Thanking Bloggers: Copywrite, Ink.

While there are thousands of bloggers who deserve a ton of thanks as the Bloggers Unite campaign unfolds today, I wanted to thank a few who took the time to help promote Bloggers Unite and Copywrite, Ink.’s “Blog For Hope Competition” in cooperation with BlogCatalog. Many are BC members; several are not.

Jim Stroud. Jim is a "searchologist" and presently serves Microsoft as a technical sourcing consultant and is a regular contributor to Microsoft’s Technical Careers blog.

Idea Grove. Idea Grove (and the Media Orchard blog) is led by Scott Baradell, a former Fortune 1000 media company executive and award-winning journalist. He often brings reality to the public relations industry by pointing out what so many forget.

Jericho Monster. Jane Sweat is one of the leading fan advocates for the return of the television show Jericho. Since she started, she has become an expert in consumer marketing.

National Business Community Blog. Sure, the National Business Community Blog is a Copywrite, Ink. program but Kim Becker has taken over the management of it. Frankly, I don’t thank her enough.

A Piece of Peace by RubyShooZ. At the end of her post, Ruby placed one of my favorite quotes from Edmund Burke: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

My Super Amazing Blog of Everything by TriblyKat. Tribly Kat is a personal blogger who writes about, well, everything she finds interesting. She not only joined Bloggers Unite but also created a Topix post for people to leave their links outside of BlogCatalog.

Ramblings From the Mermaid Tavern. Poseidon’s Muse is a personal blogger with a profound respect and fascination for world culture, art, literature and religion.

Blog Village News. Rosemary says she is retired, but she and her family maintain several antique and collectible shops that sell everything from advertising collectibles to sports memorabilia.

A Bunch Of Wordz, a personal blog/Ezine writer who picked up on the buzz “Saving The World One Blog At A Time.”

If It’s Not One Thing It’s Your Mother and The Crone’s Daily Groan and Living On The Edge of Madness. Bairbre Sine’s pre-post promotion across three blogs made me laugh with the suggestion that someone might consider posting about Republican abuse.

365 Dias. Fabio Santos is an online marketer from Brazil who promoted the event, and the “Blog For Hope Post” competition we’re sponsoring, yesterday.

Radio Free Jericho, Jericho Rally Point, and Nuts for Jericho are three Jericho fan forums that have dedicated some behind-the-scenes time to support this effort, as has the Jericho fans who frequent the CBS Jericho site.

Recruiting Bloggers. Recruiting Animal, who runs the site, has always been great to allow me to add the occasional Maybe It Pays To Blog For Good do-good post. Ditto for Jason Davis at RecruitingBlogs too.

Contest Girl is a directory of online sweepstakes, contests, and freebies. Linda’s is also one of several contest sites that have promoted the contest portion of Bloggers Unite.

I know I missed a ton of people, including all those who supported a Technorati WTF and Digg as well. Thank you all so very, very much for supporting this effort. And of course, Antony Berkman and the BlogCatalog team. You guys rock!

And if you haven’t posted about abuse today, don’t forget that there is still time to do so. Any blogger who participates has until Oct. 10 to collect some measurements and send their link to blogforhope@yahoo.com. For details, visit our original contest post. We have more recognition to extend in the weeks ahead.

Blogging Against Abuse: Bloggers Unite

Depending on how fast you read this post, about 25 children will be abused, assaulted, or caused severe physical and emotional harm. Many of them by people they trust — their moms, dads, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, guardians, teachers, coaches, ministers.

That’s one child, every 11 seconds. One right now.

Those are the obvious cases, statistics and reports chronicled by the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS), which is a federally sponsored effort that collects and analyzes annual data on child abuse and neglect. One right now. You can find one of the most recent summaries from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services here.

As defined, these children — one right now — are only counted if the act or failure to act on the part of the parent or caretaker results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation (or failure to act, which presents imminent risk of serious harm). That doesn’t count every child — one right now — whose abuse will never be identified, recorded, or reported.

That’s 3.3 million cases reported every year. One right now.

In other words, while newspapers and public opinion might be swayed by these numbers — the real numbers that go unreported, hidden away, and sometimes even blocked by the survivors of abuse are much larger. Equally alarming are those cases that do not even qualify as abuse — one right now.

Somewhere in America, for every one of the approximately 90,000 children who will be sexually abused this year, there will be thousands more who are told they are “worthless,” “lazy,” “ugly,” “bad,” “just like their bum father,” and many other disparaging labels assigned to them by the most trusted source of information — a parent.

One right now.

