I loved Stowe Boyd’s meme on “Twitchpitching.”  He offers a complete set of instructions for how to use Twitter, his prefered “pitching” channel to reach him, here.

140 characters. Not in your Inbox. The pressure to keep it short, sweet and to the point.

Here’s an example of a reposted tweetpitch from his site:

“UpTake helps u make better travel decisions, powered by 20 mm travel opinions/reviews of edglings from 1000+ sites.”

While he does allow for links to be sent his way, if the story cannot be clearly teased in 140 characters, we have a problem in this new attention economy.

Best Practice “Reaching Out”

I think “pitching” bloggers is a bad idea. Not to get too hung up in semantics, the term “pitching” is an artifact of traditional media relations. While many “head-of-the-tail” bloggers like Stowe Boyd are savvy like traditional journalists or may be traditional journalists, those farther out along the tail may not be. Pitching is not as good as suggesting a great idea that aligns with who a blogger is and what they care about. I did not grow up doing media relations. I sit beside pros who did. And most of their ‘best practices’ are equally relevant to bloggers.

Still, we have to respect how things are constantly changing. Stowe likes Twitter. He also goes the extra mile to have a link - How To Pitch Me - at the top of his blog. It’s hard to miss. Hard to not pay attention to all his signals about how best to reach out to him. He makes a case for a more personal approach to the media relations side of PR that he calls MicroPR in a recent post. Apparently, Gina Trapani of Lifehacker, hates it when pitches - both good and bad - clutter up her personal email account. She has called out those offenders in a new wiki - prspammers. And for whatever someone at Ogilvy has done to earn a spot in your list - I am sorry.

We have a deep commitment to getting it right. We even wrote a Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics which we revise from time to time (look for the Twitter section soon) to protect our good relationships with bloggers - big and small. We are a big agency. And training everyone constantly and relentlessly is an imperfect process. We do have the most ambitious digital training program of any agency I know. I also teach graduate classes at Johns Hopkins University as I want to see the next generation of professionals walk in with an innate appreciation for digital public relations.  Still it takes time and we will move ahead imperfectly.

Things are changing all of the time. I love the idea of “Twitpitching.” I hope we get it right most of the time. I have to believe our deep commitment in digital and in training will do more to help our agency live in perpetual beta  than anything to help our people always reach for best practices.

Finally, I love the discussion about this - especially at the PR Open Mic site.

For your download and pleasure: blogger-outreach-code-of-ethics.pdf

A while ago our team made a group effort to join Twitter. Although many on the team have been using it for a while (and one particular former teammate was a lover from the start), the rest of us jumped on the bandwagon a few weeks ago. The result has been tweets coming in around the clock from our brothers and sisters around the world, and an easy, open way of keeping our far-flung team connected.

Personally, I hadn’t seen the value in it (I may have used the word creepy), until I attended BlogHer Business. While much of the crowd was liveblogging away, everyone was also following each other on Twitter. The 160-character limit was perfect for quick stat, link, and quote sharing, that didn’t get in the way of actually experiencing the event. Starting with SXSW and continuously since then, it has been exciting to see more and more people talk about the impact Twitter is having on events and conferences.

The recent stats show that the number of users is growing fast, and the level of engagement is high, with so many users tweeting from mobile devices while on the go.

Brands are getting involved too, with @Zappos  and @SouthwestAir  the most talked about examples of companies being smart in the space. Less than an hour after I tweeted about my love for Radian6, a new tool we’ve been using, @davidalston, @lebrun and @tozer from the company had all either responded to me or started following me. Same when I mentioned SocialThing.

So monitoring the conversation about your brand/industry is the first way to get involved.  What else is there?

• Customer Service – follows closely with monitoring, but can your company take that next step towards identifying and rectifying customer complains in real time?
• Crowd-sourcing - Twitter is only as good as your network. If you can build up a community that you know and trust, it becomes a great way of vetting ideas, checking references, and conducting spot research.
• Rewarding your fans - @zappos has done random giveaways for followers. It’s a way of building community and thanking/ acknowledging your potential advocates.
• Link promotion – this one I am not a fan of, but lots of people/sites seem to be using Twitter to advertise their most recent blog posts or articles, basically using it as an extension of RSS (@nytimes  does this). Unless there is some new commentary in your tweet, I don’t think I’m buying it.

So, team (and other new converts) what else are we learning from our little experiment?

