Blogs And Your Earned Media Strategy

January 29, 2008

From Online Marketing Blog, here is an important discussion of two studies on journalists and their use of blogs for news ideas and sources.

Some factoids:

  • Nearly 70% of all reporters check a blog list on a regular basis;
  • Almost half of reporters say they are “lurkers”;
  • Over three-quarters see blogs as helpful in giving them story ideas, spins, and insight into the tone of an issue.

Do you think having a “Media Section” on your nonprofit's website will get the job done these days? Not a chance … too passive.

Of course, reporters have heard of googling. But more and more, they expect the new stuff to come to them via RSS and email feeds.

Tom

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I Was Master Of The Philanthropy Universe, Until …

January 1, 2008

I screwed up bigtime.

This is probably how Holden Karnofsky, prime mover of the Give Well blog is feeling today.

For a couple of weeks in December, HK was the darling of mainstream media coverage of philanthropy. A brash young hedge fund manager, turned instant philanthropy savant, prodding establishment philanthropies on issues like transparency and penetrating empirical evaluation of grant impacts. Featured breathlessly by the Chronicle, the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal, MSNBC and several others.

He should have ended the year on a high. But he over-reached, and tried to manipulate the blog world, as he confesses in this sort-of “mea culpa” post on his own blog. He was “outed” for fraudulent self-promotion by readers of the blog MetaFilter, as you can read here. Holden Karnofsky has seriously damaged the credibility of the Give Well blog. [It will be interesting to see if any MSM follow-up on his transgression.]

Having given Holden an Agitator raise in my post of December 10, titled Who Wants Holden Karnofsky's Money?, here's my take on the sad affair.

As I originally said, I've felt schizophrenic about HK and GiveWell. On the one hand, I called him breathtakingly audacious, a punk. On the other, I applauded Give Well's philosophic orientation, analytic rigor and transparency of thinking.

My ambivalence continues today!

The evidence suggests that HK is an immature, under-informed, smart-ass. There's no excuse for his attempt to generate fake interest in his blog. A lot of folks in the philanthropy world will be grinning at this turn of the screw.

But as a provocateur, he is indeed asking the right questions. All centered at the end of the day (ironically, considering his blogging mis-capades) on the issue of accountability.

  • For funders, how carefully have they really vetted the recipients of their benevolence … do they really know what's working and what's not … and why aren't they transparent about their evaluation and decision processes, so as to benefit everyone trying to accomplish good?
  • For nonprofits, how well can they document that their strategies and programs are actually effective? Not just in process terms, but in terms of truly delivering the results they claim to be pursuing.

These are legitmate questions. To be sure, HK didn't invent them. But damn if he hasn't pushed them in everyone's face over the last year. For which he deserves some credit.

So today I'm deeply disappointed that HK couldn't be content with his considerable fame lately in the mainstream media. He's dug himself a deep credibility hole that will be tough to climb out of. He'll need to work overtime prove his integrity.

But I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I'll stand by my conclusion of December 10 regarding Give Well, with one qualifier about HK:

“I look forward to their work maturing and becoming richer with hands-on experience. Until then, I can live with what I perceive as the occasional intellectual misdemeanor or sensitivity lapse. And I'll urge everyone to monitor their efforts.”

The qualifier?

Thanks to the folks at MetaFilter, we know that, for now, we can't look at HK quite the same way. He's tarnished his reputation, even for those of us who are receptive to his message. One really bad judgement like this — not just a “lapse,” but a deliberate deception — we might tolerate (some of us, anyway … see below); but another episode like this and he's toast.

Tom

P.S. Most of HK's critics on MetaFilter are anonymous … and you know how The Agitator feels about anonymity (it sucks)! As is usually case, anonymous critics can get rather vitriolic and righteous. There's no shortage of venom in this MetaFilter outing. And almost no evidence that most of the critics have read any of Give Well's material. Which doesn't stop them from imputing all sorts of sins to HK. Let me be clear … there's no defense for HK's deceptions. But it's unfortunate that one needs to read through so much bile to get to the facts.

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Is Your Online Presence Keeping Pace?

December 14, 2006

Internet users are becoming more and more comfortable with the medium, taking advantage of high speed broadband access to try more of what the Web has to offer.

Nonprofits need to keep pace with their online strategies and implementation, because higher expectations will be created by donor and activist exposure to sophisticated tools and sites in the commercial space.

Some relevant stats:

    • From Nielsen/Net Ratings, 78% of home Web users connected by high speed last month. And home broadband users spend 33% more time online - almost 35 hours per month - than dial-up users, viewing more than double the pages.
    • From Mediamark Research, some the online activities that have seen the biggest growth in the last year include (among all U.S. adults): made a purchase for personal consumption (34% have done, up 6%), used Instant Messenger (27%, up 21%), downloaded music (16%, up 23%), watched online video (11%, up 124%), visited a blog (7%, up 164% … thanks no doubt to The Agitator), made a phone call online (3%, up 198%). Of course e-mail is still the killer app, with 70% of all U.S. adults using e-mail. And two activities especially mportant to causes - 40% of all U.S. adults obtain the lastest news/current events online, while 31% pay bills online.
    • Speaking of online video, eMarketer estimates (higher than Mediamark) that over one-third of the U.S. population - 108 million - will view video on the Internet at least once per month on average during 2006.

So online phone calls, blogs and video have seen the biggest growth. Certainly the last two have implications for how nonprofits communicate, as these user universes expand.

