LBM – The PR Edition Findings

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A few weeks back I hosted the latest edition of the London Bloggers Meetup along with PR Agency Edelman. The focus of the meetup was to take a look at the relationship between bloggers and PR agencies, although unfortunately this was often billed as ‘Bloggers vs PR’. The format of the evening was a little different too, in that we had a panel session rather than the usual stand alone talks.

Photo courtesy of Peter Marshall. You can find more photos of the evening here.

The panellists included:

The Bloggers
Cate Sevilla, Bitchbuzz.com
Pete Stean, The Londoneer
Chris Osburn, Tikichris and Londonist

The PRs
Matt Churchill, Edelman
Stephen Waddington, Speed
Laurence Borel, Mindshare

The idea was each would have the opportunity to respond to the following statements:

1.    All bloggers welcome pitches from PRs
2.    PR agencies should treat bloggers like journalists
3.    Bloggers don’t understand what a PR agency needs
4.    PR agencies don’t understand what bloggers need and want
5.    Bloggers and PR agencies would both benefit from industry standard rules of engagement

The first thing to point out is that the PRs are in actual fact all bloggers and were therefore already armed with an awareness / sensitivity of blogger needs. In retrospect it might have been better to have invited three PR consultants with less knowledge of social media to create a more balanced panel. Having said that I couldn’t have asked for more from Matt, Stephen and Lolly, three folks who undoubtedly know there subject area and played their part with consummate skill.

On the whole I found the panel extremely interesting and was pleased to see some good Q&A / interaction with the audience. Special thanks to those who shouted out questions which added real flavour to the conversation.

There was a lot to take away from the session, but if I had to summarise the key highlights it would include the following:

1.    Relationships

Key to successful dialogue between bloggers and PRs is relationship. PR consultants should ensure the first step in any programme of blogger outreach is to read the blogs you are going to target and take some time to develop a one to one relationship with the blogger.

2.    “Don’t be a jackass”

To quote Cate Sevilla, if you are a PR consultant you must treat bloggers with a little respect. Do your research,  engage with a blogger on their terms and be realistic in your expectations. Bloggers do not have the same rules as journalists.

3.    Pay checks

If you want to pay a blogger to write about your content that’s fine, but make the pay check worthwhile. Some bloggers will be happy to be paid, others are simply not motivated by money, but where you intend to pay for content be prepared to pay market rates for writing. This will clearly differ depending on the bloggers background – are they are journalist by trade for example. Read Gary’s blog post on this for more.

4.    Rules of Engagement

It was clear from all sides that a set of standard rules for PRs who want to engage with bloggers are not the way forward. The simplest step to take is for bloggers to make it clear how they are prepared to work with PRs or advertisers by adding a page to your blog. Let’s be clear also that advertising and PR is not the same thing and you would do well to understand this when dealing with commercial approaches.

5.    Blogger Lists

There was some debate among the PRs over whether these already exist, but it seems obvious they do. Bloggers – if you are on a list then it’s likely you can expect to receive a lot more attention from PR agencies. But what can you do about removing yourself? Perhaps you need to read point 4 again.

You can read the views of some of the pannelists and attendees by clickong on the links. The topic really did make for an interesting evening:

Matt Churchill, Stephen Waddington , Gary Andrews and Pete Stean .

(if I’ve missed your post and you’d like to be added, simply drop me a line in the comments and I’ll add your link above)

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the ‘London Bloggers Meetup – The PR Edition’. My thanks again to each of the panellists and a huge thanks to Edelman for supporting the event. Great to see a PR agency supporting conversation and helping to cement relationships between the PR industry and us bloggers.