There’s been a lot of talk of late on whether bloggers (moms, specifically) should get paid to blog. And by late, I mean the past 24 hours. I actually had started to draft this post last night after reading a blog post on the subject earlier in the day. Later that evening the conversation continued to unfold on Twitter with the #blogmoney hashtag.
One of the biggest problems with this entire discussion is that bloggers are not asking to be paid. And if they have asked and did not receive payment, why are they working for free? A few points on being paid:
You will never be paid if you don’t ASK.
No one is holding a gun to our heads forcing us to blog or forcing us to participate in a campaign.
As a blogger, you have the option to say NO.
As a blogger, you have the option to say YES (for free).
As a blogger, you also have the option to say YES, but for a price, at which point you kindly forward your rates and begin the negotiations.
(And yes, bloggers should consider that there are actually benefits to working for free: like building a portfolio, creating case studies, stepping into the water to see if you can really be effective. You need to know what you can do before you charge for it.)
“ladies, I am here to say something else. We have to behave like professionals. If we want to be treated as small-business women, which is what we are, we should act like entrepreneurs. No more attacks and back-stabbing. We are adults here.”
She raises two separate issues here:
To be treated as a business one must act as a business
The behavior in this space has to stop. How is it that inevitably you can find clips from the movie Mean Girls played out among a bunch of adult women, moms no less. And how many of the dynamics that have been played out belong in the book Queen Bees and Wannabes, a look into the psychosis that is teenage girl adolescence.
(and yes I have more to say on this topic, but that’s another day for another post; prepare for a book review!)
There were some solid recommendations for advertisers/companies in Kelby’s post as well:
Pay for content.
Advertise.
Hire a spokesblogger.
Hire a blogger as a social media consultant.
So both sides of the argument need to change their approach. My next question for all of the bloggers out there is–then what?
It’s Business Time (and the following clip is included because I simply can’t resist).
Put on your business socks.
As a blogger, you are going to need a few things once you decide to ASK. You asked to be treated like a business; now it’s time you behave like one. Invest in yourself like a business.
Invest in setting yourself up as a registered business.
Invest in solid accounting systems (and account for what you are given).
Invest in good branding and design.
Invest in substantial analytics so that you can deliver reliable information to those who are writing you checks.
Invest in a solid media kit.
Consider your personal liability carefully.
Invest in appropriate legal agreements and contracts.
And invest even more in legal, because now that you are investing in yourself, what will you do when another blogger slanders you, misrepresents you or causes you to lose revenue and accounts? You now have more at stake to protect.
Don’t have time to invest in these things? Than invest in someone who can. Because that’s what businesses do. Can’t afford to do it? Then take out a business loan. Because that’s what businesses do.
We live in a world where virtually everyone has access to his or her very own media platform. Practically everyone can publish. We’ve all got a soap box to jump on, and right now the messages we are screaming are about money. But not everyone can make a business of it.
Some Parting Questions to Ponder:
When should bloggers get paid?
Should bloggers share rates? Are you going to?
In a business world, would there be an element of “price-setting” happening? (sigh, call in the FTC.)
As a blogger, are you ready to take the next steps to make yourself a business?
If you are sick of hearing about the FTC and its new disclosure policies, you can navigate away from this page now. . . . Otherwise, buckle up for a long post and my soapbox! This is the stuff that wakes me up in the middle of the night. This post was originally drafted at about 4 a.m. (sad, I know).
I find far too many instances (well let’s just say most marketing tactics in general) that seem to reinforce the idea that it just doesn’t make sense for the FTC to get involved with bloggers at the level that it is doing so.
Let’s just talk for a minute about products and some of the ways they are promoted:
Product placement: There are PR firms that specialize in “product placement.” In essence, putting product in the hands of celebrities, reviewers and editors online and off.
Entertainment: Let’s take the movie Talladega Nights with Will Ferrell, for example “Thank you for this bounteous harvest of Dominos, KFC and the always-delicious Taco Bell.” Look at the products on the table: Coca-Cola (notice how the logo is faced perfectly no matter what camera angle is featured). His car is covered in Wonderbread stickers. Did they need to disclose to me up front in the movie that these products paid to be in the movie? This happens with the clothes actors wear, the stores they stand in front of and the restaurants they dine in onscreen. Wondering what the most off-quoted statement at our house from Talladega Nights is? “The Jack Hawk 9000, available at WalMart . . .”
The “O” List: How many new products can one woman love a year? I heart O. But that episode is chock full of paid product placement.
