Let’s give bloggers a reason to keep the lights on
Call it a stunt. Call it desperation. MomDot issued a challenge to its community of bloggers last week calling for a PR Blackout for one week in August. (Just so happens that’s the week everyone’s on vacation anyway, haha.) The ironic thing is the announcement was the most successful PR move ever for MomDot, accidental or not. The Wall Street Journal was the latest to cover the news, in today’s edition.
On the one hand, I don’t blame MomDot. Bloggers, and mom bloggers in particular, are over-saturated with PR pitches.  We get calls daily (truly daily) from brands wanting to dive in.
I often think of our mom blogger friends on the inevitable receiving end. Step into their world for a minute. Unlike journalists, most mom bloggers don’t work full-time. They’re balancing blogging with their other passion - family. And some of the pitches, no scratch that, MOST of the pitches they get are just awful. Read Bostonmamas Christine Koh’s recent “Bad Blogger Outreach” series. Delete, delete, delete.
The good news is blogs are now widely recognized by brands as a legitimate channel in the mom media mix. And there are brands and PR firms (wink, wink) that get it.
It’s important to look at blogs individually and not as one big mom blog bucket. So much of good blogger relations is about content mapping. What’s the blogger’s focus? What value does the brand bring to the discussion? How can you be a true resource to a blogger and not a source of exasperation?
For more, look for 360 at Blogher Business this week, and if you’re not headed to Chicago, keep an eye here and on our tweets (@Laura360, @C_Pierce, @BWelch).
It was not a stunt. It was an accident where we became the poster child for supporting our forum, which had been talking about blogger burnout. We posted it to see if anyone else would be interested in linking up content posts for a week and it took flight.
As we stated in our original, non-controversial post, we have some excellent PR reps. Our response was simply to assist those that were feeling extreme PR pressure and were unsure how to say no.
A simple community exercise turned into massive traction online and the only thing we can say is that perhaps its a discussion that was long overdue if we were the first ones to point out that blogs had gone a great deal towards commercialization.
I am not appreciating or excited at the ‘traction’ and have spent the better part of a week defending our original intentions, which got lost between PR and bloggers worried that it would be a stop to the freebie express. Our entire reasoning and still remains, to support the BLOGGERS that are feeling let down by PR, thier visitors, or their need to keep up in a statistical sense.
And for that, I am not sorry.
~trisha
Laura, you hit on a seemingly simple, critical, yet often overlooked point — to look at blogs INDIVIDUALLY. I find that more and more pitches are mass mails probably sent to hundreds or thousands of bloggers. Some of them even forget to BCC everyone so you see yourself and all of your blogger buddies in the same distribution. It’s disheartening to think that clients are actually paying firms to do this kind of “outreach” (I use quotes because it can barely be labeled as such.)
This attention to personal detail and individual bloggers’ voice and style is such a strength of your firm. I wasn’t kidding when I wrote that other firms and freelancers would do well by studying up on 360. -Christine
I’ll vouch for you any time as one of the firms that get it. No winks required. And no blackout from where I’m sitting. Things are bright as day around here.
Thank you for seeing this for what it was intended. It most definitely was not a stunt - it was pretty spontaneous, a reaction to a discussion on “bloggy burnout”.
If we can gain control over our lives and our blogs we will ultimately, I believe, experience better relationships overall with brands and PR. A focused blogger who knows themselves and really has a handle on what their goals are is a better advocate and is more than just a regurgitated commercial.
We put a name on it, and are doing it together as a community (some are, some aren’t, that’s ok) because that’s what Momdot is all about - supporting each other.
This is a very well written article that is not only FAIR but it was not catty. It was worth reading and very enlightening.
I think making a decision to take a week break is temporary one and will not solve the issue at hand of learning to say NO. Just like any person sorting out your “inbox” is important but I have found the current cry to act in a certain way tantamount to bullying. The reason I left the corporate world and am in the blogging world is so I control my own site (be it a mess or not, it is what I call mine).
As the blogging has grown, so has the competition but sadly the mutual respect has decreased.
Thank you for such a good article! We are not trying to shun PR or anything like that. We just want a small break. I love working with PR, and most of the ones I have talked with are in support of us taking a short break. Thank you for understanding our point!
As a member of the MomDot community and a contributing author for the site, I would like to thank you for a pretty fair and balanced post. Most of the posts/articles out there did not care to do any homework or fact checking on this issue.
It has now devolved into a High School hate fest where vile things are being twittered about Trisha’s child, husband, family and intelligence level. This was not a stunt. It was not for traffic or to be whiny. It was in response to some of us in the forum and on the Blog Talk Radio show about 10 days ago talking about having bloggy burnout and how we felt like PR wasn’t helping, but rather taking over our blogs with giveaways, reviews, etc.. And the pressure we felt from trying to please everyone, for fear of losing relationships with PR, our readers, etc.
Unfortunately, no matter what we say, it will be picked apart, analyzed then misconstrued & misquoted.
Truly, this whole thing has quashed any faith I had that women as a whole would one day dispel the belief that we are just whiny, gossipy, backstabbing, hate filled b@^%& who would throw anybody under the bus if it benefited them that day.
But, again, thank you for this post.
Thanks for the comment Trish. You’ve made PR people everywhere think twice before hitting send - not such a bad thing. I think we’re all trying to do too much these days. Enjoy your week “off,” though my guess is as a mom and a blogger you’ll still be plenty busy!
Wow, clearly lots of interest in this one! Stunt was probably not a fair word - sorry for the PR lingo Trisha, and sorry for the fallout. It sounds like we’ve just created more work for the over-worked. Honestly, I think that’s one thing bloggers and PR people have in common - we’re all logging too many hours. Whatever happened to summer vacation?
I do think (and hope) that the other common ground is trying to provide good, reliable information for busy moms. I spent a TON of time on blogs last week prepping for my 5yo’s birthday party (which was a hit, thank you to the broader mom blogging community
I’m under water this week myself between email, twitter, reading blogs and getting ready for Blogher. It’s good to be busy, but it makes you think about the need for more selectivity and filtering in all of our communications…with bloggers, journalists, co-workers, and friends. On that note, I should’ve kept this comment briefer!
“we were the first ones to point out that blogs had gone a great deal towards commercialization.”
Um…what? Did I just actually read that?
Great post, Laura!
I’m glad to work with 360 and I can back the fact that you are very respectful when providing opportunities and never rush or put on the pressure–it is always very professional. More PR firms need to work with moms as well as you do!