Last time I checked, bandages and over-the-counter pain medication were about as mundane as waiting in the doctor’s office during flu season. However, I stumbled across a new medical brand the other day that challenges the notion that medical supplies have to be dull. Help Remedies only sells two products; bandages and acetaminophen, but these products’ branding have so much personality that I thought I would share them here.

I’m currently reading Rohit Bhargava’s book Personality Not Included and the premise of the book is that brands without personality aren’t going to survive in today’s competitive marketing environment. Rohit lays out a ton of great case studies in the book and presents a personality filter to help determine if a brand has personality.

There are three elements your brand must have in order to have personality: it must be unique; it must be authentic; and it must be talkable. Together, Rohit calls this the UAT filter for determining personality. When I stumbled across Help Remedies’ products, I immediately thought that they were oozing with personality. So let’s use them as a case study and put them through Rohit’s UAT filter.

1. Is the Brand Unique? At first glance, there is nothing new about acetaminophen and bandages, but there is something that sets this brand apart from its competitors. It is an environmentally-friendly product. The packaging is 100% biodegradable paper pulp and the pills do not contain any artificial dyes or coatings. These are remedies for the growing number of people who care about our environment. Sounds different than the drugstore brands to me.
2. Is it Authentic? Authenticity is all about trust and being able relate to the company as a group of individuals rather than a faceless corporation. Help Remedies has a great back story. Cofounder Richard Fine came up with the idea for the product after going into a drugstore looking for medicine to relieve a headache and found that the packaging for all the medicines were so loud and busy that they made his headache worse. He set out to create something simple and approachable. Help Remedies also gives 5% of their profits to charities that help people without health insurance obtain it.
3. Is it Talkable? Word of mouth marketing has been proven to be one of the most effective ways to reach people with your message. However, in order for your product to be talkable it needs to have something about it that is worth mentioning to your friends and family. Having an effective product isn’t enough because the consumer expects that if they buy a pain reliever that it will treat their headache. In Help Remedies’ case, they set their product apart with their cheeky packaging and corporate website. Infusing their products with a bit of humor makes them different than any other first aid products that I’ve ever seen and prompted me to write this post. They say laughter is the best medicine and that is a corporate message that I can get behind and tell my friends about. Other people apparently feel the same way, since it has gotten great coverage on various health, and marketing, environmental blogs.

Help Remedies launched their products recently so there aren’t any big success stories to point to just yet, but based on their excellent branding I think they have a good shot at differentiating themselves in the marketplace, which is a big help to any new brand struggling to get noticed.

So what do you think? Do you agree that personality can make a brand successful? What brands have encouraged you to take a second glance recently?

There are many points of view on the value of a blog. Whether it be for personal release or corporate brand presence, an active, insightful blog can provide a number of benefits to both the author and the audience.

In working with clients to build corporate blogs, engaging with influential bloggers for social media engagements, talking with colleagues who author personal blogs and contributing, myself, to the Ogilvy blog, I have tried to pull out a few key points as to what value a blog can bring.

Here are some reasons why people blog:

• To join and engage in existing communities around a topic of interest
• To initiate the conversation and facilitate a group or community of likeminded readers/contributors
• To share insights, opinions or ideas around something you are passionate about
• To build a personal brand or enhance brand recognition/presence for a corporate brand

Jimmy Moore, author of Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb and the Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb blog, has been a valued contributor to multiple social media engagements, here he shares his reason for blogging and the value it has brought to him:

“Blogging is a multi-faceted thing for me…it allows me to share with a community of people the information I care about the most [and it] is a release for me allowing my creative talents to be put to good use while I enjoy a certain amount of respect and prestige for the product I offer. Finally, it has become an excellent way to team up with sponsors who see the rise of this cutting-edge format to reach a whole new wave of customers that other forms of media have been unable to penetrate.

Community, creative release, and a steady revenue stream make blogging as a business the best thing I have ever done in my career.”

A colleague of mine, Rohit Bhargava, shared his thoughts on why he started his blog, the Influential Marketing Blog, and the benefits that have resulted:

” My initial reason for blogging was to find a home for some great ideas that didn’t relate to client projects. Since then, I’ve become part of a great community of individuals who share ideas and discuss marketing and so my main reason for blogging is to connect to this community.

The most obvious value I would have to attribute to my blog is signing a book deal for my new book, Personality Not Included, which I just launched last week. The other benefit is that I get to meet and interact with many more people than I would ever be able to actually meet or work with in real life. As a result, I have a great personal network of people who I have connected with through blogging.”

