The biggest mistake a PR professional can make is insulting the gentle sensibilities of a blogger. Influential bloggers are the Buddhist monks of the online world. They live simple, serene, ascetic lives and can find even the slightest upset or break with their daily routine emotionally jarring.

There are many basic rules that can help you avoid the wrath of a blogger. Remember, hell hath no fury like a blogger scorned by the shock and pain of an imperfect e-mail.First, craft your pitch carefully. NEVER WRITE A PITCH USING COMIC SANS. I cannot stress this enough. Here’s what it would look like. Not a good thing:

It’s also important to have a genuine relationship with the blogger. Like any relationship, this should be based on an understanding of the blogger’s personal style and preferences. Many bloggers, for example, like luxury items, such as chocolates or fine timepieces. Let me offer a few suggestions here:

• Godiva chocolates = FAIL. Know your brands. Good chocolates are not sold at the supermarket. Sending the wrong kind of chocolates could result in a career death spiral that will leave you lucky to get a job as a Wal-Mart greeter
• If buying a watch, resist the temptation to have the watch engraved. It makes it difficult to resell on eBay. Again, know your brands. Patek Philippe.
• An iPod with no music on it is useless. Pre-load it with the blogger’s favorite music.

You can also endear yourself by making the blogger’s life easier. As a courtesy, always include in your pitch your latest information, such as street address, social security number, ABA routing number and any major surgeries you’ve had in the past 10 years to assist with the public humiliation process. This is called “anticipating the blogger’s needs and staying one step ahead.”

Here’s a tip for recent grads. While you may have had an education, your certificate from the Sequoia Institute of Social Media may not have adequately prepared you for the communications environment you now find yourself in. Fortunately, many bloggers have now stepped up to offer reasonably priced seminars on how to pitch them. Some of these take as little as a half day of your time. Or think seriously about one of the week-long “pitch camps” bloggers are holding around the country as a way to round out your professional capabilities. The PR industry still places too much emphasis on understanding its clients and the industries they are in, newsworthiness, writing, and research, though fortunately, some are moving away from this outdated model.

Since the right pitch method varies so much from one blogger to another, you should pick up a specially modified Magic 8 Ball now being offered by the Public Relations Society of America, featuring answers to the question “how should I pitch this blogger?” such as “email,” “Facebook,” and “not at all.”

Also, existing references, such as Roberts Rules of Order and Burke’s Peerage, certainly apply to this complicated thing called blogger relations. No need to “reinvent the wheel.”

I was also very excited to learn of the launch of Outterz, a new social network where lame PR losers can out themselves in an open, collaborative community. The idea that social media can be used to solve problems created by social media is a time-tested strategy.

Ultimately, though, if you violate these simple principles, or you’re just lame, no carefully crafted, definitive blog post on the topic, such as the one you are reading, can help you.

Tags: blogger relations, outing, PR people

Sometime’s it’s hard to tell by the name whether someone is talking about a Web 2.0 start-up or a popular family game. I was playing with Quibblo this afternoon, and created a quiz to test your Web 2.0 awareness. Give it a try.

Tags: web 2.0 start-up, family game, quiz, quibblo

The public relations profession has been under siege at least since it was “invented” by Edward Bernays in the 1920s. And it’s gotten worse in the past two years as PR people continue to collide with bloggers in the intricately choreographed, difficulty rating 10 out of 10, social media etiquette dance.

So I was really encouraged the other day when I saw a car with a bumper sticker proclaiming “I(heart)PR.” OK, I thought, at least one person doesn’t hate PR.

As I got closer, I was disappointed to discover that the PR the car’s owner loved was Puerto Rico. Sigh.

Well, I heart PR, when it’s done well, by competent, ethical professionals. What do you think? Do you hate PR? Is the profession doomed? Going through a difficult evolution? Unfairly maligned?

Tags: edward bernays, public relations, PR, siege

TwitterFone, launched earlier this week, allows users to create Twitter updates (tweets) by speaking them into their cell phones.

I was fortunate enough to get an early invite to try out TwitterFone, and I was impressed. My first TwitterFone tweet was perfect with the exception of a single “s” being dropped:

Pat Phelan assures me that, unlike similar services offered in the past, TwitterFone is a technology solution, and all translation is done through artificial intelligence, and not a room full of people transcribing updates.

