Although writing is part of my job, I suffer from writer’s block when it comes to keeping this blog alive. The easy way out was to ignore it till I have something to share. Then, work and other things in life take over and before I know it, this blog is almost dead. I got a reminder email from the company that hosts this blog, checking if I wish to keep the domain name and space for another year, I struggled to make a decision.

In all honesty, I rather watch CSI when i have some time to rest rather than straining more brain cells to write a blog post. Bloggers should know, writing a blog post can some times be very time consuming.

A part of me has alot of things in mind to share – ie: last week’s CommunicAsia, an interesting book I read and some random thoughts about various topics…. The other part of me is just suffering from blog/ writing fatigue and I just don’t have alot of time to structure and write long, detailed posts like i used to…

But last week, Yahoo! invited a group of bloggers to CommunicAsia to share with them the launch of the new Yahoo! Mobile. Some of them are old friends of mine and some I only know them via their blogs. After the session, I read some of their blogs and a couple of them wrote some amazing stuff. When I say “amazing”, i didn’t mean that they wrote positive reviews (well, most of them did anyway) about the product we shared with them, but more importantly, i started reading other posts they wrote and I developed “blog envy”…

While I always find some local bloggers’ blog posts a little too frivolous for my liking, but they have their fair share of readers. What I really admire is their passion for writing, the sharing of knowledge and a platform for expression … Something i used to do.

So, finally,  … (since I am having a day off from work and was just sticking my ass to the couch, eyes glued to Criminal Minds and had some mind space to think), I decided that I’ll attempt to change some things in my daily lifestyle and find time to blog but perhaps, not stressing over the length of the posts but more of the content that matters to me, to people who still drop by this blog.

So, stay tuned for more posts …

I honestly don’t think it’s an excuse for bloggers to not blog as much. I think blogging shouldnt be “hard work” as well. I remembered a good friend who’s one of those top bloggers telling me “don’t feel obligated to blog because you have to, blog because you want to..”.

For myself, I’ve definitely slowed down, though not stopped. I twitter and interact on facebook more nowadays. It’s not that I didn’t want to write a post every other day but when you are traveling alot, and unlike agencies who might see their responsibilities to “engage in social media”, therefore more blogging and more podcasting, there are alot of people who have endless meetings to attend, endless traveling and endless hours of late nights doing a job that has alot of other objectives to meet (beside engaging the communities), so when some of us get home, the last thing we think of is to switch on laptop and start to write a blog. Personally, all i could think of, most of the nights is – try to get some sleep (and there is family and health to consider).

There are many ways to connect and communicate. Blogging is one of them, not the only means.

Having said that, I am keeping this blog and I’m still writing when I have an opinion to make, when i have something to share or when i want to record some thoughts for future reference.

So, honestly, does a reader really feel CHEATED when a blogger stopped or slowed down blogging? As a reader, I see it as a shame if my favourite blogger stopped completely but i am not sure about feeling “cheated”… I have a couple of friends who are in digital media business who used to blog about wonderful stuff but had to stop because of overwhelming amount of work, do i feel bad or cheated? Not really…

I just noticed from my RSS feeds that Brendan Cooper has compiled and put up a new PowerPR index for December and this time, it also indicated the changes in ranking. Brendan has once again, done a great job, putting together the links with the various rankings.

Amazingly, my 5-month old blog is up by 5 points. Encouraging! My latest favourite read, Pop! PR Jots dropped a few notches but I am still enjoying reading Jeremy’s posts.

Steve Rubel’s blog dropped to 2nd place, replaced by Online Marketing Blog. My other usual reads are all still in the list, including my dear friends, Melvin’s “The PR 2.0 Universe “ and Walter’s “Cooler Insights”.

I wonder if the 3 of us are the only ones blogging about PR and new media topics in Singapore. I am trying to go through the list and see if there are any other Asian bloggers.

The question, however got me thinking about the much discussed topic of ads on blogs. I know how search monetization works, read about Payperpost and the usual ad banners. There is also the “bloggers’ endorsement” on various products and blog endlessly about them. So, my question is, should bloggers (1) put ad banners all over their blogs? and what are the motivations behind them? (2) endorse products or services and blog endlessly about them?