Magazines: They are sent products all day long. We could hold hands and walk down the magazine aisle at the grocery store together right now and find a range of products and reviews in print. Editors are sent products for free and oftentimes give preferential treatment to advertisers in the articles they run. They walk a pretty fuzzy line. Why are we not forcing them to make cheap disclosures on their editorial pages? Some magazine do a great job of keeping those things separate. Furthermore, what kind of resources would it take to police the print industry alone, and is it a waste of time and money to do so?
Athletes: I can’t even begin to list the ways that professional athletes endorse products. But I think I’m going to report my neighbor for cycling in his jersey, which is covered in logos, and talking about his sponsor’s snacks all the time. I’ve been victimized unfairly by the spandex.
Bonus: And one more just because I can’t resist it:
The above list is short and barely skims the surface of the many ways that products and services are marketed, placed in the media, endorsed and represented to the public.Let’s level the playing field a bit. Do I think bloggers are being unfairly targeted? Definitely. This is one messy can of worms. All of the entities I mentioned above generally have legal departments, diversified revenue streams, real operating budgets, etc. These are called resources. Most bloggers don’t have that kind of backup.
This is targeting individuals as opposed to organizations. As well sometimes, individuals might want to target each other unfairly and individually. This can also become highly personal. Additionally, all of these bloggers have varying levels of business experience, legal expertise and conflict-resolution background. Does the FTC really want to start fielding those confrontations?
A scenario:
Competitive bloggers police each other’s content. One reports the other to the FTC (fairly or unfairly). There is room for fabrication, inaccuracy and malice in this sort of scenario. Individuals, not legal experts, are most likely handling this situation.
In walks the FTC:
Does it investigate?
Does it spend its time following up on this sort of tattling?
Does it pull apart bloggers disclosure statements, policies and procedures?
Do bloggers have the resources to handle these sorts of investigations?
Who is being protected?
Who is the victim?
Would the FTC be better off following up with large organizations that are slanderous or that have inaccurate claims and statements that are being promoted to the masses?
Are there not people in underserved countries being given our leftover dangerous consumer goods who could use more of our attention, resources and protection?
Seriously, folks–there are better ways to use the FTC’s resources and policing. Let’s be clear about who bloggers are and who their audience is. Blogs are not the Consumer Reports. They are opinion and publishing platforms of individuals.
Disclosure Statements and Consumer Savvy
Moreover–am I interested in reading your disclosure statement? Not really. Consumers need to adjust.
When I walk into a basketball arena and I see the banners, I know they are paid for.
When I walk into a bookstore and I see what’s on the end cap, I know that was paid for.
When I see the infomercial with “what’s her name” endorsing Proactive, I know she is paid.
When I open a magazine and I look at most of the editors’ picks, I know that someone, somewhere provided the magazine with a product to review.
When I watch Talladega Nights I know that Doritos, Mountain Dew, KFC, Coke, Appleby’s and Wonderbread paid to have their logos, products and services in the movie.
When I pick up Us Weekly I know that half of those clothes those celebrities are wearing have been paid for.
When there are pics snapped of high-profile people at the Sundance film fest, I know that they’ve received thousands of dollars of products in their swag bags.
AND AMEN TO THEM ALL!
We’ve created a pretty complicated world with a lot of noise for marketers to create compelling campaigns to get their message across. There is a learning curve for consumers, just like anything else. Let consumers adjust as well.
Capitalism, Darwinism and Survival of the Fittest
Will a blogger thrive and grow a loyal audience if he or she is:
Continually hawking products she doesn’t believe in
Doesn’t endorse quality
Makes canned claims and reposts marketing copy in her posts
Is off message and brand to her audience
My answer is no. And I would submit to you that her audience/followers will take care of the problem. As for those who’d like to be loyal to those content creators who don’t endorse quality–it’s their choice and their monetary gamble if they make purchasing decisions based on those blogs’ endorsements. May the best blogs win!
Bloggers with real influence care about their audience. They nurture trust and loyalty through the quality of their content, and that includes the kind of products they talk about. Let Darwin dispose of them, not the FTC.
Disclosure: Ricky Bobby, WalMart and Wayne’s World did not compensate me in any way, shape or form for their media inclusion in this post. Additionally, my family does not receive any royalties or revenue as a result of using the term “The JackHawk 9000, now available at WalMart” around our home and in our personal and public conversations.
Another example of how the way we consume media and information is changing every day. And yes, it’s yet another post about social media and Twitter.