Parents, in fact, account for more than 90 percent of the perpetrators of abuse, many of whom are ignorant of the outcome that is sometimes spurred on by their own feelings of inadequacy and lack of control. This post won’t change that. But maybe it will help one child, one right now, for some parents to know that how they were raised isn’t the only way. Without any judgment whatsoever, maybe it’s fair to simply point out that their justifications are incorrect. Here are some less obvious forms of abuse.

• Name-calling, putdowns, or assigning statements like “why do you always embarrass me” can work their way into your child’s self-esteem. One right now.

• Discounting major accomplishments because you are too busy on the phone or computer to hear what happened during their day erodes their self-worth.

• Declaring, sharing, and apologizing that you just don’t know why your children are “pigs” is really a form of public humiliation. One right now.

• Threatening body language such as towering above them, raising a hand, or displaying weapons like belts and cooking spoons.

It’s these little injuries delivered sometimes every day — one right now — that shape these children into the people they will become long after the parents’ responsibilities end. Even the best parents might pause now again to ask themselves simple questions: do you spend more time on your commute to work than you do with your child? One right now.

The image above is a reworked billboard from our participation in a campaign for United Way of Southern Nevada several years ago. It caused a lot of controversy because I had only included “dads” as the perpetrators, but it brought attention to where attention was needed.

Of course, even I knew then that while issue ads can be striking, the United Way needed a message that was more apt to raise funds to solve the problem. The following year, we helped them launch their “Great Results Start With U. United Way” campaign that later became “Great results start with you.” It was the longest running, most successful campaign in their history.

I wanted to mention this campaign today because it lends well to the concept of “Bloggers Unite because great results really do start with you. One blogger. One post. One right now. One topic. At a time. One right now.

Please take a moment to read and submit your Bloggers Unite post against abuse to our competition, win $250 for a charity (among other prizes), and receive some well-deserved recognition that will inspire others to lend their voices against abuse; which is important to them. One right now.

You can also purchase a T-shirt with the image above from the Bloggers Unite store. Proceeds from that item this year will be donated to Prevent Child Abuse. Proceeds from other Bloggers Unite items will be donated to aid against animal abuse as requested by our friends at BlogCatalog.

Later today, I will be adding a thank you for all those who came out early to support our "Blog For Hope Post" competition that is underway and BlogCatalog in this very important effort. If you haven't joined this effort today, there is still time. It only takes one.

Advertising Respect: Adweek and JWT

According to a study released yesterday by Adweek and J. Walter Thompson (JWT), only 14 percent of those surveyed say they respect ad people.

Gasp! Sometimes, I am ad people. That’s me! (Well, sometimes anyway.) So maybe I need public relations help. Or perhaps some journalists might weigh in. Oh right, never mind.

With Mad Men on AMC capturing positive reviews and ad guys coming out of the woodwork to join some playful Ad Legends cameos, is it any wonder?

Maybe it’s because as niche sub-consultants who wear many hats, we don’t always see all the glam slam that is associated with the industry. I guess I’m still stuck on a concept my creative director knocked into my head years ago … “great advertising isn’t always about being clever, it’s hard work.”

I laughed at him then, but it didn’t take too long to find out he was right. Maybe not at the big firms, but certainly everybody I’ve worked with (including a couple of big firms). Take a ton of research, apply strategic communication, and just before you become so left brained you’ll never have a creative idea again, you push your thinking to the right and come up with something that conveys the right message to the right audience while being exciting enough to get noticed.

Here’s a reality check. The survey only accounts for 966 Americans in a random online survey. That’s not only a pretty slim number, but it was also conducted in an environment that is largely predisposed against advertising. And the real irony, the survey was conducted by an advertising agency.

What the survey does do is provide meaningful discussion points.

• 84 percent agree (strongly/somewhat), “Too many things are over-hyped now."

Just yesterday, I said buzz was not a measure. Maybe consumers agree.

• 74 percent agree, “The Internet helps me make better product choices."

This finding has social media pundits in a tizzy claiming consumers want authentic engagement. (As if social media was devoid of hype; as if pretending to be someone’s “friend” to sell them is somehow better than selling them something.)

• 72 percent agree, “I get tired of people trying to grab my attention and sell me stuff.”

Which is a tremendous irony in consumer behavior considering Harris Interactive research that suggests 100 percent the opposite.

• 52 percent agree, “There’s too much advertising — I would support stricter limits.”

These folks obviously need a trip here.

• 47 percent regard “Advertising as background noise.”

Bad advertising is background noise, you bet. Only about 10-20 percent of advertising is any good, and I’m being generous. Most ads, ironically, are company-dictated because, well, companies don’t trust ad people either.

And the list goes on. And on.

