On blogs, advertising, buying coverage, independence (and CTIA)
I’m off to CTIA this Saturday. I’ve had hundreds upon hundreds of invitations to meet … strangely, precious few PR companies were up for paying for my time in order to do a decent profile of their client/s services. There’s a few evaluating the offer but I suspect, in the end, $500 is quite steep when it comes to a preallocated budget that the PR is expecting to receive in full.
Here’s what I was offering to all the companies whose pitches were relevant to the SMS Text News audience:
– A guaranteed interview/profile on SMS Text News
– 1 hour interview with executive(s) focusing on the company’s key story or news piece
– 2-3 minute video interview published on the site during the CTIA week
– The ability for me to take up to half a day to sit down, analyse and then write up a profile/interview and publish on SMS Text News
Total cost? $500. 250 quid.
I thought that was reasonable. As predicted by a few readers when I published a week or so ago, almost every public relations professional has politely declined my offer. I actually, in the end, only sent the offer to about 15 who were requesting interviews.
When I talk to companies directly — in particularly their marketing managers — and explain that I don’t have a multimillion pound expense budget behind me, they’ve been very receptive, indicating that a $300-500 fee to cover costs is no issue, as it will enable me to take the time to sit down with their executives and deliver you, the reader, what I consider to be an excellent piece of coverage. Rather than a knocked-up quickie post.
What’s quite fascinating is that many companies, especially some of the bigger players, really like qualified, independent coverage from sites such as SMS Text News. I regularly do blog consultancy and awareness training for many companies — and from these face to face events, I see quite a dichotomy beginning to arise. Companies want coverage. They can’t buy coverage. At least, that’s what the public relations industry tells them. You need to pay $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000 a month to a PR professional who will do their best to reach out and get ‘free’ coverage on your behalf. Still accurate when it comes to mainstream media (or is it? If you switched off the PR industry tomorrow, mainstream media would fall over immediately), however when it comes to blogs — independent blogs such as SMS Text News — there’s a different model available that most companies, and their PRs, aren’t aware of. Pay for it.
I most certainly don’t mean pay for editorial coverage. Absolutely not. Pay for coverage and pay for attention. If you understand and recognise that blogs fronted by humans (i.e. like me and SMS Text News) rely highly on the reputation of the main contributors, then the question of ‘paying for coverage’ vs editorial independence becomes irrelevant. I can’t write rubbish. I can’t write tosh. I can’t cut and paste public relations material and pass it off as my own work. I can’t publish advertiser written tosh. Quickly, the audience would disappear. You’d just stop reading if you thought this site was delivering a bunch of bollocks each morning. Therefore I have to be particularly careful what I write because it’s my own personal reputation (archived by Google for years to come… hello kids!) that’s on the line. Most readers recognise this when it comes to the question of funding. If a company is willing to support SMS Text News — whether through advertising, at one of the unlimited drinks events and so on, clearly there’s a quid pro quo. That company wants my attention — but I’m just the gateway — it’s your attention they want. They’d also most probably like your business. And if you’re well disposed to SMS Text News, you’re more likely to give ‘X’ a call to discuss possibilities, right? Hopefully.
The challenge is recognising that paying a public relations professional to interact with me is, actually, not required. Far sighted, forward thinking marketing managers get it. I talk to many on a regular basis.
As for getting coverage, simply send me an email and provided I’ve got time to read it, I’ll do my best to post up your news. If you’d like to guarantee a ‘service level’, if you’d like to reach the niche audience of this on a regular basis, advertise with me. It is that simple. This comes as a surprise for many marketing managers spending $10,000 per month with PR agencies.
“But you’re independent, you have to be independent! You can’t be independent if people are paying you!” some cry, when we discuss this subject.
