Session: Blogging for Business

Here are the two main questions the PR and marketing communities have on blogs: Do they have a business application? And can PR people interact with bloggers? The answer to both questions is yea, according to the panelists.

Panelists:
- Rick Bruner, moderator, Chief Researcher, MarketingWonk
- Anil Dash, Six Apart
- Thomas Zorbach, VM People (set up blog for German company
- Ernest Von Rosen, AMG Media
- Nick Denton, President, Gawker Media
- Griff Wigley, Wigley & Assoc

The problem with this session, attended by about 80 people, is that it tried to cover the entire issue of blogging in an hour. About a third of the audience was there because they were curious about blogging; another third read blogs and a handful were actual bloggers. It's pretty much an impossible mix, and my main complaint about most conferences, which mix all levels in the same room and end up having a tough time satisfying any.

It's really hard to talk about blogs without seeing blogs and, sadly, Ad-Tech has been fraught with technical problems all day and couldn't provide an Internet connection for this session. Nonetheless, there was some very good information about blogging and its use to businesses and its opportunities for the PR community.

The key to blogging, tha panelists agreed, is that its inexpensive software ($150 for a commercial license from Moveable Type) provides many of the same features that cost tens of thousands from content management companies like Vignette.

Dash pointed out that blogging allows the publication of one idea at a time instead of an entire document, creating a new immediacy in web publishing. It also gets some bloggers, who publish items that aren't well thought out, in trouble, Bruner noted.

Nick Denton's Gawker blog has already attracted Absolut as an advertiser, even though it gets only 20,000 unique visitors a day. Gawker, he noted, reaches an important niche audience of influencers and New York media. It's read by "half the journalists in New York," and he says it gets half a dozen pickups a week in major traditional media, including The New York Times. He also publishes the blogs Gizmodo, which reviews new gadgets for geeks, and Fleshbot, launching this week as the first porn blog.

Among the business blogs discussed during the session were blogs for tattoo parlors, construction companies, pubs, a German fashion label, Jones Soda, BizNet Tavel.com, Sega and Home Depot's game blogs, Barbie's blog and Dr. Pepper's much derided Ragin' Cow blog.

Each of these blogs is integrated into each company's marketing, or, in the case of the pubs and tattoo parlors, IS the marketing program.

Jones Soda blog features skateboarders who are "emerging stars" including seven year-old Mitch "Little Tricky" Brusco. Customers have submitted more than 200,000 photos to Jones' photo gallery. Visitors to the site vote for their favorite photos, which can then appear on a soda label. Sodas have names like FuFu Berry and visitors are invited to review and rate the products. A blog is the perfect medium for this site because it allows true interactivity and "brand immediacy."

Scene Embassies brands a European fashion label by having 18-28 year old bloggers around the globe spot trends in their cities and blog about them.

As Bruner pointed out, blogs humanize a company and give the sense that there are real live human beings behind the scenes.

What makes blogs interesting to the PR community is that bloggers, like traditional journalists, are looking for scoops and unlike traditional journalists, who are pitched to death, aren't in PR radar.

The real value of getting coverage in a blog, Dash pointed out, is that traditional media troll them for stories. The most popular blogs might get 200,000 uniques a day, but they are also is likely to get a number of visits from traditional who follow them closely.

How do you pitch a blog? The good news, says Denton, is that bloggers are getting more friendly. Many clueless PR people have been ridiculed by bloggers. One much-blogged-about cases involved Puma, which created racy ads and then threatened to sue blogs for running them. Then there was the infamous Dr. Pepper case, where the company launched their Raging Cow brand with the help of bloggers they paid for endorsements disguised as editorial content.

Both blog and traditional media pitches need the same approach - make it personal, make it relevant, make it short and skip the hype. Sadly, that kind of pitching seems beyond the reach of much of the PR community, who are missing an excellent opportunity to create relationships with bloggers.