“The study significantly uncovers a basic disconnect between the ad industry’s ‘world view’ and that of its audience,” JWT reports. And that is probably the most truthful statement in the entire report.

As for the rest, even if we were to consider the sampling size to be valid, here’s the real rub in this report. Ad people might have only scored 14 percent as a repected profession, but they still beat national politicians and car salesmen. Lawyers only scored 19 percent and journalists (truth tellers) a dismal 26 percent. The ONLY two other professions even asked about were teachers and doctors, and they barely broke into the 70s.

Funny. Maybe advertisers are not the only ones using hype these days. That Adweek hyperbole headline really drew me in for a minute.

Hmmm ... maybe consumers are just not all that trusting anymore. Sometimes, I don’t blame them. (Hat tip: Recruiting Animal.)

Measuring Buzz: Strategic Meets Social Media

It is no surprise to me that most social measures are misused. Many of the misconceptions mimic erroneous measures that are currently misapplied by the majority of public relations firms (not all of them) and ad sales teams.

By bridging traditional communication example with the current misapplication of measurement in social media, the error becomes even more apparent. We know a lot about that; we see it every day.

Buzz is the easy part.

In the late 1990s, my niche sub-consulting company did something out of the ordinary. We launched a split local/international trade publication for concierges and hospitality professionals.

At the time, the concierge profession was relatively new to Las Vegas, which had previously relied exclusively on VIP guest services (for guests who gambled a certain amount, based on coin in or average table wager). Between their interesting and sometimes funny stories (secrets inside Las Vegas and from around the world), front line customer service tips, and hospitality management content with interviews from key people within the industry, we had a hit concept — enough to score the front page of the Las Vegas Sun business section and dozens of write-ups in other publications.

This was a huge success because start-up publications are a dime a dozen in Las Vegas and established publications, not surprisingly, are usually unwilling to write about another upstart that might compete for advertising revenue. We were the exception.

But then again, we had a strategic plan, the right editorial mix, and knew how to communicate our message. In fact, some publishers not only gave us a leg up, but they also became content sponsors.

Buzz is not a measure.

Where the division between publicity and public relations sometimes lies is in the execution of the message and in what is measured. Had this public relations effort been measured by some firms, the measures would have been focused on the buzz.

Some might have counted column inches and reported that those column inches were worth the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars in advertising. They may have claimed that the number of “hits” the release received and media comments meant something.

They may have even claimed that they had “special relationships” with certain reporters to make sure the story got play. Or that if the release in its entirety, then that means something about the firm. Silly, I know.

Defining tangible measures.

All the media attention we received was appreciated, but not our measure. Sure, we tracked it, but that is only the tip of measurement ice berg. The real value was in tangibles like how many potential advertisers called to order one of the highest cost-per-impression publications anywhere? Several dozen.

And how well did these positive stories help establish our brand and reputation? Very well. And how many advertisers actually signed contracts? A few, but that was intentional. We only started the publication with 8 pages and didn’t have a whole lot of space to sell.

How did we do that? We had the daunting but doable task of killing the concept of cost per impression. What we had instead was something different. We calculated the value of concierge recommendations. In doing so, we discovered that concierge recommendations influenced approximately $1.2 billion in purchasing decisions in Las Vegas every year.

What does that mean? It meant concierges referred as many as 4,000 qualified buyers per month to a select retail stores, booked almost half of all reservations at select restaurants, and sent more than 2,500 additional participants to local events. These were not window shoppers. They were qualified buyers. Of course, being an advertiser was not enough to get this kind of traffic. The burden of meeting high concierge standards was still on the advertiser. (Of course, knowing key executives read the publication helped too.)

Drawing the comparison.

So what if this publication existed online today? What is a suitable measure? Link buzz? Cost per impression? Influence ranking? Click-throughs? The measurement comparisons are apparent.

Tangible results generated by our public relations effort would ultimately be the end result of receiving calls for advertisers (including the publications themselves). The measure of our media kit and sales team would be the number of qualified conversions (because we did not accept all advertisers). And for advertisers, the measure was in the number of qualified buyers recommended by a trusted source. Those are tangible measurements.

Key News * Las Vegas enjoyed a great run until we sold our rights (but the parties who bought it did not do anything with it). Five years later, we still receive calls from potential advertisers inquiring about purchasing an ad in a publication that grew from eight to 16 pages and from 500 to 10,000 hard copy and online readers. (We even had a function that was not dissimilar to a blog).

Eventually, we’ll duplicate these efforts again with someone. We just haven’t found the right partner or investor (which is secondary to our core business services). Of course, any new publication doesn’t have to be hospitality based nor would have to have the burden of expense that we had: printing and full-time designers are optional.

