Square Pegs and Round Holes - Blogger relations trends in Asia Pacific
I had the pleasure of addressing a break out group at the recent International Public Relations Association (IPRA) World Congress in Beijing recently. Thought I'd share the speech which draws on a couple of sources, in particular Text 100's APAC Blogger Survey. Happy reading...
Remarks for panel discussion presentation, IPRA Public Relations World Congress, Beijing, China, November 14, 2008
Ladies and gentlemen. If you believe what you read (ironically on the blogosphere), it seems that in the three years since US dictionary publisher Mirriam-Webster named the word “blog” as their word of the year, blogs have fallen into decline.
All the buzz is about new platforms such as Twitter and Friendfeed which are getting the early adopters excited. But blogging is, in my mind, still a relatively immature discipline, with much room to grow.
Rumours of the death of blogging are greatly exaggerated.
That’s especially the case here in Asia, where blogging is growing. According to Universal McCann’s latest Social Media Tracker, Asia leads the way in blog writing. South Korea, Taiwan and China dominate. There are an estimated 72.82 million blogs in China. In terms of blog readership, South Korea, the Philippines and China top the table.
Numbers are good, but what does this mean for PR people in Asia? The issue today is determining relevance and influence – and these are especially critical as PR dollars come under even greater pressure in today’s tougher economic climate.
Many communicators will have sat through PowerPoint presentations underlining how brands such as Kryptonite Locks and Dell were affected by blogs. You’ve probably been regaled with the tale of how blog fuelled people power here in China pushed Starbucks from the Forbidden City.
Many practitioners admit that ‘this blog stuff' is important. Yes, they should be doing something about it. But, all too often, the discussion ends there. Nothing more than an earnest acknowledgement that ‘PR 2.0' is here (somewhere).
For some reason, PR people all too frequently go back to their cubicles and labour over another dry press release that's more likely to find a place in the deleted items of an editor's PC than on the front page. For many, the thud factor of newspaper and magazine clippings is still the only benchmark of public relations success.
You have to ask, why is it taking so long for companies in Asia in particular to go to where the people are going? Why aren’t they engaging with bloggers? Is it fear of lack of control of the message? Concerns about visibility? Worries over measurable ROI? Is it the concern that they really have nothing to add?
Or is it fear of being exposed? Blog posts such as "Anti-PR from a poorly pitched blogger", "How To Get PR For Your Startup: Fire Your PR Company" and "The PR Roadblock On The Road To Blissful Blogging" are springing up with disturbing frequency.
It appears that in many cases, we've simply brought with us the tactics that failed to win the hearts and minds of "old" media to the blogging "new" media. We're not reading their posts. We're failing to develop relationships. We're spamming them with marketing gobbledegook. We're also assuming they work the same way as journalists.
And, as is the nature of bloggers, their response to our spam is to publish posts on offending emails from PR agencies. They're publicly naming and shaming, and (not surprisingly) they're welcoming and encouraging often painful discussion. Other bloggers are commenting, further spreading the negative discussion.
Given this reality, reluctance to engage is almost understandable (but not forgivable). Perhaps it is one of those cases where there is such a thing as bad publicity. But with people increasingly being influenced by blogs, the fear of engagement must surely be negated by a need to put your brand, product or service into the discussion.
To help make it easier for companies to understand what bloggers really wanted from PR, Text 100 in Asia Pacific gave them a chance to let us know – warts and all.
Earlier this year, we managed a survey of more than 125 technology, news and lifestyle bloggers across eight Asia Pacific countries. And while I’m a great believer in Chris Anderson’s first rule of the blogosphere, paraphrased as “…don't generalize about the blogosphere.” I’m afraid I’ll have to do a little generalizing when looking at the results.
First up, it is reassuring to discover that APAC bloggers want to hear from PR people. 84% said they welcomed PR firms or corporations to provide them with information, comments, and suggestions.