Another colleague, Kaitlyn Wilkins, author of the Catchup Lady blog, shares the value of creativity and engagement she finds in blogging:

“As a kid I loved creative writing, I’m lucky that as an adult social media has provided me with a great outlet for my creative energies. Also, it turns out that I have more to say than I can get through in a day - which is kind of shocking given how much I talk.

Being part of a larger community is definitely the number one thing I value. My blog focuses on social media (and a bunch of other things) and I am continously learning from people I meet through my blog - both online and off. It truly enriches my life personally and professionally.”

Web-Strategist, Jeremiah Owyang, sums up a few additional benefits of blogging in his post on the Importance of Blogging:

• It helps me learn: Blogging is a form of conversation. Comments add input and additional insight to continue the conversation.
• It saves me time: Valuable insights, information and examples that are posted on a blog, like our Blogger Code of Ethics, can be reused and referenced in different situations with clients and colleagues.
• It gets me business: As you’ve seen from recent posts on the Ogilvy blog including Virginia’s post yesterday, a blog can be an invaluable tool for recruitment.
• It brings business: Through insights, advice and resources that can be shared on a blog, a brand can position themselves as thought leaders in an industry and gain the confidence and trust of potential clients or customers, leveraging new business endeavors.

But it’s not just about the value that blogging brings to the authors themselves, it’s also about the value that the blog brings to the readers. As a blog reader, I look to some blogs as a resource for new trends, products and information. I look to others for insight and advice on topics that I am passionate about.

The bloggers I talked to (and I’m sure many others) hope their readers find this type of value in their blogs:

• Advice and recommendations from a trusted source
• Creative and new ideas and insights
• A sense of community - the ability to form relationships with others who share similar interests

Whether your a writer or a reader or both - what value you find in “the blog”?

Since using social media to issue the call that we are building the strategy capabilities of the 360 DI group in DC, NY and SF, we have learned a lot about Recruiting 2.0. We received great response using tools like our blogs (this one and our team’s individual blogs), Twitter, and our social networks to get the word out. By also publicizing where and when we are out and about at events, speaking engagements, etc we’ve also been able to facilitate a large number of offline introductions using online tools.

The biggest takeaway is that the standalone resume, for social media strategy work, is no longer enough. Recruiting 2.0 is all about demonstrating that you eat, sleep and breathe social media instead of simply saying it is so.

The pros of Recruiting 2.0 begin with the fact that you can learn a lot more about a candidate by reading their blog, Twitter, and visiting online projects or social networking profiles than you can from reading a resume. Some creative submissions have included video elements and custom web pages for us. Interviewees also come in here knowing a lot more about us because they have been able to read up on us in a meaningful way. I had a new experience last week of my own words (via my blog) being quoted back to me in an interview. That certainly wouldn’t have happened 5 years ago.

The con of Recruiting 2.0 is that researching each individual candidate is extremely time consuming. You can no longer quickly filter resumes by doing a scan for experience, education or achievements – you need to invest the time to go much deeper.

It is my hope that the payoff of this more diligent vetting process (on both sides) will produce great, long lasting business partnerships as no one is going in underinformed.

And with that, we have another Recruiting 2.0 announcement! We are also hiring a VP, Digital Strategy for our Chicago office and looking for a social media-savvy summer intern for the DC office. If you are interested in either, please visit the careers section of our website and email me at Virginia( dot )Miracle( at )ogilvypr( dot )com.

You may not have spotted it, but there is a trend on the rise which we could call RGM: Royalty Generated Media. This, of course, refers to the idea of media being created by royalty around the world to help Kings and Queens to more directly connect with their subjects. A modern twist on the common fairy tale fable of royalty walking amongst the people in disguise … most people would point to “The Royal Channel” (a YouTube channel that the English monarchy has had for more about six months) now as the first example of RGM. It is a more commonplace use of online video to share updates on the royal family and provide a platform for communications for the royal family. The second use of RGM I came across is a much more engaging effort from a member of royalty many Americans may not be familiar with: Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan.

Queen Rania of the small Middle Eastern country of Jordan (best known in America as the location of Petra - the beautiful achitectural site and tourist destination used in the filming of the 3rd Indiana Jones movie as the location of the Holy Grail) is a walking example of the large gap in perception from much of the Western world about the Arab one. She is articulate, beautiful and completely modern. A startling contrast to the women donning hejabs most frequently seen on the evening news in America - watching her is enough to challenge your perceptions of the Arab world.

