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).
This is why, when we first sit down with someone, we begin by contextualizing what it is that we do for a living. Instead of tossing around lingo such as “hashtags,” “Klout,” or “search engine optimization,” we present five simple slides on “how to think of social media” (see above).
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.
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.
“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.
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).
The next big thing is always around the click
The pace and power of Web-fueled innovation is stunning. One day we’re swearing by Outlook; the next, we can’t live without Gmail. These sea changes exemplify the beauty of the net: greener waters are but a click away. Indeed, the list of tech titans that could have surfed a wave to even greater heights, but missed the boat, is long and instructive.
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.
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.
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. For instance, Duct Tape Marketing defines the phenomenon as “the use of technology combined with social interaction.” Wikipedia prefers “Web-based and mobile technologies.” Booz Allen Hamilton points to “electronic tools, technologies, and platforms.”
Got that? If you don’t follow, your clients won’t either.
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.