The following are views from 3 different blogger friends’ (Kevin, Jason and the(new)mediaslut) on the topic of advertising on blogs. Wish I had done it in iChat/ video style, but oh well, for now just read the straight forward Q&As:-

1) Do you have ads on your blog/s? What kind of ads?

MediaSlut: Yes. Put advertlets banner ads on it

Jason: I signed up to Nuffnang so I don’t get to choose the type of ads to put up. However, they did assure me that the ads put up will be ‘family friendly”

Kevin: Not that I know of… so no.

2) Do you think bloggers should endorse a company’s products / services and put ad banners on their blogs?

MediaSlut: If you are talking about banner ads from google and advertlets or nuffnang, the advertisers can be so random that you don’t know who it is. Sometimes the blogger don’t ever see the ad at all. If somebody from US visit the Singapore based blogger, the visitor might see a ad for the US. But because the blogger is Singapore based, he won’t see the ads at all.

But if you are talking about product endorsement, why not? If the blogger really likes the product and says he likes it, why not? So far, usually most bloggers will only endorse the product they really like. Those they don’t like, they will just reject it.

Kevin: As much as we genuinely do it through word of mouth, blogs shouldn’t
be any different. Just like in real life, going overboard with it
might mean losing friends (readers) …

Jason: …it is a win-win situation for both company and individual. Companies get write ups from a customer’s perspective and individual gets new toys. However, it could be a con as the individual may be pressured to write something nice about it to get more toys to endorse in the future.

3) As a blogger, do you think you will be pressurized to blog about
your “ad clients”?

Kevin: ... If you made a commitment, you’ll have to follow through. Otherwise I’d stay clear of advertising as much as possible since it might not be what I usually talk about on my blog.

MediaSlut: To be honest, most bloggers will be more than happy to blog about their advertisers. But they don’t just blog about the advertisers’ product.. Some do it by writing their own experience with the product, or issues regarding the product. But whether they will be critical of their sponsor’s product, I don’t think at the moment they will be.

This problem is similar to the print publications of media1.0. The culture here is not ready to accept criticism good or bad.

Blogs are, however, designed different than print magazine is that for every post, there is a comment field. So the advertisers should react to a critical post by engaging the blogger via comments, not threatening to withdraw ads.

Jason: Absolutely not, but I guess more on increasing my posts to get more unique visitors. However, after receiving money for the first
campaign, it really isn’t worth it… $2.88 for one week…yeech!!

4) Beside money, why do you think bloggers agree to endorse certain products or agree to put ads on their blogs?

MediaSlut: Most bloggers have day jobs, so money is a side income. If it is a product, say a mobile phone, and u let the blogger play with the phone and review it, they will be happy.

Kevin: They could endorse because they could simply like the product /
service. I find this more likely the case than putting up ads, which
is another thing altogether. Endorsing creates an emotional
attachment, advertising doesn’t (or perhaps fakes it).

This is an interesting topic and bigger issues, concerns, business models etc to look at so, I am happy to hear more thoughts from other bloggers. Meantime, the following few links are some other posts I picked up:-

One of my favourite posts on the topic – by Mitch Joel and Ed Lee

Mr Endoh’s post on why he is giving up nuffnang

Jason Kaneshiro’s interesting thoughts on choosing between advertising or readership for the blog

I can’t say there was alot of “style” at PopOut! - (an event aimed at engaging the community, students, technopreneur, venture capitalist and startups interested in the web2.0 services) but there were definitely some good presenters and a bunch of “geeky” but fun and savvy audiences. The content was pretty good too – informative and some great insights into a few cool start-ups with inspiring stories and products to tell.

What wowed the crowd and ME was Herryanto Siatono, the creator of BookJetty. The simple fact that it was books related caught my attention. In fact, it was the reason why I decided to pop down to the event. I briefly mentioned BookJetty in one of my previous post when I was comparing social book sites and what is really cool about bookjetty is the SMS service that allows users to receive SMS about details of the book they are looking for in the libraries.