Considering Sundance: Social Media Measures

A few years ago, Sundance Catalog Company opened a store inside Boca Park in Las Vegas, a retail center that continues to offer great dining, apparel, art, and accessory boutiques. We were working for the developers of Boca Park at the time, the same developers responsible for the acclaimed the Mall of America in Minneapolis.

There was no question that Boca Park was the right place for Sundance. Boca Park is located in Summerlin, a master-planned community surrounded by more than 100 square miles of luxury, executive, custom, and gated residential developments with thousands of homes priced at more than $1 million.

From a social media perspective, Robert Redford’s brick and mortar store was a virtual gold mine. It had it all. A prime location. An attractive corner building. Friendly employees. A high traffic count. Celebrities stopping by. Great content. Dozens of “link-like” plugs from various newspapers and magazines. It was hot!

Oh, except for one little thing. Sales. Nobody bought anything. It was all eye candy; a window shopper’s paradise. I once bought a very nice light switch cover there. It cost about $10.

Not surprisingly, Sundance moved out. It was replaced by Tilly’s, which does very well at Boca Park because, well, people buy things. Sometimes I buy too many things.

Sure, I know precisely what was wrong with the Sundance store and how it could have been amazingly successful given the surrounding area, but that’s not really what this post is about. What this post is about is the growing pressure on social media measurements and why these measures are slowing down businesses that want to migrate to social media. More often than not, social media is measured like the Sundance store.

I’ve been brooding about this for some time now. And no, it’s not the kind of stuff that makes you popular in some circles, especially those who rank. However, other people are starting to wonder if I might not be right, at least a little bit.

Where does the hype end and the real measure begin? At least those are the kind of questions that Geoff Livingston, author of the new book, Now Is Gone, is starting to ask about what is now called the Ad Age Power 150. (We’ll be opening up more discussion about this later today at BlogStraightTalk on Bumpzee and BlogStraightTalk’s newest home on BlogCatalog.) But I wanted to touch on a question raised by Andrew Graham, an account executive for Cognito, on Linkedin.

“How should social media companies be valued?” Graham asked in response to my query, what social media question is not being adequately answered by communication experts? “Given a lot of these companies are more or less built for acquisition, I think it's a legitimate question.”

Exactly. Right now, traffic counts, clicks, rank, and links are considered the most relevant measures of social media. Don’t get me wrong; these measures can play an important role in the greater scope. But, unfortunately for businesses, they provide a skewed sense of reality.

In other words, there are a whole lot of Sundance brick and mortar stores (like the one mentioned above) online. They have everything going for them, except a tangible measure like sales. And the reason is pretty simple. Many of them are chasing social media measures instead of strategic business goals. To what end?

As preliminary answer to Graham, in my opinion, a social media company is worth what someone will pay for it, but the social media measures that are currently in play (like clicks and links) over inflate the value unless proprietary technology is part of the package.

In terms of blogs or other social media tools, the best measures are based on its ability to meet strategic goals: things that range from brand awareness and market share to member engagement and sales. All the other stuff, while helpful and not to be discounted en masse, are not really valid measures unless the buyer is equipped to turn traffic into something tangible.

Likewise, companies entering social media to expand their communication plan might consider what goals they want to meet on the front end. And no, I don't mean rank as much as bank. That's what we've been doing for several companies over the last few weeks, determining what real goals they can tie to their social media plan.

Making The Grade: Veronica Mars

Jericho fan John Rodriguez, who publishes the Jericho-dedicated video-driven ThunderHawk blog on Yahoo! 360 beta, knows that the “greatest challenge is keeping people motivated. It takes a lot of time invested into
promoting something. It takes good communication, and fresh up to date information, on what is going on.”

“You must fan the flames of your project, and keep it hot,” says the Internet veteran who used to run three early BBS networks. “There is a small handful I have seen excel above and beyond. The work I have seen is much better than current CBS promotions.”

Jericho fans continue to do their best, largely on their own, while waiting for CBS to officially reveal the start date of Jericho Season 2 (which is likely to be a mid-season break). Similarly, but for very different reasons, the power of consumer marketing is also being played out by another fan base. Unlike Jericho, they have nothing but rumors and faith that something, anything, might happen.

These are the fans of Veronica Mars, the critically acclaimed teen drama/mystery neo-noir series starring Kristen Bell. They could not save their show from being cancelled (the only reason perhaps, in my opinion, was the late start of the consumer campaign), but have, amazingly enough, continued to build on their momentum.

