogger Chris Soghoian, would lend his name to it. The savvy Soghoian asked who was bankrolling the campaign, and when Mercurio declined to say, Soghoian made the e-mails public.

What makes this incident interesting is that on one hand, Mercurio did many things right. He used a descriptive subject line: “Op-Ed Opportunity: Google Quietly Launches Sweeping Violation of User Privacy.” His first sentence succinctly and directly summarized the ask. He provided a list of talking points, each supported by a link to an independent sources. And his offer was tantalizing: Who in DC wouldn’t want a byline in the Washington Post?

On the other hand, Mercurio’s pitch suffered from fundamental flaws. He made no effort to connect with Soghoian. He employed the tone of a pitch rather than a conversation. And he refused to disclose his client—a fatal fuse that Soghoian knew to light.

Three minutes after he received the e-mail, Soghoian replied. “Who’s paying for this?” he asked.

The obvious lesson here is the “absolute importance” of transparency, as Burson later said in a statement. But what got lost in the ensuing brouhaha were the positive qualities of Mercurio’s pitch. How, then, do you build on Mercurio’s good practices while avoiding his bad ones?

Last week, I answered this question in a presentation to the DC chapter of the American Marketing Association. My title plays off Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, since the essence of my advice derives from Carnegie’s timeless guidelines.

Addendum (6/13/2011): Peter Himler adds two points worth quoting about Burson:

1. The firm likely was “blinded by the allure of an irresistible new and most notable client.”

2. “This gaffe was an agency aberration, not the standard practice.”

A version of this blog post appeared on the Rock Creek Blog on January 26, 2011.

Last month, TechCrunch reported that the popular bookmarking site, Delicious, is trapped in “purgatory”: Owner Yahoo wants to sell the property, but in a way that protects Yahoo’s proprietary’s technology that Delicious shares with the rest of the purple family. Yet whatever its fate, Delicious continues to offer a service that’s not only superior to the competition but that also should be part of every digital PR toolkit. Here’s why.

Quick: Your client asks you for a list of articles about X. You’ve been sent many of these articles before—whether through Google Alerts, forwarded links, or even hard copies—yet unless you’re paying to use a service such as Vocus, you likely haven’t been compiling clips. What do you do?

• Option 1: Wade through old e-mails.
• Option 2: Ask a colleague.
• Option 3: Thank God for Google.
• Option 4: Call up Delicious.com.

The first three options suffer from at least one of the following headaches: They’re expensive, time-consuming, cumbersome, inefficient, or stovepiped. By contrast, option four—social bookmarking—is free, easy, powerful, and centralized.

This last point is especially important. It means that your data aren’t walled-off on an internal hard drive, but stored in the cloud. No longer do you need to be in the office to access a shared drive or beg the IT department for admin privileges; you just need access to Delicious.com.

The value of bookmarking comes alive when you see it in action. For example: Talking with a reporter about your advanced research department? Refer her to all the articles that have been written about HSARPA. Got an e-mail from a colleague about that program called Cell-All? Peruse Cell-All’s archive. Does your boss want to see a list of the articles in which he’s quoted? Send him here.

(While these examples come from the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate, a client I’ve supported, other local companies actively using Delicious include the Sunlight Foundation, Jess3, Engage, and MiXT Media.)

As for the “social” part of bookmarking, not only are your clips public (unless you choose otherwise), but Delicious also allows you to see who else is logging the same articles. You then can “friend” these folks and use their links to broaden your reading sources.

To be sure, Delicious isn’t heaven. It works only with articles that appeared somewhere online. It stores only an excerpt rather than the full text. And it can’t sort by publication date. Yet, if nothing else, isn’t bookmarking better than what you’re doing now?

With a title like The Abs Diet: The Six-Week Plan to Flatten Your Stomach and Keep You Lean, you’d think this book would be an infomercial, dreamed up by a biz-dev-happy marketer. Although I can’t confirm or deny this, not having actually read the book, the below excerpt makes a surprisingly reflective statement about the importance of your midsection.