TheMediaSlut wrote a more detailed post about Herry’s points.

And I signed up at BookJetty this morning. I just have to keep updating my ever-growing booklists.

The other presentation that I enjoyed was by Gen Kanai, director of marketing and partner relations, Mozilla Japan who gave a preview on Firefox 3.0 – way cool!

Check out some of the cool features at Claudia’s blog

Ross from Bezurk did a rather interesting presentation, giving quite a bit of insights and tips to entrepreneurs. I thought that was great, instead of just shouting your own products.

The other few presentations -ZopIM , Quaffs and Recruit.net, I didn’t really get what they were talking about. Perhaps I was not the target audience or maybe my anti-biotic pills were kicking in by then, making me really drowsy (yes, I was not feeling very well that night and spent the next whole day in bed with a fever).

Lastly, I did make some new friends at the event and caught up with some “old” ones. Said bye bye to Bjorn Lee (who had been my lunch “date” for a while) and now he is in Beijing, on a new job – awesome! Managed to meet up with new friends whom I chatted and blogged with online – Darryl Kang, Brian Koh and Coleman Yee. Nice to be able to put faces to the names.

Aaron has asked me to do an “interview” for the video show he has been putting together titled “Princessa and the little lamb” on the topic of blogger relations. My mad schedule lately delayed the discussion.

This post contains some readings and thoughts that I have gathered on the topic. I don’t have a personal list of 101 tips on pitching to bloggers but I am hoping to open this up for some discussions from PR folks and bloggers (especially those in Singapore and the Asian region).

Just last week, Ben Koe of Hill & Knowlton, Singapore wrote about why traditional media relations won’t work in the blogosphere in the Marketing magazine. Ben also gathered insights from some of our mutual friends like Walter, Ivan, Kevin and Coleman, a couple of them are “A-list bloggers” and currently working in the PR and communications industry. An interesting point that Ben highlighted in his article:-

“ At the end of the day, the best way to know the blogosphere is to be a blogger.”

I’ve noticed that a common question that every blogger I come across asks is, “Do you have a blog?” and being a blogger, I find myself asking that at times when meeting new friends. However, it is not quite possible for every PR consultant to start a blog in order to reach out to bloggers. I believe that blogging is not for everyone.

So, what do we do?

We do what we are trained to do in media relations and pitches. We find out about the target blogs, we read them, we learn about the bloggers – the topics they cover and the preferred communications methods. These are the basic (almost common sense) that every PR consultant should do.

I have a lot of media friends who complained that PR folks (esp. the younger ones) who called up the writers to pitch a story, not knowing anything about (1) the publication (2) the section they are pitching (3) the style and preference of the writers. While traditional media pitching methods might not all work in blogosphere, there are some fundamental practices that PR consultants should remember.

Jeremiah Owyang (one of the top bloggers in blogosphere) has this to say about pitching to top bloggers like himself, whose focus is web strategies:-

Don’t pitch me. Instead, get to know me, and build a relationship, leave comments on my blog, join the conversation. Find out what I’m interested in. Read my blog, examine the keywords, read the about page, my focus is on Web Strategy, find out what that means!

Definitely valid points there.

I have come to realised that pitching to bloggers is a very time consuming process. In one of my earlier posts titled The Affair with Bloggers, I mentioned that blogger-PR relations should be a two-way process. Bloggers, like journalists look for good content for their posts and the PR folks (especially people from agencies) often have alot of content. The challenge for PR people is to get those content over to the bloggers in the right way.

Bloggers should also not be ignoring PR pitches just because the PR consultant is (1) not reading every post on your blog (2) not commentor on your posts (3) not friends or have a prior relationship with you. I agree that we all don’t have alot of time to respond to every email but if a blogger see that an agency or a PR person (even though he or she might send a badly written pitch) has got some potentially good content that you can keep in mind for future posts… I say – drop a note back, say thank you for noticing and targeting your blog. Even if the pitch is not right for you at the moment, you can still keep in touch. What’s so difficult with doing that? Those few lines take less than 2 mins?