More active Web users have a special significance to nonprofit marketers, apart from their communications preferences.

A study just conducted for Yahoo finds that among consumers who have made purchases online, full 40% also qualify as “brand advocates,” defined as: “adventurous opinion leaders who are socially well-connected, express their opinions and viewpoints and continually discover new content online.” Brand advocates like to write online about their purchases. They watch online videos (45% say they watch online video “several times a week) and 32% either write blog posts or message board entries.

Our takeaway for nonprofits:

    • Endangered species: print newsletter writers!
    • Most important species: online strategists!

Re-visit our earlier post: Your Most Important Hire.

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Bazooka and Neutrogena Have Clues for You

August 23, 2006

B.L. Ochman's blog points us to an instructive promotional contest sponsored by Bazooka, the bubble gum folks, on YouTube. Bazooka is encourging kids to submit their own dance video routines to accompany a 50's song called “Choo'n Gum.”

Now what could this possibly mean to you, Ms. Cause or Charity Marketer?!

Her point:

Social media sites like MySpace, blip.tv, flickr, SecondLife are providing easy tie-ins for marketers' campaigns, saving them huge programming fees.

The so-called social networking sites are the fastest growing watering holes on the web — indeed YouTube and MySpace are in the top ranks of visitors, competitive with the establishment portals like Yahoo and MSN. Creatively used, the social sites potentially can pull thousands of young people into your cause, even as you capitalize on their infrastructure to save costs.

Of course, you need to be interested in attracting young people to your cause!

In a similar vein, as reported by Ad Age, Neutrogena is tapping the creative energies of young girls to engage them in a conversation about their skin problems. In this case, girls are invited to video record themselves talking about their beauty secrets. Otherwise known as “brand building.” The result: 1,500 videos in the first two weeks.

If your organization is interested in appealing to young people, and you don't think you will need to master new media techniques, you oughta be fired.

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What Clout Do Bloggers Really Have?

August 18, 2006

“Why Bloggers Can't Win the White House” headlines Ad Age.

With the “netroots” taking credit for derailing, at least for phase one, Joe Lieberman's re-election bid, there's plenty of bravado these days amongst liberal bloggers. But this article throws some cold water on the netroots celebration.

Essentially two points of view.

From Michael Bassik (from John Kerry's 2004 online agency of record):

“Campaigns and advocacy groups still want to see the internet as a cash register. Most campaigns allocated about one-tenth of 1% of their budgets in 2004, and there are no indications that that trend is going to change in 2006.”

From Arianna Huffington (pundit & founder of Huffington Post.com):

“Netroots is not about a website or fundraising. It's an authentic and passionate conversation, and it has proven its ability to affect American politics.”

Sounds like an “old guard” versus “new guard” debate. The former add that the percentage of folks actually reading blogs with news/political content is still low. The latter argue it's the quality and intensity of engagement of the netroots that makes the difference. The former argue for message control. The latter say “the people” will set the agenda.

We're betting on the new guard!

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Introducing Web 2.0

August 1, 2006

Most of you know that Web 2.0 refers to the advent of user-generated content on the internet — podcasts, personal webpages (and more) on sites like MySpace, blogs with all levels of sophistication, and online videos ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous on sites like YouTube.

MySpace (for web-based personal profiles and networking) and YouTube (for presenting home-made videos) are the most notorious sites for facilitating user-generated content. MySpace, with 96 million members, now has more daily visitors than established portals like Yahoo and Google, while YouTube serves up 80 million video viewings a day.

These home-made efforts constitute a sort of democratization of online creativity and entertainment … literally millions of creative individuals expressing themselves outside what have been the traditional entertainment channels where “they” supplied “us” with the content.

WallStreetJournalOnline has compiled a fascinating “New-Media Power List” of some of the most popular entrepreneurs behind these efforts, many of which have crossed the bridge from “sharing with my closest friends” to impressive commercial potential and web superstardom.

Not surprisingly, there's a lot of political expression — both spontaneous and orchestrated, from personal rants to structured campaigns — via the instruments of Web 2.0. For example …

Continue reading “Introducing Web 2.0″

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Poetry or Persuasion?

July 21, 2006

Once again the Pew Internet Project has produced a research masterpiece with its just-released study, Bloggers: A portrait of the internet's new storytellers.

In addition to reporting all the valuable demographic data (12 million blog creators, 57 million blog readers), Pew drilled into the motivations and behaviors of bloggers, producing many rich insights. Looking at reasons for blogging, Pew's authors focus on the desire of bloggers to express themselves creatively (79%) and share their personal experiences (76%), leading marketing guru Seth Godin to title his comments on the study, Blogging is the new poetry.

But the study also delivers a portrait of bloggers as “among the most enthusiastic communicators of the modern age” and as motivated persuaders — 61% blog to “motivate others to take action” and 51% to “influence the way other people think.” For you fundraisers and organizers out there, older, wealthier bloggers are more likely to list “motivating others” as a major reason to blog. Among all bloggers, 11% indicate “politics and government” as the main topic of their blog (more likely for bloggers in their thirties and forties and those college-educated, second after “my life and personal experiences” at 37%). Bloggers are the most avid online news news readers, particularly political news.

I'll bet that if you passed bloggers through the traditional Roper “Influentials” screen, they'd over-index like crazy, even though they skew so young (only 16% are 50 years or older).

Plenty of meat to chew on in this report. Get it. Read it!

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