“Take the person with a six-pack. He’s the icon of strength and good health. He’s lean; he’s strong; he looks good in clothes; he looks good without clothes. Defined abs, in many ways, have defined fitness. But they define something else: They’re the hallmark of a person who’s in control of his body and, as such, in control of his health. . . . When you have abs, you’re telling the world that you’re a disciplined, motivated, confident, and healthy person.”

By the same token, if you let your body sag, the message you’re broadcasting is one of apathy and laziness. If you can make time to read this post, make time to do a few crunches.

Addendum (6/13/2011): A fitting poscript: The day before I published this post, the New York Times nailed the legacy of Jack LaLanna:

“What he left behind when he died last week, at the toned old age of 96, was not only a sweaty culture of relentless crunching and spinning but also the notion that fitness equals character, and that self-actualization begins with the self-discipline to get and stay in shape. In the post-LaLanne landscape, it’s not the eyes but the abdominals that are windows to the soul …

“Perspiration is a gateway to, and reflection of, higher virtues … A ‘new you’ usually means a trimmer, tauter version, not someone who has learned to speak Mandarin or picked up woodworking skills …

“Steadiness of exercise signals sturdiness of temperament, and physical leanness connotes mental toughness …

“Listen to the way doughy contestants are introduced (and how they talk about themselves) on TV weight-loss shows, which promise redemption through rigorous calisthenics. Saddlebag thighs and love handles are woven together with career frustrations and domestic strife—all of them the wages of sloppy living. Moving past these humiliations and rejoining polite society are contingent on serious gym time.

Addendum (6/19/2011): On the other hand,  Julian Michael points out that fat “implies zero about your value as a person in this world.”

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We’ve all heard the complaint before: Why doesn’t my Web page appear when I Google [fill in the blank]? To paraphrase George Berkeley: If a Web page is published but can’t be indexed, is it still published?

Let’s face it: If you don’t show up in a search engine’s first 10 results, you don’t exist. Indeed, that Google has made predictive search the default setting only hardens this race to the top. (According to the latest report from comScore, Google continues to process two out of every three queries in the U.S.)

Fortunately, this is a solvable problem—especially if your content contains a unique word or phrase.

Consider this article from S&T Snapshots, a government e-zine I used to edit. Its subject is something called “SportEvac.” As the above screen shot shows, simply by adding this word to (1) the Web page’s title (“DHS | SportEvac: Choreographing a Stadium Stampede”) and (2) its in-body header (“SportEvac: Choreographing a Stadium Stampede”), we ensured that Google would find it and rank it highly—in fact, first.

Sure, the article itself is dotted with references to SportEvac, but this isn’t enough. Google prizes repetition, and in the right places.

Similarly, Google [“MagViz”] and [“Cell-All”]. The reason the Snapshots on these subjects appear so highly—both second—isn’t a secret. It’s the result of search engine optimization.

By contrast, Google [“LED Incapacitator”]. Nowhere in the top 50 results is the Snapshot that illustrates this so-called puke ray. Why not? Because neither the page title (“DHS | S&T Snapshots – Borders & Maritime”) nor the in-body header (“Enough to Make You Sick”) mentions “LED Incapacitator.”

By adding the key word or phrase to the key places, you too can master the Google game.

This past summer, I delivered a presentation on how to write better. My intent wasn’t to rehash the rules of grammar but to leave people with handy, memorable tips they could recognize and immediately apply to their own copy.

A version of this blog post appeared in PRWeek on December 17, 2010.

After a conference or happy hour, many people find their pockets stuffed with business cards. If it was a productive event, the next morning you may be unable to pair each card with a face.

For the faces you remember, it’s customary to send off a nice-to-meet-you-hope-to-see-you-again e-mail. Often, the reply is just as trite.

This is the 1.0 way to follow-up: toilsome and monotonous. First you need to remember what you discussed, then you need to craft a non-cliched missive. Then, when the need arises for a real follow-up, you run into e-mail’s static limitations.

Consider this all-too-common scenario. After swapping e-pleasantries, a few weeks pass, then months. Suddenly it’s a year later and you’re trying to get a meeting with the head of advertising at the Chamber of Commerce. Wait—doesn’t that woman you met at the reception on K Street work there?

You race through your inbox, your deleted items folder, your auto-archive files. If you’re lucky, you find the messages. Then you dig through your business card stack, Rolodex, and address book, hoping to piece together a connection you made—a mutual friend, a place, hobby, anything. Finally, you Google her. Among the top search results: links to her social networking (socnet) profiles.