This comes as a great relief for those of us actively engaging with bloggers across Asian countries. But this finding also presents a great challenge, as the survey went on to point out that we (the PR industry) seem unable to consistently give the bloggers what they want.
While, for example, 52% of the bloggers we spoke to wanted online video, and 48% wanted charts and graphs, it appears that, instead, bloggers have been spammed with traditional press materials and other unsuitable documents. Only 34% said they wanted to receive corporate news announcements, while 75% wanted opinionated responses to blog posts.
Comments on content included: “Those who contact me should not be lost in their own jargon” and “What they talk about should be relevant to my blog”. One of the more telling quotes simply said: “Content (provided) is often unusable – stiff and corporate in style. Speak like real humans and be good listeners”.
This is commonsense but it seems PR agencies in Asia are breaking some of the cardinal rules of communication by simply not taking the time to understand their audiences. To quote one of the bloggers, “They (PR people) should be polite, civil and professional, and should not be pushy”.
Another interesting finding was that bloggers were happy to hear from anyone representing a company, as long as it was the person closest to the story. In particular, they wanted to hear from active bloggers or those prominent in the blogger community. Another point in our favour is that 69% said they preferred to hear from PR people, while 63% were happy to hear from corporate communications folks.
It’s clear – “who” doesn’t matter but how and what they talk about matters most.
This got me thinking about the Asian social media 'spokesperson of the future'. This person may not be the managing director or product manager who has traditionally spoken with mainstream media.
My advice to Asian companies looking to engage with this increasingly influential blogging audience is to determine who's already blogging within their businesses and groom these active participants to become active company representatives.
PR folks should also consider that most Asian bloggers are part-timers, with 67% of bloggers spending fewer than eight hours of each working week blogging. Knowing this, it is critical for Asia Pacific PR people to plan activities outside of normal working hours.
Invitations to traditional midday press conferences will likely go unanswered while also running the risk of being posted on as worst practice PR examples.
To summarize, here’s what they told us:
1. Know us and our blogs and target us with unique content
2. Treat us professionally and build up a long term relationship which goes far beyond dispensing news releases
3. Electronic communication is king. Understand how to use it most effectively
I think blogger and new media engagement gives us a wonderful opportunity to throw away much of the baggage that has crept into our profession. Our world is one in which email conversations, Outlook-based press release distribution lists, and media management via database have become an unfortunate (albeit pragmatic) norm. We're also not doing ourselves any favours by reinforcing the myth that the thud factor of a pile of clippings represents PR success.
This ages me terribly, but those of us who started our careers cutting out news stories with scissors didn't have the luxury of email. We read. We cultivated personal relationships with media and other influencers. The skill of the pitch was constructing a story in conversation over time - not simply spamming a manicured statement to all and sundry.
But there's a fundamental tenant that seems to be increasingly rare in our game. We're not reading enough. We're not investing enough time to understand the blogs, and more fundamentally their readers. This last point is critical as we move into an era of dialogue-based public relations.
My advice to anyone wanting to get closer to bloggers is to lock themselves in a meeting room for two days and start reading and commenting. Through the magic of RSS feeds, we can glean a greater understanding of what our influential bloggers are saying and doing. FriendFeed, Xanga, Facebook, MySpace, Zuosa and Twitter allow us to follow discussions and gain a better than ever understanding of their interests. Today, we are better armed to engage with - and understand - these people.
That’s right, people. Success doesn’t come through better understanding of tools or web applications. Tools are a means to an end - they are conduits for discussion.
We need to help our clients tell good, hype-free stories. Our ability to help our clients form relationships with influencers and their audiences are the keys to success. We need to inspire discussion and thought - not simply bludgeon with key messages and noise.
If we get it right, the opportunities for creating real change for our clients are limitless.
To quote from one of the respondents to our survey: “Bloggers are the new media; they are not to be treated like second-class journalists or expected to behave like traditional journalists. It's a whole new landscape and PR people should learn to accept it.”
- Jeremy