Her latest effort on YouTube that launched this week is a more direct effort to counter the many stereotypes that persist amongst westerners about the middle east. In her first video from March 30th (inserted above), she invited watchers to send her their stereotypes in an open dialogue. In a little over a week, the video has more than a million views, over 4000 comments and 20 video responses. She has also published a follow up video response and seems to be laying ground to use YouTube as a consistent channel to communicate with a worldwide audience to challenge the perceptions about the Arab world. This is an example of the power of social media at its best … to foster a discussion, change perceptions and tell an important story in a highly personal way. Already, her first video has nearly as many views as the entire Royal Channel of 125 videos from the English Monarchy. If Queen Rania’s example isn’t a common case study of the power of social media … it soon will be.

1.) It’s PRETTY: The UI, the easy-on-the-eyes “Intel” blue and clean lines make it easy to read, browse, and view what’s on your news feed and profile page. I also like the small, colorful app icons, photo icons and profile details . . . small, cute, concise.

2.) And what a RESOURCE it is . . .: You can educate, comment, learn, share information by posting interesting blog entries, articles and videos.

3.) ARCHIVE my stuff!: Just like every other photo sharing and video distribution site out there, Facebook allows its users to archive an infinite (I think) amount of photos and videos on their profiles. There is also tagging features so you can highlight your friends or contacts in your network featured in photos or videos AND you can send your archived photos to friends, family or colleagues whenever you want, for years to come . . .

4.) Virtual NETWORKING on steroids: It’s crazy, but I’ve been able to recruit employees, conduct business deals, connect people and pitch reporters and bloggers via Facebook. Not that it’s the most ideal mode of communication to to do business in, however, it’s an easy, quick way to reach someone and refer someone should you need to hire a social media specialist yesterday (like I’m doing now!)

5.) Promotional tools for EVENTS: Facebook allows users to promote events, invite people to their events and keep track of who is attending through the social graph. It’s ideal if you’ve, for instance, started an organization called Girls in Tech and need to promote your events, but have no man or “woman” power to do so. Events also show up on your sidebar calendar and in your news feed.

6.) K.I.T. with friends and family: It’s super easy to keep in touch with high school friends, family and pretty much anyone on Facebook. Not only do you know what they’re up to based on what shows up on your news feed, but you can easily send anyone in your network, or multiple people in your network and email or a ping. It’s also simple to get in touch with specific subsets of people in your network by creating a group. This way you can send messages, post items, send pics, videos, whatevah to that specific subset of contacts!

7.) INTUITIVE Intuition: Facebook is seamless in its very personalized and customized approach - It knows you you’re up to, what you like, what to advertise on your newsfeed (err . . . no comment on this one). It’s just cool, to know that a social network is “sensing” your behaviors, so that you don’t get random ads, but stuff that you truly can be interested in based on past transactional, browsing online behaviors.

8.) APPS-Gone-Wild: Anyone and everyone can be an application developer with Facebook’s open developer platform. It’s frikkin’ awesome, genius, and it has evoked so much creativity and entrepreneurialism amongst the masses, mainly kids in college . . . Quizzes, Friends for Sale, Easter Eggs apps were created by kids (even some that have dropped out of school . . .mums the word Eric!)

9.) $$Cha-ching$$: Facebook is a cash cow . . . maybe not HUGE returns right now, but with an existing network and audience - if your app does well, downloaded, shared, etc. you’re bound to make a ton of money on ad sales. It’s a business . . . and probably the best, most nimble kind right now.

10.) Dave Morin: Last, but not least I have to highlight a good friend and all around awesome guy that has helped make Facebook what it is today - D-bone, D-dawg, D-nice . . . jk - Dave is a managing developer at Facebook and tours Silicon Valley and the world talking about how Facebook is evolving and taking over the world . He is as big-hearted, as he is smart and a nice dresser (surprised the heck outta me, since he’s from Montana )

Who would’ve thought that mixing Lunch and the Web 2.0 crowd would be so popular? Well, maybe it’s the free food, maybe it’s all of those nerdy conversations, or maybe it was Ogilvy’s “Lonche 2.0″ theme, seasoned with maracas, sombreros and of course a sumptuous burrito bar from Mexico Au Parc (our favorite lil’ South Park joint).