If you’re lucky, this research jogs your memory; you both grew up in San Diego! And yet, there’s no avoiding that your entire relationship consists of 15 minutes in person and two nondescriptive e-mails, both of which took place last winter.

By contrast, what if you had initially followed-up via a socnet? What if you had friended Jane on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn?

Not only would this have obviated a greeting—you simply click the “Follow” or “Add As Friend” button—it also would have allowed you to stay in touch and get to know one another. Indeed, since most people use an avatar, each time her name crossed your news feed, you would have seen her headshot.

Now, one year later, when you want to reach Jane, you’re not forced to say, “Remember me?” Instead, you know her a little, and probably discovered that you have several things in common.

This is the 2.0 way to follow-up: effortless, entertaining, and dynamic.

Try it the next time you find yourself beginning an e-mail with the line, “Nice to meet you…”

A version of this blog post appeared on GovLoop on November 29, 2010.

Last month, President Obama signed into law a bill that tells Uncle Sam to speak and write plainly. The bill echoed Obama’s executive order in May instructing agencies to write job announcements in clear language.

Unfortunately, one smart-ass TSAer at BWI airport didn’t get the memos. Happily, her supervisor did. The New York Times reports:

The many people in line, grim-faced but uncomplaining, were met first by Jennifer Adams, 33, who assessed each traveler with a smile and a subtlety that suggested she was merely an official greeter. She joined the T.S.A. eight years ago, after earning a college degree in communications management, and has risen to become a supervisory behavior detection officer.

What does that mean?

“I’m entrusted to report here and protect the homeland,” she said.

“Give a real answer,” Mr. Burdette advised.

“I look for anomalies in the behaviors of the flying public,” Ms. Adams said. A coat too heavy for the season. Averted eyes when asked about carry-on luggage. “Anything that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up,” she said.

Was that so hard?

A version of this blog post appeared on LindsayOlson.com on November 23, 2010.

In the current edition of her e-newsletter, Claire Kittle, who runs the Talent Marketstaffing agency, recounts an anecdote that immediately rang true for me. With Claire’s permission, I’m reprinting the story, which I’ve edited slightly.

I get dozens of applications every day, and you would be amazed to see how many seemingly intelligent candidates do not follow instructions. If I had to put a number on it, I’d estimate that 50% of applicants fail to send me what my clients request.

I used to give all candidates the benefit of the doubt. I would follow-up with them and ask for the information they neglected to send the first time. But I learned that those same candidates often still fail to follow instructions on the second (and third!) attempts, and worse—they frequently get belligerent about being asked for more information!

Here’s a sample scenario:

Me: “Are you free for a phone interview Friday at noon? If so, what’s the best number where I can call you?”

Candidate: “Yes, that will work!”

Sigh. Now I’ll only throw the life preserver to candidates with very strong resumes, but I still file away the fact they didn’t send the right information off the bat.

All this prompts the question: If a candidate can’t follow instructions for a job application, how will that person perform on the job? Will he take direction? Will his work be sloppy? How will he treat your customers? It’s hard to say for sure, but the initial data points don’t bode well for his future as an employee.

Indeed, although I don’t work in HR, I encounter this bugbear routinely. A recent example:

Vendor: “Please provide profile details.”

Me: “Can you let me know if you can’t get this info from the document I sent this morning?”

The vendor’s response? Silence. Apparently, she could; it was just easier to ask someone than to find a previous e-mail herself.

I learned this passive-aggressive technique from an old boss. Rather than explicitly point out a mistake I had made, he would take the mistake to its logical conclusion. For example, if I wrote that a campaign would run from April-March (rather than March-April), he might reply, “When did our month-long budget get extended to a year?” While my first reaction was, Huh?, upon reflection I appreciated the humor—and gentle guidance.

So, what can we do to minimize these miscommunications? While people will always and forever be lazy, the principles of Web writing suggest separating out anything crucial from the body text. To wit: Any questions or requests should be put in (1) list (2) format, or  at least be bolded or highlighted. The extra time this takes upfront will save you from wasting time down the road.