Well, in the blogger-to-blogger dialog between Norman Birnbach and me, starting with How Do You Establish Metrics for a Blogging Initiative? Take a page from the campaign for Jerry White’s book then moving onto Guy Kawasaki on the impact of bloggers on PR and buzz, then Gifting Bloggers Doesn’t Mean Pushing Swag, Stevie Wilson on The Swag Culture of LA, finally onto To Swag or Not To Swag — Actually Chris Abraham Clarifies the Notion of Swag:

To Swag or Not To Swag — Actually Chris Abraham Clarifies the Notion of Swag

In response to my blog entry, Guy Kawasaki on the impact of bloggers on PR and buzz, Chris Abraham has provided additional perspective about swag in his post, “Gifting Bloggers Doesn’t Mean Pushing Swag.”

Check it out, but here’s some of what he said:

• “Gifts don’t have to be free stuff — like books or iPods — gifts can be in the form of knowledge, intellectual property, insider access, or blogger exclusives; gifts can be informational, gifts can solve a community problem, or customer service issues.
• “What a gift needs to be is super-valuable to the recipient — the value of a gift is based on perception. You need to be willing to give the gift that the blogger wants and not the gift you are prepared or want to give.
• “What is not cool is half measures or crappy, throw-away gifts, the Internet version of key rings and a bowl of candy. Offering throttled, limited or restricted demos (without access to the full version when it is released); offering a single book chapter (without the whole book being an option); or granting “exclusive” access to something that is already released is just plain lame and will result in severe negative consequences.”
• “It is pretty bad to not give a gift when you reach out to bloggers just because you feel entitled or represent a fancy client but it is worse to be stingy about the gift you do give. Make sure the gift is generous — give until it hurts.”

This is very useful. I’m sorry if I misrepresented what Chris was telling me about swag.

Thanks, Norman, I appreciate the follow-up post that better explains my methodology and the implemented strategy and best practices of Abraham Harrison.

This morning, Norman Birnbach wrote an article wherein he suggests that I emphasize giving swag:

One of his tips is to “Give swag” — a point that Chris Abraham emphasized in a recent interview. The reason is that blogging is often a second career and there are few perks so swag can make a difference to get bloggers to respond.

He is not wrong, but I think I need to clarify my definition of “gift-giving.” I don’t emphasize giving away swag, necessarily — what I do emphasize is gifting — and giving ’til it hurts, “What a gift needs to be is super-valuable to the recipient — the value of a gift is based on perception.” The following excerpt is from Be Generous, Not Stingy, When Engaging Bloggers:

“Gifts don’t have to be free stuff — like books or iPods — gifts can be in the form of knowledge, intellectual property, insider access, or blogger exclusives; gifts can be informational, gifts can solve a community problem, or customer service issues.

What a gift needs to be is super-valuable to the recipient — the value of a gift is based on perception. You need to be willing to give the gift that the blogger wants and not the gift you are prepared or want to give.

What is not cool is half measures or crappy, throw-away gifts, the Internet version of key rings and a bowl of candy. Offering throttled, limited or restricted demos (without access to the full version when it is released); offering a single book chapter (without the whole book being an option); or granting “exclusive” access to something that is already released is just plain lame and will result in severe negative consequences.

It is pretty bad to not give a gift when you reach out to bloggers just because you feel entitled or represent a fancy client but it is worse to be stingy about the gift you do give. Make sure the gift is generous — give until it hurts.”

My Director of Operations, Saul Wainwright, wrote a very fine blog post, Spread The Word: Blogs Matter We Just Can’t Measure It!!, over on Marketing Conversation today in response to a blog post by Norman Birnbach of PR Back Talk titled How Do You Establish Metrics for a Blogging Initiative? Take A Page (Via Marketing Conversation):

Another day, and another blog post thanks to our efforts at Abraham & Harrison. Norman Birnbach over at PR Back Talk wrote this great post, How Do You Establish Metrics for a Blogging Initiative? Take A Page from the Campaign for Jerry White’s Book”, which talks about our successful blogger outreach efforts on behalf of our client Survivor Corps.

The goal of every outreach campaign is to get the “conversation” started and help keep it going. How do you do this? Norman shows some of the elements that we have used to promote both the Survivor Corps brand and the book, I Will Not Be Broken, written by the co-founder Jerry White.

First: craft messages that are specific to the demographics you are trying to talk to – no cookie cutting here!!

Second: make it easy for bloggers to blog. In other words create an SMNR – check out the two we created for the campaign here & here.

Third: be passionate about the conversation. This, in my opinion, is always the most critical element – get your team excited, get them talking, get them thinking. Excitement is infectious!!

Norman mentions an article that was recently written by Business Week called, Beyond Blogs: Thee years ago our cover story showcased the pheneomen. A lot has changed since then. I am not going to to into great detail about the article but what I will say is it highlights how things have changed. How powerful a blogger outreach campaign coupled with utlizing social networks like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and Digg are in the world of PR.