If you are on Twitter, simply look at the top trending topics and click on #iranelection. I noticed this topic trending on Saturday night and have been watching in awe ever since. I’ve found the latest photos, articles, posts and voices from the inside keeping me up-to-date with the events surrounding Iran’s recent election. Accompanying many of those tweets you see hashtags like #CNNfail and frustration with the media’s coverage (or lack thereof) of this event.
Truthfully, as things progressed Saturday night, not much could be found on CNN.com about the unfolding events. Now I’m not suggesting that we, as individuals, replace the formal media, because I don’t want them to go away. I want their credibility, I want their standards, I want to go there to fact check and confirm. I want them to be correct. But can we demand that they be both correct and immediate at the same time? Yes, it’s tough–and we, as information consumers, are making it even tougher on them. However, they’ve got some catching up to do. If they don’t cover it, we will. On our blogs, in our networks, with our tweets–we’ll spread the word.
Where do you look for up-to-the-minute coverage on what’s happening to the world? This weekend I realized how much it had changed for me. Tweet!
People are talking about you . . . are you talking back?
Last winter I complained on Twitter about my blog service, which was taking ages to get back to me on a bug request. I had e-mailed and e-mailed . . . and e-mailed. However, I sent one tweet with the company’s name on it–and that’s all it took. My tweet went something like this:
“Typepad is slaying me! I have had a bug in my admin for weeks–no progress!”
Typepad’s customer service might have been backlogged, but it had someone dedicated to monitoring social networks, and she resolved my issue within the hour. All of the sudden, I received an e-mail with the subject line: “Typepad Woes?” The body read:
Hi Rachael:
I saw your Tweet about having trouble with TypePad. I’m taking a look
through your tickets now–I’ll work on escalating this and see if there
isn’t something more I can do from my side to get you posting again!
–
Ginevra Whalen
TypePad Community Manager
Six Apart
And escalate she did. I was able to post within the hour. Typepad and Ginevra did a couple of things right, and good things followed:
It has someone monitoring the networks and engaging with the community.
Ginevra stepped in, followed through and actually did something that helped me.
The tone of the conversation about Typepad and my experience with the company changed. I went from being disgruntled and ready to shut down the blog and leave (I had been e-mailing about the bug for three weeks) to impressed and excited about how it effectively used social media for customer service.
Another company that shines for its customer service via Twitter is Comcast. To read more about what it is doing and how @comcastcares has been an effective way for the company to help customers, check out this recent blog post from the Wall Street Journal Digits blog.
Sad example of a missed opportunity:
I heart my milkman. But in a very upstanding way.
Once a week, the cooler on my porch is full of fresh milk and fresh-pressed apple juice, and sometimes the poor man has to drag groceries up my long and windy stairs, too. One very early morning I was up feeding the baby, and looked out the window to see my poor milkman hunting around my yard for the cooler that my kids had hidden. He found it, returned it to the right place and filled it. Just a little thing, but I was impressed. I wanted to tweet about it. I searched on Twitter for his company–it was not participating. But people were talking about his company on Twitter–good and bad. Unfortunately, the conversation was one-sided.
If you have a business, you can’t afford not to monitor and engage the social networks your customers are using. Whether you are a blog service or the local dairy with a delivery service, people are talking about you . . . are you talking back?
Brands can benefit in a big way by having solid social media strategies, but they can also be hijacked. The recent Domino’s disaster raises questions about how much control you really have over your brand online. Employers also have to be asking themselves how to monitor their employees’ use of social media in relation to their brand and business.
I don’t think there is any easy way to make your brand and business bulletproof–but I do think that every company would benefit by setting some social media policies for its staff. This, too, raises interesting questions, such as:
What can and cannot be posted about your company by employees?
Should employees sign an NDA of sorts regarding specific points and practices?
Should you keep employees’ twitter handles on file?
Should you friend them on Facebook?
What should be considered personal and private information about co-workers?
At what point do you encroach upon personal privacy in social media with employees?
I sent a tweet out to the twitterverse asking people if their company had a social media policy. I got a response from someone with OrangeSoda.com. In essence, they’ve had the conversation with their staff, and their rule of thumb for social media is to “use your best judgment.” I agree with that, and I think it’s important to at least have that conversation and set those expectations.
It still doesn’t necessarily solve the Domino’s problem–as the two Domino’s employees obviously didn’t use any common sense. However, I do think that it would be a good preventative for businesses to simply have the conversation. Moreover, I think a basic agreement should be signed outlining the standards that employees agree to abide by both from a customer service and social media perspective.