I also noticed an interesting comment on Jeremiah’s post by a CEO of a US/ Russian set up who believed that companies’ executives should handle the blogger relations themselves and not engage a PR firm to assist:-

1. Yakov September 9th, 2007 6:57 am

   Being CEO of a US/Russian startup, I simply spend a significant amount of my time communicating to bloggers and started doing this. For example, I flew in from Moscow to London to join a pub tour with Uk bloggers and personally meet with Robert Scoble and Hugh MacLeod who led the tour. I joined FOWA last February to demo our new user interface to Michael Arrington of TechCrunch who agreed to exclusively review it when launch a few days later…

To some extent, I see great benefits for a company whose CEO is keen to do bloggers outreach himself. As a blogger, I would love to hear directly from the CEO of a company on his products rather than from PR folks. However, the reality is, not every CEO or the top executives have the time, the “bandwidth”, the right communications skills to do the outreach and thus, either a PR firm or the company’s internal communications team has to do it.

We have read and heard tips on the how to pitch to bloggers, let’s move on to the WHO to pitch to instead (a topic that is not widely discussed).

Here, I would like to also open up the following thoughts and issues I see in the Singapore blogosphere (and these are purely based on my own observations) for discussions:-

Unlike other countries where there are bloggers who write about specific topics, whether it’s technology (ie: Scoble’s), web strategies (such as Jeremiah’s), new media and PR ( like Brian Solis’), in Singapore, I often find it a struggle to pitch to local bloggers. There are alot of local bloggers but not many cover specific interests/ topics and those who cover specific topics tend to have smaller, niche group of audience. The ones who have larger readerships tend to write about (what I call frivolous stuff such as “what I have for lunch” and “is that celeb gay” type of posts).

If I have a premium tech product (to be launched in Singapore) to share with the local bloggers as part of my new media campaign, does it make more sense for me to target people like my friends, Ben and Kevin who often cover related topics or should I reach out to bloggers who might not be even tech savvy but have a bigger readership? (disclaimer: both Ben and Kev have great audiences reading their blogs, I am just throwing out an example for discussion sake).

Many blog posts I read about the topic of blogger relations are usually US-based, the Asian blogosphere can be quite different. I have been searching for bloggers in the region (english language blogs so that I can actually understand), so if you are one of them, drop me a note!

For more good tips and views on the topic of pitching to bloggers, here are some interesting reads:-

• The PR Lessons of a clueless blog pitch
  
• Ready to pitch a blog? Take this quiz first
• PR Tip: How to pitch a blogger
• Hidden Gems in comments: Blogger relations
• PR Tip: Pitching bloggers and journalists who wear many hats
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective blog PR
• Ogilvy’s Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics
• How to: pitch bloggers

1) MY NEW BOOKS

A quick visit to the bookstore today and I came home with two new books

Think ASEAN! by Philip Kotler, who believes that ASEAN has tremendous untapped potential to become a highly energetic and profitable market and shows case studies on how companies go about penetrating this region.

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson – I had originally wanted to find Stephenson’s 1992′s Snow Crash (introduced to me by Kevin), unfortunately, the bookstore ran out of stock so I got The Diamond Age instead. When Stephenson wrote Snow Crash in the early 90s, Second Life was non existence and yet there are alot of similarities between the virtual realistic-cyber world that he described that we can see happening in the web space now. I am going to find the book!

2) Y! MASH – the new Yahoo! Social Network

I am reading with interest, the new social network created by Yahoo called the Y!Mash. Unfortunately, it’s still in its beta stage now and you can only try it if someone sent you an invite. Meantime, here’s the Mash blog to check out the new network!

3) Our First PR Blogger Group Meet-Up

ThePR blogger group finally got together for the first time last evening. Initiated by Walter Lim – a group of us who are in the public relations industry (and blogs!) in Singapore are trying to get together with a simple objective in mind – to have some beer and bitch alot (kidding). We are hoping to share thoughts and insights with one another on relevant issues, topics and “trends” about the industry. Well, we did bitch and have many rounds of beer anyway.

