TEXAS my state!

Participatory Spamming

Getting press releases, requests from people you don’t know to write a
blog entry about something you know little about? You’re not alone. I’ve
seen a lot of edublogs that post press releases, reinterpreted in a
personal way. When you’re a blogger, you’re hungry for content to share.
Recycling press releases is one way, though not the best way. I like
this diagram from Personalize Media…

I can’t remember the definition but it breaks out like this…and I’m
remixing a bit here. Read
the original.

My diagram above takes a different view. Anyone and everyone can have
significant influence in the social network, [regardless of what role
you play…below is Miguel’s interpretation of the roles with original
text broken up].

Sharers: You simply share a video or
link with a friend or
Creators: Create one from scratch. Each
makes a statement and you are influencing.
Critics: People
who have more influence are commenters than by simply creating. Your
comment can spark more comments and draw attention to the created work.
Consumers:
passive watchers/readers
Editors: those who will take content
and ‘modify it’ before presenting it.

Also the
potential ‘level’ of influence of each group is indicated in the right
triangle, and one would imagine a focused blog post or moving YouTube
video would have more influence - but as I said before if enough people
rate it highly the actual influence is generated by the community, not
by the original piece.

PR in the past has been targeted for passive consumers, but I agree with
Christie (quoted below) who says that more meaningful contact can be had
if a little more time is spent preparing something for the critics and
editors. And, should PR specialists target just these two groups and
forget about the rest, trusting that their chosen critics and editors
will get the word out there?

PR spam is a growing pain in the rear for all bloggers…and few PR
firms and companies follow the advice shared
here, advice that I’ve shared in various forms with folks who’ve
emailed me their press releases. Quite a few have turned into nothing
more than unsolicited (junk) email to write about their product.

Christie Goodman (San
Antonio Byline Blog) writes:

Have you heard of the term PR spam? It’s the practice of blasting out
news releases or pitches to lists of contacts with no attempt at
tailoring pitches or even verifying that the recipients might be the
least bit interested in the content….because of the ease of sending
e-mails, the volume of PR spam is growing exponentially. While reporters
have mostly tolerated our bad and lazy behavior, bloggers aren’t so
willing. We’ve seen them lately ranting online about it, blocking PR
spam e-mail domains and publishing the names or domains of offenders.

So,
rather than the story becoming in the story, the mis-pitch becomes the
story. Of course, many of these spammers are people doing public
relations work without any public relations expertise. I wish that was
the whole problem. The fact is, many large and small PR firms have been
called out. That leaves us with several questions, like: How are we
training our PR staff? How are we holding ourselves accountable? How are
we measuring media relations success?

Are you getting Public Relations (PR) spam emails? I bet you are but
maybe you’re thinking you’re one of the privileged few, one of the
chosen ones especially selected to serve as the messenger to the world.
This past week, I received this one:

First allow me to introduce myself: My name is Chris Thilk and I
work for MWW Group, a public relations firm. One of our clients here is
Samsung and it’s on their behalf that I’m dropping you a line today.
Samsung is once again kicking off their Hope for Education program to
award a school over $200,000 worth of technology.

Wow, that sure seems like a great opportunity, doesn’t it? Let’s find
out some more…here’s the rest of his email:

From the site: “Each year, Samsung’s Hope for Education holds a
contest where students from schools nationwide can write a 100-word
essay about how technology benefits and helps education. In 2008,
the top winner receives a grand prize of over $200,000 worth of Samsung
technology, Microsoft software and cash grants from DIRECTV, as well as
the SCHOOL CHOICE® educational television programming package. Entries
are open now. Contest will run until August 31, 2008.”

Here’s the link to the official site: http://pages.samsung.com/us/hopeforeducation/index.html
And
this year in addition to a MySpace page (not included here for fear
of being banned)
there’s also a Facebook Fan Page people can add (link
not included here)

We’re really trying to get more people than ever to submit entries so
if you think this is something you’d be interested in mentioning it
would be greatly appreciated. I thought, considering your focus on
the intersection of technology and education – and the proper usage or
tech in the classroom – this might be up your alley.

Let me know if there are any questions you might have.

Best,
–Chris

So, does this meet Christie’s criteria? Let’s see if I can derive the
criteria from Christie’s post:

Is this PR announcement within my blog area of interest?
Is this PR email relevant to my audience?
Is the author of the email just sending this to a bunch of people–how
would I know, except to share it here and find out if you receive an
identical email?–or have I been specially targeted?

What other accountability criteria should there be? I’m not a PR guy,
but reading some
PR blogs/wikis
(e.g. MetricsMan)
makes me an insta-expert:

Measurable objectives:
Increase awareness of Hope for
Education from 15 to 25% in the next 3 months.
Strategy:
Enhance visibility of Hope for Education among
online educational technologists and edubloggers audienc
Tactic:
Email prominent (ah, flatter yourself) edubloggers
and kindly ask them to write about this in their blogs.

Sheesh, what’s so hard about PR? Probably having to put up with
know-it-all bloggers! I received another email from the Absolute
Software (CompuTrace) folks seeking to clarify my recent posting about
their product. This time, though, they handled it better than the first
time…but they didn’t put it on their blog…they still suffer from a
lack of transparency and personalization. I still like their opening…

I see you’ve recently published an article that discusses LocatePC – a
no-cost laptop tracking technology. While we certainly view any media
interest in publicizing the proliferation of laptop theft and subsequent
breaches of sensitive information as a very positive thing, I think
there is one subject that is often overlooked by reporters, technology
analysts and the general public. It might be an opportunity for you to
shed some light for the community as a whole.

I’ll probably publish
Craig Clarks ( Senior Manager, Marketing Communication, Absolute
Software) entry in its entirety…wait, I already did. Sylvia
Martinez (Gen YES) remains one of the best .com edubloggers. You
have to hope folks will pay attention and learn something.

In the meantime, maybe it’s time the rest of turned into participatory
spammers…you know, critics of PR spams/products we receive. Thoughts?