5 simple rules of Blogger Engagement

I wanted to share my thoughts about the new Skype phone from 3 and their blogger outreach launch program.

Last month I talked about the fact that I was in the process of writing an Christmas article for the Spectator about "gadgets for girls" and asked the blogosphere for ideas about what new gadgets I should write about. Robin at 1000 Heads emailed and asked if I would like to trial the new Skype phone.  My husband Skypes a lot with his family back home in France, so I said yes.

Let me start with a big confession upfront: We never used the phone.

We didn't end up using it for a number of reasons: firstly, we realised pretty quickly that the thing that we loved so much about Skype is the web-cam functionality. For us it wasn't really the fact that you can talk via VOIP for free (which is obviously great), but it was more to do with the fact that we could see parents and young cousins on the screen in front of us while we chatted. The Skype phone does not have video functionality.  So  suddenly a big reason for  wanting to use the mobile phone went away. Then we realised that the times that we had always Skyped folks in France were Sunday evenings as that was the best time that we knew everyone would be home, and it felt silly using a mobile in the house when we could have talked together face to face with Skype and iSight.

So I can't give you a proper review of the phone, apart from the fact  that it didn't look very pretty but I was very grateful that someone had thought of letting me have one pre-launch to play with.

But I did want to talk about the blogger outreach program itself and how I found being on the other end of an  initiative like this.

The emails that I received felt a little dull.  Although it was interesting to know that a Flickr group that had been set up, when I clicked through the photos that had been uploaded were corporate photos of executive suits holding up Skype phones.

Sometimes I wonder whether brands are starting to set up Web 2.0 things like Flickr groups because that is what expected of them, rather than it being of any real interest to the consumer.

I would have been more interested in some of the background info, some insight into the technology used, their expectations for handset uptake and also I was interested in hearing 3's reasons for why they wanted to produce a phone like this.

Anyway, I still decided to talk about the Skype phone in my article.

Then I got this email from the blogger team saying: "If you were to link to the article from your blog, mentioning the skypehone (perhaps with a picture), I might wet myself..."

Now I have never met this person before, so to get an email like this actually made me quite uncomfortable.

The same day I got this email from another member of the blogger team asking me to contact them so they could get the handsets back: "now more than ever is the time for pulling together those final thoughts before we sweep in and take back our trusty devices. I say ‘sweep in’. In reality we’ll send a jolly fellow in a delivery van to pick the phones up and return them safely to us - all fairly conventional. As such, we’ll need a daytime phone number and suitable address, with someone to return the phones to our guys."

And if I am honest, I found it a bit annoying.

When the phones were sent out, they did not say that it was a time limited trial. It's not that I wanted to keep the phone, but I do think that companies have to be really transparent upfront about what they want and what the blogger obligations and expectations are. There were huge issues around this when Microsoft Vista did their blogger launch this year (Microsoft gave away a top of the range laptop pre-loaded with Vista for bloggers to use and blog about pre-launch)

Anyway, I did receive an apology for "weirding me out" (their words, not mine) but it got me thinking a lot about blogger outreach and how best to do it:

1. Have something of genuine value to the bloggers that you are contacting (a product, a site, an idea etc)

2. Stay in communication, but not too often

3. Please don't do a "one size fits all/copy and paste" approach, it just feels odd and like a bad PR way of doing it. Think about the blogger you are communicating too, you should have a good sense of what they are like and what they are interested in - if not, spend more time on their blog!

4. Ask for feedback (not just on the product) but also on the way that the program was carried out - stuff like this should be in a constant state of Test, Learn, Refine for any future initiatives.

5. Be totally upfront about expectations and obligations.

Simple really, but funny how often it seems that brands don't follow these 5 simple rules of Blogger Engagement.

Comments

[Stan Lee]

Couldn't have put it better myself Amelia.

[Robin Grant]

Hi Amelia

Thanks for your feedback - it's important both for us and others who are doing similar things that we get a chance to learn, both from our successes and our mistakes.

It seems we didn't make it clear to you initially that the phones were only for a one month trial - I apologise, we should have done this.

This is probably because you came into the programme via me subscribing to your blog, reading that particular post and asking the team to get you some phones rather than through the normal route that this vital piece of communication slipped through through the net.

We feel it's extremely important to be ethical in our dealings with bloggers (and in all other areas of our business), and as founder members of WOMMA we helped to develop their code of ethics:
http://www.womma.org/ethics/code/read/

Driven by this, we've taken the decision on all of our campaigns so far that, where physical products are involved, we should not give them to people to keep as this may seem both to them and to others as some form of payment, and therefore might interfere with them being able to give an honest opinion of that product.

Moving on to the separate issue of the content and tone of the communications you had from myself and the team, this was less than ideal and I'd like to apologise again.

Our use of colloquial language was driven by a desire for us to behave and sound like the real people we are, rather than corporate automata, in all of our communications. However, we obviously need to re-examine this, as when there is no existing relationship between us and those we're communicating with, colloquial language is easily misconstrued.

I think your 5 points are pretty spot on, and you are not alone on this - Poke's Iain Tait has written on this subject (http://www.crackunit.com/2007/10/03/blogger-relations-digital-agencies-suck-at-it-too/ ) as have numerous others. We let ourselves down on some of these, but thanks to your feedback, we'll be working harder in the future to ensure this doesn't happen again.

A couple of final and much less important points - I imagine you were sent a link to 3mobilebuzz's Flickr photos so that you had some high quality photography available to use, if you wanted, for your article. We've actually been encouraging people to tag photos on Flickr "3skypephone" (see http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/3skypephone/ ) and we're pulling these as an uncensored feed straight into the sidebar of 3mobilebuzz.com which I think you'll agree is a bit more interesting. It's also a pity you couldn't make the launch event, as you would have had the chance to talk to people up to CEO level at both 3 and Skype about both technology and business strategy issues - here's a post from one of the other bloggers we invited that illustrates this - http://www.mobileuserexperience.com/?p=447

[John Dodds]

I was alerted to this programme via another participant and was struck by their urging participants to tag, link video and god knows what else. Much more instructional than conversational.

And to Robin above - the key to communication tone in any medium (and this one in particular) is to be the real people you are rather than "trying to sound like" them.

[James]

Valid points, and you've qualified what your criticism carefully, however I can't get away from the feeling that if you had either liked the product, or the behaviour of the team managing the promotion, you might not have written it. As it is, the product left you indifferent, and the team pissed you off. 2 strikes, out.

I admire Robin for standing up and explaining the stance. I wouldn't want to be responsible for mapping the minefield of etiquette that these scenarios represent.

[Amelia]

Thanks James - It is probably the other way round, if I had loved the phone then I would not have shut up about it. Generally when I get something that I think is brilliant, I tell folks. So the fact that the product left me a bit cold meant that I actually did not have very much to blog about. I wanted to try and find something constructive to say.

You're right, this whole area of Blogger Engagement is so new and such a potential minefield,but I do think that some basic rules apply.

BTW, Robin - thank you for your comment, much appreciated!

[Ewarwoowar]

I'm all jealous. I got contacted by the same people. I said yes, would love to trial it. And then it all went quiet and nothing ever materialised.

Robin! Naughty naughty. :-)

N

[Ewarwoowar]

Oh, and on a side issue - how did it make you feel, Amelia, being asked to review a phone for 3, when one of your clients is O2?

I kind of put the fact that I never got a phone down to me working on Vodafone...

[Amelia]

Openness and transparency all the way. 1000 Heads knew that O2 were a client, my O2 clients know that I blog and that I was asked to review the Skype phone.

Seriously though, you gotta know what the competition is doing right...