For the first catch up session, Walter, Ben, Melvin, Jason, myself and Derrick (who got stuck somewhere and couldn’t show up) started the ball rolling. There are others in the group who are not able to make it but there’s always next round. So, if you are in public relations/ communications (+ being an active blogger) and would like to join us for some chill-out, drinking/ bitching sessions, feel free to drop Walter or me a note.

4) BLOG ACTION DAY

I first read about the Blog Action Day initiative from my friend, Erwin Oliva, a reporter for the online Philipine news website, Inquirer.net.

Here’s what it is about:

On October 15th – Blog Action Day, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind.

In its inaugural year, Blog Action Day will be co-ordinating bloggers to tackle the issue of the environment.

What Each Blogger Will Do

Bloggers can participate on Blog Action Day in one of two ways:

Publish a post on their blog which relates to an issue of their own choice pertaining to the environment.

For example: A blog about money might write about how to save around the home by using environmentally friendly ideas. Similarly a blog about politics might examine what weight environmental policy holds in the political arena.

I have signed up for it too to show a little support to the organisers for the (although not new but worthy causes) initiative

The problem has always existed but recently, it seems to get worse as more and more competing publications pop up, vying for the attention of advertisers and consumers in our small country in Singapore.

I am sure I am going to get some “concerned” emails after this post from some of my wonderful local media friends who are reading this blog but I am open to hear some thoughts.

Here, I am not even debating about the difference between advertorials and editorials, I am just looking at how some media are asking us, PR consultants to get our our clients to advertise in their publications before they even consider our pitches. And here, I am talking about newsworthy stories that we crafted but got rejected because our poor clients do not have enough advertising budgets to spread across all key media.

It sounds unbelievable? “Where is journalistic integrity?” you ask and it’s the exact question I am pondering over.

Some common comments I got from journalists:-

- “oh, your client is a competitor of one of our biggest advertisers, so even though it’s a new launch, it is not nice for us to feature it. Even if we do, can’t do it too big” and that usually ends with “ask your client to advertise with us! then we can maybe do this and this and that too..”

I wonder what is the root of this problem. Is it the need to survive, profit pressures, thus causing publications to try push and increase ad sales by any means? It is not that bad if the question on ad buys comes from the sales folks but we get that from editors and writers/ journalists as well!

Perhaps, the companies/ marketers have a part to play too. The understanding of the difference between advertising, PR/ editorials is all confused. Every other day, we have clients telling us “I’ve already bought ads in XX publication, please ensure we get some editorial coverage in that publication.”
Because of that increasing pressure, and despite endless explanation to clients that it does not quite work that way, PR folks are getting tired and some gave up and went to the media and said, “well, our clients bought these ads in your publication, you should support us by featuring this and this…”

Vicious cycle!

At the same time, I am also observing the blogosphere and how some bloggers are blogging endlessly about their “sponsored” gadgets and would only blog about restaurants who advertise on their blogs.

Again – the blurred divide. But it’s a new space and there are alot of movements and changes, I shall have to keep on observing before more comments can be made.

Meantime, I have to start preparing myself for questions from clients asking ,“I spent $XX, can we get coverage of our latest product launch in the Christmas issues!?”

PS: maybe if the products are like the iPod Touch or the Nanos, there is absolutely no need to worry about getting editorial coverage in any Christmas supplements?

First of all, PR is not just about “publicity stunts” and definitely not about roadshows or promotions. I am sure PR agencies get alot of the weirdest requests from clients to (1) get media down to their event – which usually means roadshows that have nothing “news worthy” and not carefully thought out to reach out to the target audiences (2) have a BIG press conference to announce their erm, website launch that often looks like any other websites (3) insist of doing “publicity” stunts that are totally not relevant to their products or company.