“The main problem with putting together a campaign of any kind is ensuring that there are not multiple campaigns working against each other,” says Shannon Miller, Web master of the Veronica Mars Movie Web site. “The best way to keep up morale is to work in phases … to have multiple steps to the larger plan, and continue to encourage smaller campaigns along the way.”

Like Jericho, there are several groups of fans with different goals, ranging from fast-tracking syndication to focusing on the full-length feature film (and some who still hold out for a complete reinstatement, which seems unlikely). Where Veronica Mars fans are winning is in their success in establishing a centralized forum called Neptune Rising. The goal of Neptune Rising is to consolidate fans with different goals under one campaign banner in order to benefit each other and support a larger campaign, whether that means promoting syndication or the movie.

“We occasionally have a hiccup, but we work them out,” says Mark Thompson, who was introduced to Veronica Mars as late as season 3 because of previous fan efforts. He works on Save Veronica Mars. ”Morale is something that has to be considered and it varies with each person [so we have to keep it high]. Right now, we’re concentrating on building our membership numbers because the more members we have, the better our chance of success.”

Thompson, like everyone we had contact with, stressed that they respect the privacy of the creators, crew, and cast (even saying they are excited that Bell will be appearing in Heroes), and prefer to keep their focus narrow: finding existing fans, creating new fans, requesting syndication, and keeping the dream of a movie alive. By doing so, their work has gotten noticed. Rob Thomas, Veronica Mars creator, recently responded to a letter sent in by a former Web master.

“I'm afraid I don't have a definitive answer other than to say I want to do it. Unfortunately right now, I need to pay the bills, and I'd have to write the movie on spec.,” said Thomas. “It's difficult to consult on a show, develop new pilots and knock out comic books and/or a feature script. I'm grateful that there are fans anxious for it, and I remain motivated.”

Thomas is not the only one. Rachel Gerke, who was instrumental in providing backgrounders and assisting us with collecting interviews (better than some public relations professionals, I might add) for this post, notes that Bell’s answers in interviews have changed.

“I think that Kristen Bell is listening. Her interviews went from thinking that a movie was not going to happen to talk between her and Rob Thomas that it could happen,” said Gerke. “I think the challenge is getting enough active people in each of our smaller groups. As long as we have someone overseeing each of them, which we do, it will work out well.”

Courtney Harris is one of the primary organizers. She created the majority of the sites, including the forum and MySpace page. She also made many of the petitions and movie posters.

“I’m not big on coming up with ideas, but I’m really good at getting things done,” says Harris. “A lot of dedicated fans seem to be listening and willing to take on the challenge, and fans in general seem to be interested in what we’re doing. Just getting a group of fans together to create a campaign is a huge success in my opinion. As long we stay on track, I’m hoping it will all go up from there.”

If there any is indication that their collective plans are working, perhaps Sara Pillitu is the perfect example. She is an Italian fan who followed the “Bars for Mars” cancellation protest campaign but suddenly found herself very involved in the effort.

“We’re very lucky to be happy to be ‘shiny, happy people’ and we work constantly to keep morale up with jokes and discussions about the show,” says Pillitu. “We do a lot of recruitment and we always look for new ideas to get the people involved in our campaign to save Veronica Mars. Unfortunately, Veronica Mars is not so popular in Europe, so right now I'm trying to spread the buzz on the show and create a partnership between us and the European fan sites.”

Collectively, while the outcome is anybody’s guess, Veronica Mars fans have a lot working in their favor. Here is a hot list of things they are doing right:

• They have established a centralized group that remains largely positive.
• They have designated smaller groups, each focusing on slightly different promotional efforts or social networks with informal leaders to provide direction.
• They welcome new Web masters and encourage them to promote specific goals.
• They have established clearly defined primary goals: engage existing fans (some who have become active supporters) and find new fans (loaning personal DVD sets when they have to) with the focus on supporting a movie.
• They have established secondary goals such as encouraging Warner Brothers to put the show into syndication and promoting DVD sales.
• They have a consistent message. Each participant responded separately, but they all had very similar answers. Their message sticks.
• They have remained courteous and supportive of the cast and crew, even going so far as to promote other ventures.
• They have remained courteous and supportive of each other and have fun.

All of this seems to demonstrate marked progress since we first mentioned Veronica Mars fan efforts in June. Currently, the fans are also looking for ways to raise funds to support promotional efforts as well as encouraging other sites to pick up on their efforts. (Hey Stephen King ... maybe you could plug fan base movements in one of your Entertainment Weekly columns.)

For some other insights into the fan base that will never say Neptune sets, visit the VMCW MySpace page where they still comment today. Consumer marketing. You have to love it!