What a good Bloggers Meetup. Seriously, nice to see a lot of new faces at October’s LBM but also plenty of bloggers I haven’t seen for some time. We also had the guys from Wired and Muzu shedding light into the world of online music videos and I had a particularly interesting conversation around people’s preference for access over ownership of music. I will certainly be spending some more time on Wired.co.uk and Muzu from now on. Thanks to Duncan and Ciaran from Wired and Muzu respectively.
I had first heard about Muzu when they were pitched to me by a PR agency earlier in the year. But now I have spent some time looking at and playing with it I’m definitely hooked. I signed up for an account this morning and have been watching the playlist from LBM last week. Some great and some horrific records in there… don’t believe me, here it is:
What an exciting prize draw too. I think we finally got a winner on the 7th or 8th draw in Ann Fenech who has promised to come back and write about her music gig experience. Correct me if I’m wrong Ann, but this may be one of your first music gigs right?
Thanks to everyone who came along and took over Red Soho for a thoroughly enjoyable evening.
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.
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:
(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.
I’m really excited about the London Bloggers Meetup taking place tomorrow. For some time I’ve noticed a growing impatience / irritation among bloggers about how they are treated by PR agencies. On the other hand, working as I do in marketing, I’ve seen a huge increase in brands wanting to engage with bloggers and get them on board either in PR or marketing campaigns.
So what’s going wrong?
Do we as bloggers need or want attention from PR agencies and brands, could PRs be more effective at working with bloggers, does everyone need to relax and understand we each have different needs and wants and we should all learn to get along better? After all, there’s a lot to gain for bloggers and PR agencies if we can all work together.
Perhaps there’s just a need for a better set of working practices or ground rules if you like?
If this is something that’s been on your mind recently, you should come to the London Bloggers Meetup – The PR Edition tomorrow – that’s Wednesday 8th September 2010.
We have a panel of expert speakers discussing all this and more, including:
It’s always interesting to see the blog posts and tweets after an LBM, none more so that Ill and Ancient’s posts. Who else would have thought to evaluate a social evening with a graph depicting his engagement with fellow bloggers over the course of the evening.. an example of why I always say the bloggers meetup is full of phenomenally interesting people.
I have to thank Rob for what was a detailed and well thought out talk, which, if I’d thought about it, I would have recorded with audioboo and made available on the blog. But never mind, if you want to get the gist of his talk, head to the Real Cycling blog which has all the info he presented on the night. It’s the first time we’ve had a presenter heckled / corrected during their presentation (thanks @radiokate) which thankfully didn’t throw Rob too much.
TalkTalk were as generous a host as we could have hoped for, providing a good array of beers and some wonderful canapés. At one point the venue manager tapped me on the shoulder and said:
“we’ve already got through most fo the beers, do you think I should order more, or will everyone be happy with the wine.”
I think she knew the answer before she’d finished the question and organised a few more cases. I was surprised just how good a venue the Talk Talk centre is and if you didn’t get the chance, do pop back and check out the lounge and business incubator spaces on the 1st floor and above. A great little centre and I must applaud Talk Talk for finding a creative use for the space they acquired on buying Tiscali. A huge thanks to Maggie, Leanne and team for hosting us so well. We’ll be back (if for nothing else but to use the free internet).
So who did I speak to on the evening. Well, a lot of people, new faces and old and I’m not going to name check the lot of you. But a few notable peeps as ever:
Lolly – a pleasure as always, let me know on the LBM paternity cover Matt – good to see you being one of the last to leave as usual. Drop me a line on that potential sponsor Peter – you’ll have to wear a health warning with the number of times I saw your flash going off, but the usual great pics online already I see Proactive Paul – the paperless office, interesting read and let’s chat about how you could shape into a talk for a future LBM Pete – now you’re selling ads, perhaps you can teach the rest of us how to do that on our blogs…? Mehrdad – there’s no way you are that old, just no way.
Heading back to Ill and Ancient for a second, he asked the question…
“would Andy the LBM organiser consider hosting a special, where all the regular bloggery meetuppery people had to do a 60 second talk. Some deal with twenty slides in a minutes or something. Would that entertain?”
The answer is absolutely. If we have enough people interested in doing a 60 second talk, then I’m well up for that. Volunteers please.
Well, enough from me. A fantastic evening had by all I hope and look forward to the August edition (more details coming soon).
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