Yes, it is then the job of the agency to EDUCATE, EDUCATE, EDUCATE! the clients that there is really no way any media or consumers who would pay attention to what they want to do. Unfortunately, many consultants fail to do that for various reasons. At times, the clients fail to listen to advices. The result – a bad relationship and a lot of money wasted on a bad “PR activity”.

I have been in both agency and in-house positions and i know of many clients who complained about their PR agencies all the time and consultants in agencies curse behind their clients every other day. So, this post has nothing to do with new media and nothing 2.0 but it is going back to basic as I ponder and read some experts’ views on how the two can better work together to achieve better results.

I read an interesting article in alwayson.goingon.com, listing 10 reasons why PR doesn’t work, with the original source from Margie Zable Fisher of ThePRSite.

One of the reasons states:

The client doesn’t understand the publicity process. PR folks need to better educate people about how publicity works. The first thing many clients ask is, “Can you get me on Oprah or the front page of the Wall Street Journal?” The answer might be “yes,” but the process to get to the “yes” may take months or years, and may first include a series of smaller activities to get there.

Brian Solis (my top favourite blogger) wrote a brilliant post about Why PR doesn’t work and how to fix it

Brian not only listed why PR doesn’t work, he gave suggestions on HOW to fix it and in his post, he wrote the following advice to the companies’ executives:

Understand first, what PR is and isn’t. All too often, businesses expect PR to perform miracles simply because they confuse it with advertising, online marketing, media buying, search marketing, etc. PR can’t guarantee legitimate coverage in industry publications – no matter how tight the relationship. If PR promises it, then they’re lying. I leverage relationships daily to consider stories that I package in a way that’s most relevant to them. Most of the time it works because I take the time to make it valuable to respective markets. If I took advantage of my contacts to force coverage whenever I needed to deliver on a promise, then it would mark the beginning of the end of my relationships.

On Andy Lark‘s blog, he wrote his views some months back on how he believes that PR works but at times the relationship between client and consultants are worsened because of the client that doesn’t grok their audience, what they read, or what their circle of influence is… PR Works where everyone groks the audience and understands how to communicate effectively with them – and that might mean skipping the media altogether.

I aso read Jeremiah Owyang, the web strategist’s blog entry on 20 reasons why PR doesn’t work.

The part I want to highlight is Shel Israel‘s (the co-author of Naked Conversations) comment to Jeremiah’s post:-

…. could someone please define the term “public relations.” I think every person in business needs to have relationships with members of their communities. You (Jeremiah) are superb at having those public relationships. The problem with so many alleged “PR Practitioners,”is they are really working on client relationships or maybe even press relationships, but it seems to me the field is really about something very different. You understand communities better than almost any traditional PR practitioner I know. So I guess you are my kind of PR guy.

It is interesting that although Jeremiah has no former training in PR and not a public relations professional, many of his blog fans and experts in the field look to him as one. The reason is probably because he has an influential reach to alot of audiences. As Shel mentioned, he understands the consumers, the communities better than many PR professionals.

So, to the people who work with me and are complaining about the clients or my friends who are clients and complaining about the agencies, instead of blaming one another, work towards understanding the problems and needs of the other.

There is often an objective in running a PR campaign and it is definitely not pissing one another off. Before we even start throwing in the tech/ PR/ Web 2.0 social and new media stuff, get the basic of PR in place.

Educate the client. Build the relationship. Help the client understand what works for the company or product. Look at your target consumers, understand them. The keywords now are to involve and get participation and not just sending out gospel-like key messages that are often a monologue rather than a dialogue. THEN, let’s talk about the cool 2.0 tools to build your campaign.

My good friend, Walter Lim, the communications director of a government body in Singapore wrote the following in his blog … (and I agree)

Any effective PR strategy needs to look at the relationships, processes and dynamics that all three parties have with each other. Just pointing the finger at the client alone will not solve the problem if there isn’t enough effort to educate him or her.

In addition, understanding and working together must be a two-way win-win thing. While publicity is good, it isn’t the be-all and end-all in the business world. Sometimes, one needs to see if one’s business strategy and tactics lends itself favourably to publicity or should employ other approaches instead.