Lunch 2.0 is the prefect two-hour window that allows people to mix, mingle and chat it up with fellow VCs, freelancers, PR peeps, bloggers, developers, designers, biz dev’ers, tech professionals and industry influencers.

Created by my dear friend Terry Chay, Mark Jen and the amazingly fashionable Bernadette Balla, Lunch 2.0 has proven to be a total success in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley and beyond. So do people really come to get to know more about a company? The employees? To learn more about what Ogilvy does? Judging from the feedback we received, people really didn’t know much about Ogilvy’s 360 DI division. People were asking tons of questions on what types of services we provide, commenting on how the social media and WOMM markets are growing and how we plan to be the top agency in this space, as well as wanting to learn about some of our case studies and what was the “secret sauce” to our success (of course I didn’t divulge that!) It was exciting to know that everyone’s ears were perked and if they didn’t know what 360 DI was, now they do!

Come participate in the world’s most advanced and practical coursework in Word of Mouth Marketing from WOMMA. You will leave with new ideas, new programs, new tools that you can apply to your business and brands today. And we’re turning the classroom inside out with a live participatory model that will give you access to some of the best WOMM practitioners in the world. (Oh, and there’s a special price this week only for everyone - see below)

May 8 & 9th, 2008 in Miami. Get more & register at http://womma.org/wommu/

Three big reasons to come:

Great Insightful Keynotes:
Carla Hendra, Co-Chief Executive Officer, Ogilvy North America will share how word of mouth marketing is transforming marketing, why every CMO needs to evolve their view of the discipline and inside stories on how Ogilvy has embraced WOM.

Andy Lark, VP of Global Marketing & Communications, Dell gives an inside look at how word of mouth and social media has changed Dell forever and how they are using more and more non traditional marketing and communications, to be a part of the conversation with their customers.

Intimate Roundtable Sessions:
Call it a collaboratory, call it a roundtable, but don’t call it a “presentation.” We’ve added a series of intimate roundtables (10-15 people) hosted by experts where you can share in a conversation with your peers on topics that matter to you.

We will cover top questions including:
What’s new in 2008?
What’s working based upon real brand case studies?
How can I get started in WOMM and how can I pilot a program in 2008?
How can I make my existing WOM programs even more effective?
How can I measure and report ROI now?
Who can help me create effective WOMM programs?
How can I connect with my peers in this space?

Great Brand Cases:
See the following brands share their best cases for Word of Mouth Marketing from concept to measurement:Carnival Cruise Lines, New York Times, Houlihans Restaurants, OPI Cosmetics

Register This Week for a Special Member Pricing:
If you register before April 14, the conference fee is $995 for EVERYONE. That’s member pricing. Then, it reverts to the regular pricing for nonmembers ($1495).

Stephania from KimChi Mamas and City Mama sparked a discussion at last year’s BlogHer conference, which led to this final break-out session about multicultural social media marketing. The three panelists Stephania, Kimberly, from Mom in the City, and Laura, a writer and marketer who specialized in Hispanic marketing, are three multicultural women who are coming from multiple angles and viewpoints about when and how they’d like to be contacted by marketers.

They begin the discussion by talking about the lack of awareness about their sites and their readerships by marketers. For example, Stephania, on KimChi Mamas, has only received one pitch from a PR person (where on City Mama she receives many each day). Kimberly hosts events and accepts sponsorship -from a mix of local and national companies - but often reaches out to marketers herself and takes that first step to build relationships.

This lack of attention to multicultural audiences represents a major missed opportunity for our clients. The blogosphere is disproportionately multicultural: 60% of bloggers are white (74% of the general internet population is white), 11% are African American, and 10% are English-speaking Hispanic. These audiences, as parenting bloggers, want to learn about the best products for their kids, they want educational tools and the best new programming. As women and wives, they are looking for community and shared experiences, and as community members, they are looking to support issues and causes.

In a trend that continues to resurface throughout the conference, relationship building is key. Starting partnerships and growing a relationship through commenting and linking and readership is the first way to reach out to these audiences. The women spoke about commonalities based on life stages rather than by demographic. How old are their children? What neighborhood do they live in? What do they like to do? Where do their interests lie?

Especially when looking at social media, we are constantly talking to our clients about behavioral rather than demographic marketing. Bloggers are self identifying by so many more characteristics than just demographics. Reading site content and focusing on those commonalities and communities and building relationships is the first way to start.