TwitterFone is an exceptional accomplishment. The ability to go directly from the spoken word to a text update on a social network has long been a missing link for users. More than just fun TwitterFone overcomes some hurdles to “always on” communications. Text-based mobile users are severely limited in how they can format and publish updates. The keyboards and screens on most mobile devices are not large enough to allow quick and easy text entry. And so much mobile use is in cars, where text entry is difficult, and most likely, illegal. The service could also be useful to disabled persons who can’t use a regular keyboard.

TwitterFone was launched by Florian Seroussi, CEO of CelTrek*, Pat Phelan, CEO of MAXroam, Sean O Sullivan, Ivan MacDonald, and David Marcus, and is currently in limited private beta.

Congratulations to the TwitterFone team for launching such an innovative service!

* While TwitterFone is an independent company, it should be noted that CelTrek is a Socialized client

Tags: twitterfone, twitter, voice to text, artificial intelligence, Florian Seroussi, CelTrek, Pat Phelan, Cubic Telecom

Speculation in Twitter IDs, aka handles, has begun. I spotted an auction on eBay for the Twitter ID @powerseller. I’ve been wondering for about a year now whether Twitter “handle” speculation would become popular in the same way as domain name speculation, with people securing Twitter IDs hoping they have resale value.

This strategy is going to have the same effects as domain name speculation:

• Like domains, the best Twitter IDs for many businesses will be held by speculators who have an inflated, dot-com boom notion of their worth, forcing smaller companies to adopt “workaround” IDs with hyphens or extra words in them.
• Large corporations will crush speculators who attempt to hold online IDs that are part of an established, valuable corporate brand. For example, someone has already registered @mcdonalds on Twitter. This could be the harbinger of a Twitter presence for McDonald’s, or is more likely a speculator. You can bet if it is the latter, McDonald’s will crush the current holder of the ID if he/she does not surrender it willingly, should McDonald’s decide it wants it.
• There have been many instances of people securing Twitter handles and posing as someone else. This is easy, given Twitter’s lightweight registration process, and its loosely written Terms of Service, which bans impersonation, and lack of enforcement on this point. (See for example @billgates or @sethgodin, ersatz celebrities on Twitter.)
• Ultimately, Twitter handles probably belong to Twitter, and there may be some disappointments ahead for speculators.

@andrewbaron ’s recent eBay auction of his Twitter ID and followers does not really come under this heading, but is interesting for what we can observe from it - there is a market for Twitter presence in whatever form. The auction went past $1500 before Baron canceled it.

My assumption is that if eBay decided to have a Twitter presence for its PowerSeller program, and felt @powerseller was the best ID for this purpose, they would simply take it from whomever currently holds it.

While eBay may consider PowerSeller a trade mark, or copyrighted reference, it has allowed independent use of the PowerSeller name, so there are certainly possibilities for building a legitimate business with the ID. If someone purchases the ID, and uses it to build a genuine eBay PowerSeller community on Twitter, then not only does that have general value, but eBay might want to just leave it alone and be grateful that its PowerSeller program has so many passionate and engaged participants.

I do advise clients who become aware of grassroots community efforts, rather than seeing these as threatening, to instead monitor the conversations, and join in if the forum is genuine and constructive. This is a separate topic, but it’s part of the whole dynamic of what happens when private individuals co-opt, for whatever reason, bits and pieces of a corporation’s identity.

The larger issue with this is the erosion of trust in Twitter as a social network. Before it was revealed that @sethgodin was not Seth Godin (the ruse was carried out very effectively), people were thrilled that Seth had a presence on Twitter. The Twitter Turing test is an easy one. In Godin’s case, what easily passed as “authentic, transparent 1:1 conversation” was completely inauthentic, and for a time, the deception was undetectable.

If there is a question, then community policing of Twitter-based deception and co-opting of brands and company names is not a sustainable answer. Twitter may want to adopt a commercial ID registration process in which holders of these handles certify ownership of the brand name, product name, etc.

If, on the other hand, you support free reign in the assignment and use of brand-like Twitter names, then you should expect that the “information” offered by these users could be completely worthless. What if toshibaflatscreen tells you it offers 1080p resolution, and you buy it, and find it doesn’t? Who do you hold responsible? For this reason alone, it’s unlikely that in the long term, large companies will tolerate any abuses of their brand and company names.

Tags: twitter, domain name, handle, speculation, powerseller, @andrewbaron, ebay