My general rule of thumb when it comes to the naysayers is to let them “naysay” and refrain from jumping in the mud. But I couldn’t resist when I saw Beth Blecherman’s post on SVMoms.com about a story that was seriously “dugg” back in 2007 on Digg.com. This post had 2,612 Diggs and 91 comments when I came across it the other day. Sadly, times have not changed. But how much evolution can one really expect in two years?
We recently launched a new feature on our site that was covered by the WSJ Digits blog. We made it onto Digg and, last time I checked, had 116 Diggs and 14 comments. The comments posted there were equally nasty, if not nastier (browsers beware).
Maybe the boys plaguing Digg’s comment threads should figure out who their mama really is. She’s pretty tech savvy, controls more than 80 percent of household spending and isn’t very likely to marry a boy that wants her to do all his bidding. And gasp, has more to say about life than “Come home dinner in 10 minutes.”
I was on a panel the other night. Generally you get invited to be on a panel to represent a certain area of expertise or a unique demographic. Participating in panels is a great way to get exposure and position yourself as an expert in your field, as well as a great way to expand your network and gain some credibility in your community.
Here is my problem with being an “expert”–no one knows everything. So it can be intimidating to pitch yourself as an expert. The intro text for the event was a little intimidating: “We have lined up a terrific panel of some of the valley’s social media elite.” I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a social media “elite,” but for a night I could look like one, right? I may not be as seasoned in social media as some of my counterparts on the panel (@comcastcares for heavens sake!), but at the end of it all I still have a unique perspective from a unique demographic that is worth sharing.
We all have something worth sharing. So if you’ve been hesitant to get out there and pitch yourself as an expert in your field–you don’t need to know everything. But know enough to share something genuine and unique from your perspective. And don’t think you need to bluff your way through things. If you don’t know something, admit it. No one will ever fault you for that.
I hesitated to put up this post because I thought it was common knowledge, and many of you will probably scratch your heads and say, “That is so 2008.” However, I went to a conference recently and more than half the people in the room didn’t know about HARO a.k.a. “Help A Reporter Out”–a fabulous free resource for media outlets and for those looking to be covered by the media.
Peter Shankman runs HARO (he can be followed as well on twitter: @skydiver) and sends out up to three e-mails a day with all of the latest inquiries. Another note for Twitter users: You can ask questions directly using #HARO.
TodaysMama.com has gotten coverage from some of these inquiries, and we also are starting to use the service to source content. It’s easy–just subscribe to Shankman’s newsletter and watch for queries that fit your business.
Be aware that there are loads of people who respond to the queries. I think the key to getting noticed is being genuine and to the point. If you’re not a PR pro, don’t pretend to be one. Be real.
We often think that public relations and perception are for the outside world–but we all need a good does of internal PR.
Does your company have a core message, mission and culture? Are you communicating adequately to your employees? It’s time to go above creating a mission statement on the whiteboard.
Here are some things we’ve done at TodaysMama to keep our company communicating and on the same page:
Quarterly Business Plans and Reviews: Many people save this for once a year; we do it every quarter. This is a great opportunity to review goals, track progress, make sure we are on the same page, get new ideas and show appreciation.
Company Culture/Company Ethics Document: Because we are a virtual office and we all come from different workplace experiences it was important for us to outline our ethical expectations as well as the goals for creating the culture of our company. Because we are a virtual office it can be hard to have a company culture. But we’ve gone so far as to outline the things that are important to us so that we all know what to expect from each other. For instance–in our company culture document (which is more lighthearted) I spelled out the fact that we are not a CMA business (Cover My A**) and I don’t want us to operate as such. Everyone should feel comfortable raising their hand in a meeting and admitting to a mistake and focusing on a solution. Everyone needs to know what their expectations for interactions are and it helps to actually let them know!
Annual Message: I also like to kick off the year with an uplifting message to our staff and partners outlining the progress of the previous year and goals for the next. I think it helps set the tone for a new year with a clear message and road map.
Weekly Time Sheets: What? I’m a Gen Y entrepreneur! Isn’t that micromanagement? No. Because we’re a virtual office it helps me see what everyone is doing on a weekly basis whether she’s full time or hourly. I also leave a blank space at the bottom of the time sheet for people to summarize any outstanding questions they might have for me or needs they have in their position. It’s a great opportunity to keep the communication lines open.
These are just a few of the strategies we’ve implemented to keep communication and messaging clear within our company. What are you doing? How do you keep everyone on the same page? How do your reinforce your internal messaging? Please share.