The return-on-investment on a social media campaign is huge. Once you get the message out there it can keep propagating and spreading and you get to watch this happen. You get to see the blog posts go up, you get to count the visitors to your site, you get a sense of what people are thinking and feeling about your product. You never got this in traditional media – you sent out your message and then….well, that was the end of that.

What so many companies are still wanting though are metrics – how many people will “read” the posts, visit the blogs – how do you measure a conversation? How do you track where a story goes – where an email is sent, who read the post and then went home to tell their kids about the book? We can’t put numbers on this – it is “out of our control” just like the whole concept of social media – it is about loosing control and letting go. Ultimately it is a trust game. Trust your product, trust your social media team trust your demographic. Don’t get me wrong – we can give you certain measurements but in the end this is only a slice of the much bigger pie, and no one has truly figured out how to measure the much big network effect.

We are very stoked with the response that we have garnered so far for our clients. We know that we have done a good job getting the message out there and bringing it to people’s attention. I hope all of you get a chance to check out the book and ask any questions you have about all that we do over here (wherever that might be for a virtual company) at Abraham Harrison.

When clients come to us asking for conversion rates, metrics, CPM, penetration, eyeballs, and all of the rest of the numbers that are de rigeur in the world of advertising and marketing, we do our best to oblige. We really do. People want to speak numbers and they really want to be able to strictly quantify the spending of a budget with a nice solid number.

Truth is, as an insider, most of these numbers are sort of bullshit. Not because any firm is bullshitting, but because all the tools suck and because all the good tools are aimed squarely at easy-to-define web1.5 portal and ecommerce sites. Truth is, the influence of blogs and bloggers is generally not directly associated with how many folks visit but who.

Blogs are news sources. And, likes water sources, they’re generative dribbles that coalesce into mighty rivers, the portals and mainstream media. Bloggers and blogs are the source from which all downstream media trade is buoyed. New media bloggers, mainstream media columnists and pundits, and talk radio hosts have disproportionate influence on both the mediasphere in particular and on culture in general.

In my world, it isn’t a game of how many eyeballs, but whose. And since this is essentially a B2B campaign — PR exec to blogger and not PR exec to consumer — it is almost impossible to extract the kinds of metrics one expects from B2C campaigns. We’re not direct marketing, we’re doing pitches to folks who are in possession of their very own platform or organ: a blog or a forum. It is apples and oranges.

We use many of the same standards of success that traditional PR firms do: Are we getting coverage? Are we getting articles placed? Are we getting buzz? Is is the buzz good?

Are people picking up our news releases? Is the coverage directly connected to our outreach? Those sort of things. Also, is the tone of the coverage good, bad, neutral? Is the conversation infectious? Are we winning hearts and minds?

As part of our reporting we show volume, tone, penetration, influence, and trending; additionally, we offer analysis of the campaign as well as deeply consulting with the client in order to make sure our messaging is consistent with both who they are as well as steering towards who they want to be! See!

This isn’t marketing, this is PR stuff!

Norman Birnbach just posted the first part in a series of articles about a recent blogger PR outreach that my company, Abraham Harrison, did on behalf of Survivor Corps. It is a very generous article and everyone here is very pleased.

Our goal for the Survivor Corps campaign was to promote both the introduction of Survivor Corps, formerly Landmine Survivors Network, and Jerry White’s new book, I Will Not Be Broken. Jerry, the co-founder of LSN and Survivor Corps, has been the perfect client and we are so lucky that they have allowed us carte blanche. Of course, the products sell themselves.

Another part of our campaign that Mr. Birnbach didn’t mention is social media outreach. We have created over 40 profiles on behalf of Survivor Corps, including very popular Facebook Groups for both I Will Not Be Broken and Survivor Corps, MySpace profiles for Survivor Corps and I Will Not Be Broken, as well as videos on YouTube. Please check out Norman Birnbach’s article, How Do You Establish Metrics for a Blogging Initiative? Take a page from the campaign for Jerry White’s book:

[...] I got an email from Jerry White’s organization, the nonprofit Survivor Corps., asking whether I would review his book, “I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis.” It provides a terrific perspective that has a number of different elements to it — and that’s one of the first lessons I took away, after talking with Chris Abraham, who is handling the outreach to bloggers.

According to Chris, the book appeals to many segments, including cancer survivors, veterans and their families, Christians and leadership. They’ve developed outreach for each segment. While that makes sense, too often organizations do a one-size fits all approach, and miss out working with individual segments.

What they’ve also done is make it really easy for bloggers to write and post about the book with a download page that provides:

• Facts about the books’ publication schedule (including availability as an audiobook).
• A synopsis of the book.
• Sample chapter downloads.
• Reviews and testimonials.
• About Jerry White.
• An overview of The Five Steps.
• Various Excerpts.
• About Survivor Corps.
• Contacts.
• Multimedia Elements.
• Additional Resources.
  
• Social Media and Tags.

They even made it easy for people to join Survivor Corps’ mailing list.

I will continue to explore other elements about blogging relations, based on an interview with Chris Abraham over the next week.
I will continue to explore other elements about blogging relations, based on an interview with Chris Abraham over the next week. [...]