I received an email from Margee Moore who has a really fun app out now called Sleeping With the Laundry. The app comes with 20 chapters of Notes from the Mommy Track and it’s gotten great reviews on iTunes! Priced at $2.99, it is a steal compared to a book or an ebook.
But I’m not here to promote Margee’s app – instead I wanted to address an interesting marketing question she sent me.
Margee writes:
“I’m running a low cost social media campaign to promote my app, Sleeping With the Laundry: Notes from the Mommy Track. Would you recommend a facebook page, facebook group or what? Which one works best? Then how do you promote your page and get more members? I’ve got my one page marketing plan and I’m working it, but what’s the most effective way to sell apps in today’s social media environment?”
I don’t know all the details of Margee’s marketing plan, but I had a couple thoughts on how she should market her app.
Click here to read how Margee should market her app
When it comes to business books, I’m like the anorexic girl at the five star restaurant. Always order, never eat. Push the food around on my plate.
My shelves are lined with interesting books, but I only ever read a small subset of fiction (usually urban fantasy or sci-fi). I told myself I would not buy any more business books, because I never read them, and because I already went to an expensive business school that assigned those classic HBR essays where 90% of the material from most business books are derived. At this point, if I want to learn more about business, my time would be better spent studying philosophy.
Find out why I finally read The 4-Hour Workweek
Back in college, my sorority had a rule when we were voting in new members: anyone who used the word “nice” to describe a rush candidate got sprayed with a Super Soaker.
Yeah, it’s weird. But we never made the mistake of voting in women just because they were nice. That’s the point.
It amazes me how many PR and marketing professionals talk about the importance of conversation – that numbers and fans and followers don’t matter, and that’s it’s actually about building relationships. I don’t disagree with them. The part I disagree with is the conversations they seem to want.
The conversations most people want are the ones where you nod your head in sheep-like agreement, write a comment like “Wow, that’s amazing!” and generally participate in the virtual circle jerk.
Continue Reading…
I read a post by beauty blogger Krizia on Problogger today who feels that PR people are getting pushier with bloggers due to the recession. The post left me with two questions: 1) Are PR people really getting pushier? and 2) Is it really the recession that could be causing this?
To address the first question, what are PR people’s expectations, and are we as bloggers meeting them? The factors I see here are:
- Do bloggers review products in a timely manner? The beauty blogger said she tests products for 2-3 weeks before reviewing them. In my experience, publicists send me follow up emails only days after I’ve received the book, asking when the review will be up. As a blogger, I need more time to read the book (because, you know, I actually do read it before recommending it). Are these timelines acceptable to PR professionals? Do they compare to traditional media timelines?
- Do bloggers say the right things in the review? Do PR professionals expect to see a review no matter what, even if the review is lukewarm or bad?
- What success indicators do PR professionals want to see? Comments, page views, social media mentions? Are we as bloggers communicating this information back to PR professionals?
For the second question, my intuition is that the “pushiness” is not due to the recession at all. Here are some other reasons PR professionals might come across as pushy:
- Bloggers don’t respond like traditional media - I’ve written before about the reasons that traditional media outreach is vastly different from blogger outreach. The main gist is that bloggers often have different goals than traditional media, so the incentives are different.
- Bloggers are getting greedy – It seems like every blogger wants a sponsorship deal these days. Whatever happened to blogging about things you like, as opposed to blogging about things so you can make money from them? The world of blogging sponsorships is about as fragmented as you can get, so it’s hard for companies to discern 1) who should get sponsorships and 2) what those bloggers should be paid.
- Bloggers are not a sure thing – I know many bloggers who say, “Send me a sample, if I like it I will write about it.” This partly due to the idea of disclosure, and it’s partly due to the idea of trust, and it’s partly due to the fact that bloggers have limited time and resources compared to traditional media. But if a company isn’t even going to get a mention from a blogger, why should they send the products? It’s a business, not a charity.
- Bloggers can’t deliver on ROI – PR people are extremely pressured to show return on investment these days. Even sending a book to review costs at least $5 – from an author’s perspective then, the blogger must be able to sell at least 5 books to see an acceptable ROI.
- Bloggers are numerous – It’s too easy to start a blog these days. While it’s not easy to build a community, it’s certainly not as hard as say, building a newspaper or a magazine. This means there are a lot of bloggers out there with a couple thousand subscribers who could get traction for a product. A company has to eventually ask, “If I keep giving my product away to anyone with a blog, who will actually buy it?”
What do you think?
- PR professionals, are bloggers meeting your expectations? Are bloggers producing the results you need to get the job done on behalf of your clients?
- Bloggers, are PR people getting pushier in your experience?
- How can we improve relationships between PR professionals and bloggers?
Monica O'Brien is the Director of Digital at Fizz and author of the book Social Pollination, which helps businesses leverage social media for crazy growth!