The first thing I point out is that I am not independent. Absolutely not! If anything, I’m far worse than a journalist. I do what I want. I often follow whatever’s on my mind at a particular point. I have, for example, been giving Nokia a particularly hard time over the last few days because when I ‘updated’ by E90, the restore didn’t work very well at all. I suppose I’m free to choose what I write about and in that context I’m independent. However if you’re advertising, I’m most probably going to be well disposed to covering your activities. Interesting point: If Nokia were an anchor advertiser here, would I have written the diatribes I’ve done recently? I think so. But I’m pretty confident I wouldn’t have used the words ‘bollocks’, ‘shit’ or ‘crap’. It’s just not polite if someone’s paying, is it? To be clear, they’d be paying me. Not some multimillion pound publishing house. So I would certainly moderate my editorial a little bit — a bit less sharp, I reckon. But I couldn’t avoid writing what I am thinking and feeling. I have my own issues. I think RAZRs are ridiculous. I think it’s a total crime to use a stylus or wear your mobile phone on a belt clip. Your average New York Times journalist can’t be so opinionated. They have a duty to be truly independent and objective. I, on the other hand, am free to express whatever whim I wish — provided it’s entertaining, informative or relevant to the audience.
If I get an email from Clickatell, the chief advertiser here at SMS Text News, I shove everything else out the way and give priority to them. If there’s a story there, I’ll write one. I don’t give them editorial control at all. But I’ll definitely give them attention. Similarly if I see Clickatell on the caller-id, I answer. Everybody else goes to voicemail (or, er, SpinVox).
I don’t think I’d have a problem describing a Clickatell service as ‘ridiculous’ or crazy, crap or stupid (as I’ve been doing with Nokia recently). I’ve never come across a situation where that’s been remotely relevant though. And since I have direct access to Clickatell, I can get straight to one of their executives and resolve the matter — or at least find out if there’s a fix planned — very quickly. I think it’s probably of more value for all concerned to have me publish a problem or an issue, and then publish a resolution when one appears.
Anyway back to CTIA.
I have income from other sources, yet I more or less qualify myself as a professional blogger. That is, I generally do ‘this’ — blog — full time and I’m not backed by a big company paying the expenses. So when I fly out to CTIA this week, it’s me who’s paying for the privilege.
When I hundreds of requests for interview, I was quite disheartened because each and every one that I’ve glanced over is relevant in some way to SMS Text News. There’s a time issue though. I can’t meet everyone. At one point, when I had 25 interview requests, I thought ‘Wicked!’ and reckoned I could do some sort of live-blog kind of coverage with them all, one hour after each. Then I got more and more offers — as most (real) journalists do I suspect. I began to get a little disappointed, then hugely disappointed. I feel for each of the companies that have emailed. Unfortunately I can’t cover them all. How disappointing.
What have I found myself doing?
Well, since I’m paying for this trip, I need to guarantee success. I can’t risk spending a few hours with a company that I don’t quite know. Instead I’ve done as we all do, and focused on the big players. Why? Well, I know their brands. I know there will be something to report. I’ve confirmed my reservation for the Yahoo Mobile launch, the Microsoft one and the Accel Ventures one. I’m off to ShowStoppers and the Sprint event. Aaaand that’s more or less it.
Disappointing. I’m disappointed with myself. But then I want to watch the keynotes, I want to make sure I can deliver some good coverage for the site and I don’t want to be swamped with hour upon hour of meetings. I’m paying therefore I’m choosing.
I thought it would be good (and certainly and interesting exercise) to offer some companies guaranteed attention in return for money that would help me a) offset the expense of the trip and b) contribute toward keeping the lights on here at SMS Text News. No takers so far so I’m going to sprinkle my attention as I see fit. If you’ve got any recommendations for companies I should meet, let me know — whack me an email and I’ll certainly do my best to meet them.
Finally: If you’d like sustained blog coverage and attention, call up the relevant blogger and ask them what you can do to support them. Make it clear to the blogger that you’d like them to guarantee some editorial attention on a regular basis in return. Some will decline. Others will readily accept provided you don’t demand editorial control.
